MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Ideas and instructions how you can make your own bondage toys.
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Jeanette
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by Jeanette »

mfx wrote:
How many self bonders use these failsafe units?
Small point, just because a unit is commercially available doesn't mean it's failsafe, particularly in the bondage field. It's VERY difficult to design something that's truly failsafe, one example I saw for sale online was a self bondage key release safe that looked like a modified commercial electronic safe. If they've kept the original locking mechanism and simply added a timer than I can pretty much guarantee it's not failsafe. I use Estim a lot but I only use TENS units, they are more than adequate to provide the sensation I need and are mass market devices, much more likely to have been designed with the possibility of being sued in mind. As has been said my concern is not so much about the effect of electricity but more the physical shock when it activates just as would be the case with having a bucket of ice water thrown at you for example, however we all take risks every day and it's up to me what risks I'm prepared to take. Agreed about mains, ALL my self bondage stuff is battery powered including key release and apart from the TENS units I design and build everything I use myself so I know exactly how it works and there's no one to blame but me if it goes wrong.
We use comon sense!
Does anybody know that a 12 volt battery can put out ungodly amperage, - under the right circumstances?

Unfortunately a fair number of people I've come across seem to lack that :-( .
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bound_jenny
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by bound_jenny »

What worries me even more than using electricity in general without precaution are those people who use the pretext of "we are taking risks anyway in SB" as a blanket excuse to take any risk, including unnecessary ones.

I think that's the entire point of this - reducing or eliminating unnecessary risks. Using a commercially manufactured TENS or other electro-stimulation unit in the recommended fashion is a substantial reduction, if not elimination of unnecessary risks - as mentioned, these things are designed to not just deliver electric stimulation, but to repel lawsuits.

Using a jury-rigged, re-purposed or even homebrew device to deliver electric shocks is an extremely risky proposition, and is not recommended at all. Anyone here, including Anna and the rest of the team running the board, could be exposed to legal action if anyone is injured or is killed by such a device. That's why these warnings, admonishments and other assorted nagging are posted.

To put it bluntly, I don't feel like being sued because of someone else's lack of common sense.

I don't think anyone else does either.

So get used to the nagging. It won't stop anytime soon, so long as there are people around who insist on taking unnecessary risks.

Jenny.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by lj »

Jeanette wrote: Does anybody know that a 12 volt battery can put out ungodly amperage, - under the right circumstances?
which, for me, shows how careful we must be about electricity and the ideas posted on the forum.

I have seen a demonstration in which a 4" nail was melted by a standard "D" NiCad battery, producing about 200amps for long enough to melt the nail. A spanner dropped on the terminals of a car battery is an excellent way of covering yourself with sulphuric acid and molten metal.

However, persuading either of these current sources to cause a medical problem by electrical stimulation is nigh-on impossible. To do damage you have to interrupt the neurological processes in the cells, or totally over-ride them, and this requires current to flow. But to get the current to flow you need a suitably low body or inter-cellular resistance. Ohms Law tells you that this will require a suitable voltage. If you don't understand the concepts, PLEASE do not mess with electricity.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by mfx »

lj wrote:
Jeanette wrote: Does anybody know that a 12 volt battery can put out ungodly amperage, - under the right circumstances?
That's what fuses were invented for !
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by lj »

to the best of my knowledge, the lowest current fuse available is 50mA. Which is more than enough to kill you, if the connection is "right"

and how do you explain to someone who doesn't have a clue about electricity what is actually a safe fuse rating ?

I spend my professional life designing and working with electricity, and I try, on this and other forums, to steer people away from killing themselves through sheer ignorance.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by MKu »

Point is, for making electrostimulators you need more than only knowledge in electricity.
Companies which develop such stimulators do this with support from cardiologics, biochemics and other medical experts (at least the serious do so).This is nothing to be home made.

So HANDS OFF.



btw. people who think of only current and voltage should stay with thinking.
The human body reacts to frequency, average and peaks too (radiation not mentioned because disputed).
Indeed over time people got knowledge but no wisdom.

Accidents do not happen, they are caused.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by Tonawandasub »

Well as an ex-electrican, computer tech and a person that majored in elctric and electonics I follow 2 simple rules.

1. never use anthing with any amount of electricity above the waist.
reason is simple, you use it above the waist and think your safe but I don't want the be the 1 in a millon
that ends up dieing from its use.

2. I never use any device other that the tens unit. I have the et-312. and I can honestly say even though
it is high in cost, it will give you the most pleasure if you follow rule 1.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by SnMAddict »

Just wanted to add, yes it takes computer programming to make a governor for such an item, I've only had 2 years of coding schooling and I wouldn't even try it. Too much trial and error. Not worth the time, not worth your life. so don't try it. Enough said.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by PiJoy »

SnMAddict wrote:Just wanted to add, yes it takes computer programming to make a governor for such an item, I've only had 2 years of coding schooling and I wouldn't even try it. Too much trial and error. Not worth the time, not worth your life. so don't try it. Enough said.
@SnMAddict,

I must respectfully disagree. True safety critical limitations, such as current limiting for eStim channels, should be done with an intrinsicly safe electronic design, one that is fully safe in the presence of all single faults, both those in hardware and/or software. Software can assist with reporting unsafe conditions (loss of power/switchover to backup battery, loss of ground connection, etc.) but, IHMO, software by itself, is inadequate to protect adequately in all situations. For example, consider a situation where the CPU had power, but the clock-generation circuit fails, leaving the CPU unable to compute at all, let alone monitor and correct safety issues. Not good!

A software-only approach is unlikely to get past the FDA's testing regime -- and I wouldn't want it anywhere near me. Keep in mind that the FDA first got involved in analyzing and understanding the terrible deaths and radiation burns caused by the infamous Therac-25 accidents, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
As they found out, poor software design can kill. Every adult should be able to choose his/her own level of acceptable risk, but with eStim, I strongly believe that there's no such thing as too much safety. I like all sorts of sensuous and sensual pleasures -- but not enough for me to risk electrocution. Your mileage may vary.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by JimS »

Just a quick 2pence worth:
In surgical situations (where because of an open wound, the resistance of the skin is bypassed), even a current in the *microamps* (1uA = 1 thousandth of a single milliamp) is large enough to disrupt the heart's electrical signals. Even though that tiny a current is too small for us to sense as even a "tingle", it is able to send the heart into the highly dangerous "Ventricular fibrillation" in which the heart quivers ineffectively instead of pumps.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by lj »

JimS wrote:Just a quick 2pence worth:
In surgical situations (where because of an open wound, the resistance of the skin is bypassed), even a current in the *microamps* (1uA = 1 thousandth of a single milliamp) is large enough to disrupt the heart's electrical signals. Even though that tiny a current is too small for us to sense as even a "tingle", it is able to send the heart into the highly dangerous "Ventricular fibrillation" in which the heart quivers ineffectively instead of pumps.

This is a good point and should be borne in mind if using any electrode that could puncture the skin. To put it in context, though, JImS' warning relates to surgical procedures and I would expect this to be outside the scope of anything we do in BDSM (well. mostly :shock: ) and would have to be across the heart itself, so for example anal/genital connections are not relevant, these being the most likely to involve body-fluid electrical conduction and a long way from the heart. Mouth-anal/genital would be much more risky.

But as we keep banging on, if you don't understand electricity and the potential risks, don't do it !
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by cooper1337 »

Even if you have contacts at the genitals and the ass, it is still possible that a big portion of the current goes through the heart, if you puncture one vein and one artery.
On the other hand, if you have a current in the order of uA, you will only have a voltage in the order of mV across the whole body, so the actual voltage at the heard would be much less. I doubt it would be high enough to cause excitation of neurons.
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by JimS »

...To put it in context, though, JImS' warning relates to surgical procedures and I would expect this to be outside the scope of anything we do in BDSM (well. mostly :shock: ) and would have to be across the heart itself, so for example anal/genital connections are not relevant, these being the most likely to involve body-fluid electrical conduction and a long way from the heart. Mouth-anal/genital would be much more risky.

But as we keep banging on, if you don't understand electricity and the potential risks, don't do it !
An incident half a century ago that took a student's life is to this day still used in electronics classes to illustrate the dangers of carelessness with electricity. That student electrocuted himself by trying to measure the resistance between cut fingers on each hand (ie the circuit path from hand to hand crossed the heart) with an ohmmeter powered by a single 1.5 volt flashlight cell.

As Cooper1337 pointed out though, even if both connection points are well away from the heart, (like in your anal-genital example) it is still possible to get an unintended path through the heart if the electrodes cause scratches. From Kerchoff's laws, although most of the power will still take the lower-resistance shorter route, some will use the blood vessels like wires connected to the heart. (the circuit becomes one similar to a high-value resistor [genital-heart-anal path] connected in parallel with a low-value one [anal-genital path])

Edit by JimS: correct a quote tag that got misplaced and a grammar correction
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by Riddle »

JimS wrote:
...To put it in context, though, JImS' warning relates to surgical procedures and I would expect this to be outside the scope of anything we do in BDSM...
An incident half a century ago that took a student's life... That student electrocuted himself ... with an ohmmeter powered by a single 1.5 volt flashlight cell.
Do you happen to know what size cell the ohmmeter used? A half century ago, cells better than D cells existed and ohmmeters were analog which apply greater current levels than modern Digital Multi-meters (DMM's).

I have seen some old analog multimeters only calibrated for VAC with the battery removed since the ohm meter portion no longer meets safety standards. Also, my favorite ohmmeter measured down to 0.1 mOhm using two pitch-fork probes and a 200V battery pack. Still not sure how that thing was safe...

On a slightly related note, a friend had 12V LED rope lights powered by 10 button cell alkalines (15VDC). Replacing the battery pack with 8 AA batteries (12VDC) made the LEDs shine much brighter even with the lower voltage. The internal resistance of each cell makes a huge difference in available current.

Electrical safety has come a long way in the last century. So has mass-produced electro-stimulation devices. New neon tubes for violet wands now advertise safer glass... Play safe with safe devices!
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Re: MODERATOR WARNING: ELECTROSTIMULATION DEVICES

Post by lj »

Riddle wrote: Do you happen to know what size cell the ohmmeter used? A half century ago, cells better than D cells existed and ohmmeters were analog which apply greater current levels than modern Digital Multi-meters (DMM's).
just to clarify something

the size of cell, or more strictly its capacity, is irrelevant to how much current it can supply into a given resistance. Ohms Law determines the current in the circuit, voltage (volts) divided by the resistance (ohms) gives the current (amps). Resistance in the circuit is made up of the load resistance and the source resistance - in this case the cell.

It happens that high capacity cells often have a very low internal resistance so they are capable of supplying very large currents, but unless the total circuit resistance is low the current will also be low. The capacity of the cell will limit the length of time a given current can be sustained.

The old analogue meters relied on magnetic force to deflect a coil carrying the current (moving coil type) or the opposite where the coil was fixed and the magnet rotated (moving iron) This meant that a significant current had to flow to get the needle to move. I recall the "AVO" meter also had a 22volt (?) battery to measure resistance in the MOhm (meg-ohm = million ohms) range as the main 1.5v cell simply couldn't supply enough current to make the needle move over a few thousand ohms resistance. Modern digital meters effectively require almost zero current to take a reading as their operation is voltage-based, not current-based.

The unfortunate death commented upon, where a student received a fatal shock via a cut-to-cut connection with an old-style meter, could not happen with modern meters, as the internal resistance is measured in MOhms so the current would be sub-microamps whatever the external circuit resistance was.
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