Tools and Tips #2 from Applied Science 

More tips: 1. You can use Hot melt glue to secure thin metals for machining on a lathe or mill. Use heat to delaminate it and whip off with a solvent (acetone works) after machining. 2. you can use hot melt glue with sandpaper on dowels or other instruments to create custom tools for sanding inside of parts. 3. silicone caulking does not bond to scotch tape. You can use it as a mask when applying silicone to surfaces. 4. You can use cheap PTFE (telfon) tape like electrical tape for very small wires or connections. PTFE tape isn't sticky, but holds tight when coiled around a wire. PTFE is a very good electrical insulator, and does not outgas (for use in vacuum systems). Standard electrical tape is difficult to use on small wires due to its sticky adhesive 5. Hot air rework stations can are great for reworking hot melt glue. you can dial in the heat necessary to remelt the glue and avoid putting to much heat onto the part your working on and have fine control of where you remelt the glue.Hot air workstations are also great for heat shrink tubing. 6. You can use loctite to bond metal to metal surfaces where soldering or welding is not an option (ie securing a bronze bushing, or thin pieces of metal). You can de-bond loctite with heat. Loctite will provide a more uniform parallism between thin parts as hot melt glue is difficult to apply smooth and flat.

That one picture explains why blu-ray is a thing far better than any explanation I've ever been given. And all it took was a guy building a SEM out of spare parts in his garage!

The way I understood it, fridge magnets have this complex pattern because they are half-magnets, meaning only one side (the back-side) is magnetic. It's called a Halbach array if you want to look it up. Has some really cool applications aside from decorating your fridge.

Your phase checker can give false positives. So always check both and don't assume the other one isn't the hot one because the neutral can give you a light if it isn't grounded properly such as in old houses.

Applied Science I don't know if you do that already, but you should try hot glue and baking paper! Hot glue won't stick to baking paper at all (may depend on the quality of the paper though) if you let the glue cool down before trying to pull of the paper. Put a dab of glue on the paper, then push a connector (e. g. standard 0.1" pin headers with wires soldered to it) into it and push on the top with a second piece of paper (although it's fine to do this in two steps also). With a little bit of practice and trimming (flush trim wire cutters work very well for that) you can make connectors that almost look like injection molded, including a kink protection.

5:36 cool! But actually it's not north south north south but in fact a special pattern called a Halbach array which uses 4 distinct polarizations (two are normal to the sheet and two are parallel) in a specific repeating order to magnify the field on one side of the sheet and partly cancel it out on the other. This is why most rubberized fridge magnets don't work very well in reverse.

That pin vice looks handy. I usually wrap tape around the drill bit and then put that in the chuck, but it doesn't always work well.

7:34 - Are tester screwdrivers not a common thing around there?

The flexible magnet has fields like that because they are arranged into a Halbach array. This gives magnified pull force to one side by taking it from the other side. VERY useful configuration.

The trouble with pin drills is that the TIR (eccentricity) is so bad that the drills have a much higher chance of breakage. Also small drills don't really work well in hand drills for several reasons. First, the smaller the drill the faster it needs to turn, 10k or even 20k rpms is not abnormal. The other problem with hand drills is that they are not sensitive enough to 'feel' the drill and it's very easy to bend and break the bit. There's a tool called a "sensitive drill attachment" that allows you to very carefully and accurately control the drill in a drill press. Thanks for the video, Robert

Starrett also makes a set of really nice pin vises which may be worth looking up if you're (like many machinists) into their line of tools. Check out the Starrett S162Z. I've used them myself, and they're lovely! Thanks for some good tips!

Permatex sells a liquid PTFE sealant, I use it for things like the drain plug on my car's transmission. It resists chemical damage and can be applied even with oil on the parts and it will still seal pretty well. I've actually used it for sealing household fittings and air fittings up to 150psi, it's worked very well so far.

For cutting rubber tubes I use a Folding Utility Knife. I fold it with the hose in between and do a turn, works like a charm. Just like a pipe cutter.

bro you are genius I love watching these and consuming the random things you know

The fridge magnet is a Halbach array, and is more complicated than alternating N/S. It uses a pattern of magnets to create a strong magnetic field on one side, but very little on the other.

a much safer way to check the 'hot' pole of the outlet is to use the ground instead of your own body. without a resistor, that testing method you showed could cause injury or death in certain circumstances..

I was happy to hear you give "hot-snot" the thumbs-up; its lowly status and poor reputation belies its usefulness! A somewhat flexible adhesive that can be re-melted at will, can be removed without trace from many surfaces, applies and sets quickly (albeit messily), is actually quite useful in many situations where nothing else would work. One perhaps unusual application is to put some low-temperature hot melt glue on a wire connection which is to be heat-shrinked, in order to make the seal waterproof. When shrinking the tubing the glue re-melts and fills any voids (some may even ooze out the ends if you've applied it too liberally), forming a watertight bond. I know there is such a thing as glue-lined heat-shrink tubing, but it costs more $$$ and this is a reasonable alternative when you haven't got any to hand in the correct diameter.

I've got some input in r egards to cutting tube. Standard PVC pipe cutters are pretty common in a home shop. I've used them to cut all sorts of softer tubing. Really amazing how well they work! Love these videos Ben. My favorite channel on youtube. Cheers.

I see you donated to NurdRage - nice one man; he's such an underrated youtuber! I respect what you're both doing so much. You guys will be remembered as part of the driving force of a new era, and I think that's pretty amazing.

Ben, you are the killer app for youtube.

3:05 ...it's thicker BUT it's more dense. Shocking. 4:25 you can also get glue sticks made for fabric that set soft and flexible. 7:00 This is handy for being neat, but don't twist wires you intend to feed through conduit. It makes it MUCH harder to pull through pipe. Also increases heat inside the conduit...7:43 instead of your finger (Hi, I'm an electrician) put one side into the ground hole at the bottom, or connect to a faucet or water pipe. No shock and you will find the polarity (which side is plus or minus) which won't be shocking! ha. Love this channel. I also want to point out it would be cheaper to subscribe to get the iron on logo than to make it yourself.

Ben, you're my inspiration! Don't ever stop being awesome.

There do exist soft pipe cutters. Used quite extensively in making watercooling loops in computers. They make stright clean cuts to avoid any missalignment with the fittings.

more of these "Tools & Tips" videos, please. These are great.

On cutting vinyl tubing, a garden pruner type called an (Anvil) pruner will do the same. It also uses a flat edge on one blade and a knife edge on the opposing blade. Square cuts for a lot less money. It also works well for cutting Coaxial cable and bundles of electrical wire and nylon rope.

I use the drill tip for twisting wires as well. One other thing I do to keep the wires from unraveling is to to run an industrial hot air gun over the plastic insulation to relieve the stresses built up and give the plastic insulation a new less stressed memory before I undo the drill chucks grip.

I love these videos so much, sharing quality tool info is the best! I have the Surebonder glue gun he mentions, it is without a doubt a good choice. Once it heats up you can blow through stick after stick, so much so that you have to retrain yourself to go easier on the squeezes than what you're used to coming from other models.

Great tips, thanks for sharing!

For cutting tubing, you should try a 'flexible tube cutter'. It has a curved holding surface that makes it easy to get a square cut. They even have ratcheting tube cutters for heavy duty tubing.

There are also specific hose cutters, but my favorite cheap cutter that does wonders with all kinds of hose, is the el cheapo ratchet type PVC pipe cutter from the local home center. It will work with all kinds of hose up to about 2" and even high pressure type hoses. Leaves a real clean edge and can get into pretty tight places.

In terms of being practical for me, this was the most useful Applied Science vid I've seen. I always wondered what the difference was between different types of Teflon tape. My own experimentation found no detectable difference between the so-called "gas" and "water" types. Now, I'll have to get some of the dense Teflon type to try. I usually use pipe dope, though. It seems easier to use effectively.

Ben, your thought about the fields canceling and the idea about the higher field strength were both correct. Search Correlated magnetics to find people who have taking this to high power magnets and done the testing.... very interesting work.

The giant scissor thing also works great to cut PP wastewater pipes, i used to do it with an angle grinder or some kind of saw but this thing makes an absolutely pristine edge.

I used to have on of those drill chuck pin vise adapters, but they're mostly crap and break way too easy. I have a Dremel graveyard that I plunder from time to time and I took an old shaft, cut it in half and use the threaded half with the Dremel universal chuck and chuck that up in my drill chuck. Works like magic.

You can get Hose cutters specifically for plastic tubes, for less than $10 just go to any PC supply store or website, they are used in custom water cooling loops

Thanks for the tips. This magnetic viewer film is some kind of sorcery to me! I wonder if there is any tool like that for visualising antenna radiation?

Thank you for some excellent suggestions. May I add a couple of comments? To cut tubing (and coaxial cable) the anvil-type pruning clipper works very well. Just make sure the blade is sharp. I also use a drill to twist wires, but I usually have better control using an eggbeater type hand drill

There's quite a number of options available for cutting tubing. Notably rigid PVC pipe and copper piping. I've used PVC pipe cutter/shears for cutting vinyl tubing (kitchen sink project) and it's always left a very flat, clean edge. Best 8$ that I spent on a whim.

for cutting tubing i'd try bevelling shears that are popular for UPVC window installers for cutting plastics. Just check any glazier supplier shop and they should cost around $10. They also have angle guides for angled cuts and are much more robust than the one presented here.

The wire twist is a neat idea.... You could make custom wire looms with any number of wires and encasing them in shrink wrap. Frank

i've used the wire in drill thing so many times before. glad to see it's not just me

Hey Ben! I believe your second theory regarding the plastic magnet pole pattern is the correct one... They build magnetic chucks the same way with close alternating poles because it increases the holding power!

with regards to contact burnishing, at out company we use erasers. the red and blue kind, the blue side removes oxidation and carbonation quite well, but doesn't scratch the contacts

Do not in any case touch another tester lead, these devices are not designed to be safe to touch (might never, ever strike trough dough). Use the ground connection instead, it should lite even better.

Applied Science Hi Ben. Just though about the magnetic rubber sheets, that another point of having small sections of magnets with opposite poles, is to further prevent sliding of the surfaces. If both of them have the magnetic sheet, they will stick extremely well too eachother in a vertical setting.

The magnetic pole pattern on that fridge magnet sheet is a Halbach array. It is a 4 stage N/left/S/right array that is doubly magnetic in one direction only. Effectively it doubles the strength on one side whilst neutralising it on the other. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array

Wish I lived next door to this guy when I was a kid. He is like the Mr. Wizard from old TV.

Make more videos!! You are changing lives, man!

I had the same cutter for PVC & rubber tube. It worked OK, but what I replaced it with after I broke it is Eclipse tools EPPC42. It is way better. It cuts much bigger pipes (intended for up to 42mm, but I regularly use it on 46mm), much more squarely.

It would be interesting to see the surface finish of contacts burnished with the burnishing tool vs sandpaper under the SEM. I have that same tool in both coarse and fine and I fail to understand how the tool is any less harmful than fine grit sandpaper. I like the stiffness of the tools, but at ~$9 a pop I don't think the added cost is justifiable if 10¢ worth of sandpaper leaves a comparative finish.

Nice job man, I just subscribed...I am a do it your selfer jack of all trades and your video is just the kind of thing I like to watch...very clever information...thanks

The Drill and Wire trick also works to straiten out kinked wire. Mind you Copper Wire will work harden quite fast.

Hey Ben - On the cutting of soft plastic tubing... that McMaster tool looks nice, but a Ratcheting PVC Cutter works just as well and is $6.48 at the big orange hardware store. Nice video, good tips.

That tool you use for cutting tubing is also offered by Craftsman under the name Handi-cut.

How does "gas grade" thread seal tape from the hardware store compare to the McMaster stuff? Gas grade tape feels way thicker and denser than the cheap stuff.

I'm totally going to buy that tube cutter. Also, for gas pipes, if you use Teflon tape, you should use the yellow tape.

Hi Ben, Those poles on the fridge magnet and the speaker magnet form Halbach arrays. In the case of the fridge magnet, it makes cheap magnetic material more effective. I'm not sure why the speaker would need it. Sorry if I'm adding to a slew of similar posts

Most useful video on the internet.

Love the razor cutting tool - I have a cheap Husky brand I use all the time. The razor is just a small standard type you'd find in a retractable box cutter. Also, the magnetic film is fantastic. I need to get a piece of that :)

Maybe not as good as the razor tool, but for tube like that, I've found that pruning shears would very well. Plenty of leverage and leaves a pretty good edge.

Instead of the Electrical Contact Burnisher you can just use a simple pencil eraser. The contacts develop a thin oxidation coating and you can rub it off with a pencil eraser. It's a lot less abrasive than sandpaper.

A pencil eraser also works well as a contact burnishing tool. And interestingly, if you also use deoxit, it seems to stiffen the rubber which can also help with the burnishing.

I use the little box protractor on a milling machine all the time for angles and slopes.. So much easier than Sine Bars gauge blocks etc. Joss in Cork.

For drilling really soft metals . If you greatly reduce the angle of the bit or actually make the angle of the bit a little bit reversed it won't dig in and break the bit

Interesting as always. Thanks for the tips.

Thanks for all the videos :) I love internet because of people like you :)

I prefer the actual pistol-grip tubing/pipe cutters over the one demoed. I believe the one shown is actually for ribbon cable since I have a few that are similar.

Leave it to Ben to do the first "Tools and Tips" video series in the history of RU-vid that's worth a shit.

In germany almost everyone has a screwdriver with a bulb in it to check the "hotside" ;) And cutter knifes like youve shown are extendable to about 10cm so its easy to cut such hoses. There are also pliers for cutting roses which work the same and basicly are the same as the ones youve shown and arent that expensive ;) The magnetic viewer foil is nice thou :D

I use a miniature chuck in my Dremel tool. It will easily hold a #80 drill bit.

I thought the fridge magnet poles being close together was just to allow it to be manufactured in a continuous length and easily cut to the any required length without adversely affecting its magnetic properties. That was only my theory though.

Are those tiny pin chucks really that hard to find? I use one all the time when etching my own circuit boards

With the angle checker I believe the gauges like protractors are more accurate if you want around 1 degree or so. Why not use links for amazon that will support your channel, like referral.

The pin vice idea is a good one just remember that you will likely take your eyes and ears close to the drill to see this miniature work, so use protection always.

Great video. Very snappy and full of great tips. Thanks for sharing.

I like these smorgasbord videos.

There exists an outlet tester which looks like a screwdriver. Simply stick the flat end into the socket, make contact with the other end of the screwdriver with a finger, if it lights up, it's hot. And they're cheap too. A dollar each from Stanley.

Pruning shears work well at trimming tubing.

With the cheap magnets and the tight north/south pattern, I fully believe it's so it will adhere better to steel. I work at various dealerships photographing their cars, and they usually don't like stickers in the pictures... well if there's ever one of these magnets on a car often times the bond is so strong once it's been on the car long enough that you have to break it off in little pieces, even get a plastic scraper to scrape it off. I'd say after about 6 months to a year those cheap magnets are impossible to remove without destroying the magnet itself.

It the magnetic tape only had one pole then one would have to have north and South Pole tape if one wanted to mount tape to tape, as happens in signage occasionally. You can feel the alternating poles if you drag one magnet over another.

if you haven't, you should show how to use some superglue and silicon carbide (grey and greyish green grit) sandpaper to make a wet stone that will cut through even really tough tungsten carbide though it is very slow going with that stuff, and the sand paper works so much better on steel of nearly all sorts, though oil or water is needed for softer steels since they can clog the grit, What super glue? it soaks into the paper to make sure the paper portion of the sand "PAPER" is not acting as a tiny sponge and allowing a slight rounded edge on the cutting portion of the blade possibly either making the angle too obtuse or rounding it off completely, each piece of glass can yield at least two grits and if its a particularly wide piece, and long you could have a section on each edge giving 8 grits with 4 per side, though larger sheet of glass equals more chance to be broken another nice thing about the silicon carbide sand paper is it will easily round off sharp bits of glass and the like, or even give a sudo frosted finish to it though if its fresh and sharp, the frosting is more like a diffraction sheet. anyway thanks for the thought out video and ideas, I think most of the ones here I have been using already except the wire harness trick, so can't wait to use that as I am rerouting wire to my truck, so I can add modular solar panels that I can put away in the bed, when not in use or in motion, and then pull them out and plop them on the ground, or on the camper and hood of my truck, and charge up the marine batteries I have planned for it, so I can run my inverter to do a little work on the fly, Also I am redoing my lighting to switch completely over to lower wattage LEDs for more light and more power left over when running to throw into that marine battery, when the standard car battery is full :)

Cleaning old relays (contacts) with a mixture of salt and vinegar/ zitronacid works good as well, and it is very cheap.

the tube cutters are awesome

Became a patron just now :D Keep being awesome!

Glad to see another video from you, great tips!

Those are not theories, those are just facts, and both of those things are very real and measurable advantages of alternating pull magnets like that.

I have before wondered about, but not tried yet, sticking a piece of ABS in a glue gun. some info I can find implies that a high-temp glue-gun should be able to melt it. otherwise, wondering if there is some other option for rigid plastic glue-sticks, like if you want to glue something together a bit harder/stronger than normal hot glue. or maybe something that sticks good to steel (normal hot-glue doesn't stick for crap to steel), ... (ideally, sort of like the hot glue equivalent of JB weld, that can be removed later with a heat-gun or similar, and not quite as drastic as drilling holes for screws/bolts or welding things). though, even as lame as hot-glue is, it actually seems surprisingly strong vs OSB (glue some pieces of OSB together, or glue stuff to OSB, and generally the wood comes apart before the glue fails, at odds with its seeming lameness in other areas). also, random things that would be nice: iron-containing 3D printer filament or glue-sticks, which aren't crazy expensive (say, for fabricating magnetic cores, or maybe magnets with the right setup); something that is 3D printable, but has significantly better durability than normal 3D printed plastic (ex: better for mechanical parts or heavier loads), and cheaper than 3D printers for metal (DMLS machines and friends are generally absurdly expensive, need a more "consumer grade" options); ...

keep up the good work man, really good stuff

A pencil eraser is a great tool for cleaning contacts (when you have room) as it is non abrasive. It gets the contacts clean and shiny again.

a cheap and easy trick for the thin drill bits is to wrap a cooper wire on back of the drill bit to increase its diameter

Applied Science For the pin vice, my father (ex CNC machinest) has always had what he calls a "Jaycob's chuck", which is just another much smaller chuck that you put in your drill's chuck.

Nice tips! What about "Tapered" threads? Are they not designed to create an interference fit as well? Or is there some other nefarious purpose for the taper?

There are small, cheap line testers that measure the e field available for a couple bucks. Don't risk your life on a neon probe, there is a nasty failure mode if a bit of moisture get in it.

this thing is nice....i actually have both this snap on drill chuck and the same thing you were using

I have found Rectorseal #5 far better and more versatile than teflon tape. I have never had a leak with water, natural gas, or pressurized air using it where teflon tape mostly works, but I have had leaks. I highly recommend that product.

well the printed magnet thing isnt really theory, the poles being close like that increase the magnets strength but because theyre close together the loop isnt as large as it would b if it were just 2 poles, which wouldnt b a very strong magnet that thin. its an efficiency thing

My brother had a device that looked like an opaque magnifying glass that when put close to infrared LED's wold glow green, similar to what our magnetic film is doing. Do you happen to know what material is?

I recently watched your vid on hardening steel and I was wondering if you have ever done a video on tensile strength verses sheer strength...I think your viewrs would get a kick out of that...expecially if you explain why you would want a big tensile strength on a bridge connector because the bolts are accually pulling the plates together to create a friction hold...I would bet that most people would think that all of the bolts going through the connector plate are using sheer load...thanks for the awesome vids

The old outlets around here are unpolarized and the ground is the metal sheath that runs from fusebox to a metal box. You can use the neon tester even at the outlet faceplate mounting screw to access ground if you're real lazy (which is essientially how the three prong adapter does it). Personally I like to stay out of the circuit.

Holding one end of the voltage tester like that is still considered unsafe. It's better to do the three point check. Hot-Neutral, Hot-Ground, and Neutral-Ground. The results you should get for properly wired are: Hot-Neutral, lit Hot-Ground, lit Neutral-Ground, no light If any one of these three positions is wrong, it's miswired. Much easier is the plug tester which will tell you exactly what the problem is. It checks all three at once and gives you the indication.