13 Unusual Uses for a Hair Dryer

Step 7: Remove Dust

Use a hair dryer to remove dust from hard to get to nooks and crannies in your house.  Use this trick on carved wood work, art work, artificial flowers, bookshelves, lamps, computers....you name it!

Comments

[baskinator4]

Just make sure you use cold air for computers! The high heat could easily melt solder connections if left on too long, rendering your expensive equipment useless and broken.

[santy22]

Hmm, this could actually be useful. Anyone remember the "oven" re-fluxing trick?

[DIY-Guy]

Are you saying a normal hair dryer can melt solder with the short duration of "dusting?" That seems difficult to do under normal "dusting" conditions, even on high heat. I wish my hair dryers were that powerful.   :)

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.

[kedwa30]

Hair dryers are limited to 140 degrees F for safety. A hot air gun may be able to melt solder, but one would never use that to dry ones hair. I agree with your point that heat is bad for electronics in general; I just think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say a hair dryer could melt solder. 90 degrees C is 194 degrees F.

[mostertbj]

How hot is your hair dryer? I'd really start to worry if my dryer start to melt solder (melts from 90 to 450 degrees Celsius and computers can run at up to 80 degrees without damage)

[baskinator4]

Well most hair dryers will run between 100 and 140 degrees, they need to be hot enough to dry your hair in a reasonable amount of time. Also, that's why you don't point them in one spot for too long because you can burn yourself.
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.

[Tamaresque]

My hairdryer has a 'cool' setting which is only lukewarm; I can also have it blow just cold air. It's not new, it's years old, so I'd be surprised if more modern dryers didn't also have these settings.

[Gryt]

Your macbook is running at 120 degrees? Are you boiling water with it?

[dfc849]

I think there's some unit mismatching here! I've had my smartphone get up to 60°C (that's 140°F!) while charging, and those components are much smaller. I know someone that fixes electronic components with a special heat gun, and those things have to get really hot. The only 'computer' I know that can't handle heat was the first few batches of Xbox 360 units.. ;)

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!

[baskinator4]

TamarGirl- Yes, most hairdryers have a cool setting, which is my point that it should be used in this case.

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.

[flamekiller]

My desktop peaks out at about 45 C under a relatively heavy load. That's from polling the CPU's on-board sensors, just the same as it probably is with your MBP.

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. ;)

[lukeyj15]

No actually. When you put something in a 200 C oven the water doesn't flash to steam.

[baskinator4]

My units are still not wrong. When I say degrees I mean farenheit, not celsius. I never use celsius.

But like I said again, heat + electronics = bad, and if you have the $500+ to replace a computer on a whim, be my guest.

[sconner1]

compressed air does it better.

[blopez]

I personally have a hair dryer which has a cool setting. I also have a computer. I do not have compressed air. The hair dryer option might not be optimal in many of these situations, but it's easy, handy and it works.

[acmuis]

Take your computer outside when you do that - it can be quite messy/dusty!