Took some Creatine and got some weightlifting in earlier in the day, then got some pizza from Dominos as a protein meal, followed by a protein shake. (Vanilla muscle milk protein shake is the best.) 8 out of 10 for the pizza, as usual... 9 out of 10 for the protein shake.
Also... off topic... I'm beginning to notice the high view count this topic has been getting... I know there are a lot more members on LG compared to way back in the day when I first joined in 2010, but... who's viewing this so much? Bots?

There were also gramophone lamps. http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/oddgram/oddgram.htm#lampRead the whole page too if you want, and also just look at the whole Museum of Retrotech on his site. This Self person is cool.

Yeah, that is freaky. I wonder if bright emitter vacuum tubes were ever used for lighting as well as, well, doing the usual tube things; a big transmitter tube could probably light a large room.

@RRK
I am fairly certain (looked it up a while back, can't remember) that my solder does contain copper. And I can confirm that if it erodes at the rapid rate that is does now with copper added, I can only imagine that it would erode unusably fast without copper.

Aliexpress is not known for providing particularly good quality products…

The iron layer dissolves in the solder? Isn't that not supposed to happen, like the point of plating it in the first place? Or is some dissolution necessary for wetting?

Sure. Some of soldering tip material is lost continuously. Iron plating just slows this down considerably, that's the point. Still, tips are considered spare parts having a limited life.

Interestingly, today most of lead-free solders have circa 0.5% of copper added. Having this may slow bare copper tip dissolution in the solder, but no one in their sane mind uses bare copper tips in 2026 so it is hard to verify...

High impedance grounding is is not possible because it still allows to some voltage spikes to leak through heater - tip capacitance. Modern general purpose components like microcontroller ports or 74HC logic are in practice quite impressively robust to abuse by mains leak currents and static electricity, but you'll get some components killed randomly with careless work, like small SOT23 MOSFETs having low gate capacitance.

 

For serious work, industry rules call for hard grounding everything involved. Hard grounding operator person is dangerous, so some current limiting resistor of circa 1 megohm is added.

In addition to mandatory grounding, GFCI may or may be not in use, not for actual components protection, but for stopping insulation deterioration problems *earlier* before they grow to full blown short circuits.  Downside is as always some nuisance tripping happens due to interference.

 

@Ash
Thanks for all that info! Yeah I don't think a mains transformer is crammed into the handle of my iron, and I think I have tested it's continuity to ground before and concluded that it is directly connected. I haven't worked with those extra low voltage sensitive components before, but if I do I will definitely be careful and do research.

I wonder if it would be possible for manufacturers to integrate a GFCI-like device into the iron to be able to omit the transformer and still have high impedance grounding. Maybe that would be more expensive than just having a transformer, who knows.

How much leakage it has right now is not that important. What's important is whether it can change anytime with no advance warning, generally the answer is yes, it can. That's where the transformer will provide your safety

(as long as it is intact - which is worth testing, but unlike a soldering iron, an isolation transformer has huge safety margins in its isolation materials, and they are not stressed by high temperatures)

When you use equipment like a standard user uses home appliances (not covers off and sticking hands in), as long as your equipment is in good condition and reliably grounded (including the ground wiring throughout the house being intact), its perfectly safe as is and does not require any additional isolation between you and ground

Isolation by transformer provides the same level of safety as ground or higher. Electrical codes do define some dangerous situations (typically in the context of industrial settings, the cases where you are with a line powered tool in a confined metal duct ect) where grounding is not considered good enough, but isolation by transformer is - for a reason

I am always barefoot as well, except when actually dealing with electricity or with the electrical installation



Workstations have also a relation to this :

A grounded iron is safe to use, but not ESD-safe in all cases (to prevent damage to components) :

 - The source of the static charge may be present in the circuit, and discharge to the iron. The damage will be exactly the same as if the source was in the iron and discharge to the circuit

 - The most sensitive components nowadays may have abs max ratings in the order of single volts or less. If the circuit is grounded from one source (you and te floor below) and the iron from another source (line ground) the voltage difference between them alone may be sufficient to damage something

So to improve its ESD safety, an iron is better be electrically isolated, than low-resistance grounded. Then it is still grounded through some high value resistance (typ 1MOhm), to prevent slow static charge build up if a static source is present

Then for electrical safety, the iron is powered by extra low voltage (<50V), and the transformer is contained inside the station box

Not all workstation irons are like that, and some can be reconfigured between different grounding settings. The low end ones and those where the controller is in the handle are often powered directly by line voltage and must be low resistance grounded