About 3 years ago I was working as an engineer in a medical facility. As me and some colleagues had a lot of free time, we started playing with circuit boards, mostly making DC motors driver board.

As tools were limited, to transfer the circuit to the pcb we were using a clothes iron... An of course I burnt my skin really bad and took a lot of time to heal.

Fortunately, I no longer have a scar so I can't attach the picture.

Kitchen knife, I think this is whorst as handling is more dangerous still most used tool for me

From stripping the wire, to removing components also used to cut plastic casing by heating on gas of the enclosed curicuits.

I used a stove heated screwdriver as a soldering iron for a school project, I still loved that innovative approach!

A Hammer makes a poor choice as a tool for electronic projects. It does however make for a great stress reliever on that project you just fried to a crisp.

One of the worst tools ever invented was to crimp the crimp and poke terminals for DB-25 etc. This is a ball buster to use you have to hold the crimper, the connector pin, and the wire. Now that you have this feat accomplished, you now have to squeeze the Crimper's Handels, while making sure you don't lose the wire or the pin. And I have hundreds of these pins laying about. So I decided to use them for the interface standard for NexGen between the slaves and the device they are controlling. So what to do? Simple find old parallel printer cables and cut the Centronics connector off! Easy Peasy!!

14rhb  wrote:

 

Liking such comments seems slightly wrong.

Hahaha! I was thinking the same thing! "You stabbed yourself with a scalpel! - Like!", "You nearly died on mains voltage! - Like!"

So yes I'm with 14rhb here - like is about being grateful that you survived to tell the tale, and also as thanks for sharing the story!

-Nico

most crimpers.

hear me out:

The original multi-thousand-dollar priced Dupont crimper comes with a locator that holds the 'pin' in place. After trying it while assisting a german artist in setting up his installation I was ruined for life. Can't find a Dupont crimper with a locator, it kills me it is the handiest tool I can never have and it would make prototyping so much faster, I just can't justify spending the money to buy a multi thousand dollar hand crimping tool no matter how nice.

so sad.

dougw  wrote:

 

The knife was so sharp, I thought I had just cut my pants .... until the blood started pouring out.

Scalpels do that! My most stupid scalpel incident (well, 2nd most stupid) was carrying 2 back to tool stores, for some strange reason I was holding one in each hand, blades forwards, but chose to tuck the blade into the opposite fist.

I was basically walking along with both fists facing forwards and thumbs touching . . . . .

On getting to tool stores, I 'flourished' both scalpels by pulling my clenched fists apart rapidly - slicing the index, middle and ring fingers on both hands!

Thankfully it wasn't deep, but it still hurt like hell.

I don't do that anymore . . . . . 

The personal computer industry began with computers that came as kits you had to assemble. There's an interesting site here with descriptions of all the old favourites, such as the South West Technical Products M6800 kit. 

I came across a good story about it on another website. Here, the author, Stan Veit (who ran a store selling these kits) is describing how some people ruined their kits by using the wrong tools:

"....they advertised widely that here was a computer system that almost anyone could build. I say almost because we did have some people who ruined their kits. One of them glued all the parts to the board and brought the mess in to be wired so it worked. Another burnt the motherboard by using a torch for soldering. "

Imagine paying hundreds of dollars for a computer kit and then trying to use a blowtorch for soldering!