OHHHH the unusual things you can do with your house hold gadgets!!! I've thoroughly research all the strange weird uses for your blow dryer. Yes that's correct: BLOW DRYER. Fitting your glasses to your head and adding a glaze to your cake frosting are just some of the unusual uses I discovered.
You can tell from the look on my face that this is no joke ;)
You can tell from the look on my face that this is no joke ;)
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Have you ever spent hours peeling of a sticker from a window or box? You scratch it but can only get small bits of paper off...
The hot hair from a hair dryer will loosen a price tag or sticker making removal super easy. You can also use this trick to remove contact paper from shelves.
The hot hair from a hair dryer will loosen a price tag or sticker making removal super easy. You can also use this trick to remove contact paper from shelves.
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A few uses for those like me who live in the Cold North:
DEFROST your CAr windows on those wicked cold days
UNFREEZE your car DOORS on those wicked cold days--this is very helpful after those rainy days when it gets so cold that your seals freeze and your doors are stuck closed.
Use it to tighten up the WINDOW FILM you put on over your windows to keep drafts and insulate--the heat makes the plastic shrink and makes the seal work,
Blow down pesky cob webs from your ceilings
Blow dry your pets---this seems obvious but it is not always to some people. Use LOW heat and blower for this--esp if the paws are involved--can be useful to get ice balls out from between tender paw pads.
To thaw your fridge without ruining your dryer--place a large bowl or flat pan of BOILING WATER--pour into bowl that you place in freezer BEFORE you add H2o---and close the door for a few minutes. This might take a few re-fills but it works without having to use a potentially dangerous ice pick or knife on the sides and or top.
You can use the dryer to dry up the last bits of water in there to avoid NEW glacial formations!
On another note, I had to buy a special heat gun like a super-powered hair dryer to help me melt solder to recycle electronic parts off of old circuit boards. Even then it took a long time and the components did not just fall off without some effort.
Computers can withstand more than 80 degree temps, as the cpu in my macbook pro is running at around 120 degrees right now. However, prolonged exposure to high heat from a hair dryer is certainly not good for any electronics, especially if it was recently turned on and running hot. Many laptop fans are barely proficient enough to cool them down, and I know from experience that lots of older computers suffer from this problem. Same situation with the Xbox 360.
Simply put- any heat is bad for a computer.
ASIDE from all discussion, this instructable is going to serve as a wonderful reference for me! I've been seeing 'unusual use' how-to's in my newsletters lately, and I love it!
Gryt- All computers get this hot, it is simply what happens when they run. The processor itself will fluctuate between 120 and 140 degrees doing light work. That doesn't mean the case gets that hot, in fact it runs quite cool.
dfc849- Units are correct, smartphones will get pretty hot as they have a whole lot of processing power packed into a very tight space, requiring much smaller circuitry. The small space also allows less room for any type of heat dissipation (i.e. fans, heatsink, liquid cooling) which a computer uses. My Droid 2 sometimes gets hot enough to feel through my pocket. The temperature of a computer relies solely on how well it's components are cooled with these devices. The first Xbox 360s did not have a big enough heat sink, which caused the solder connections to come loose on the graphics chips. All they did to later batches was increase the heatsink size. I fixed my 360 which had this problem, as well as seen this happen with many iBook G3s I've worked on. A heat gun is a temporary fix, and WILL melt solder connections (that's the point).
But you are right, this is a great instructable. Merely pointing out a precaution that should be taken when working with these things.
Your units are wrong ... if your hair dryer was running at 100+ C, it wouldn't just dry your hair, it'd flash that thin coating of water to steam, severely scalding you in the process, in addition to the rapid burning caused by the hot air.
Sure, you can use a hair dryer to melt things. Ice, for example ... I've also used a hair dryer to melt hot glue to replace a hockey blade in a stick shaft, but it took a long, long time and it didn't fully melt the glue. The likelihood of it melting solder (90+ C) is pretty much nonexistent.
That said, yeah, you should use the "cool" setting. I'd be more worried about a photograph on the shelf than a computer though. ;)
But like I said again, heat + electronics = bad, and if you have the $500+ to replace a computer on a whim, be my guest.
It's a dubious use of the hair dryer, anyway. All it does is redistribute the dust in the house. If I have something with intricate contours that needs to be dusted, such as my desktop computer, I take it outside and blow it clean with a compressed air at about 40 psi.
It's just like a leaf blower but for dust!
40 psi with a rubber-tipped blowgun is sufficient to remove all dust, even UNDER the chips. It is less likely to cause damage than most other methods. Sometimes I help the process along with a 1-1/2" natural bristle paintbrush, particularly if the dust has caked a bit due to exposure to moisture, since natural bristles don't generate an appreciable static charge. As an electronics industry professional, I've been doing this successfully for many years with no damage to any devices.
If you have any coatings on the lens then overheating can cause issues.
I'm sure it SHOULDnt with good quality lenses and coatings, but just had to take a pair of glasses back because the optometrist managed to knacker the lens coating during initial fitting.