the "Ask DVS about Electrical Play" Thread

[Beverly1]

Bumps

 

[ultramarineblue]

I want to play more with a violet wand. The only thing holding us back is lack of funds.

 

[deucie]

Well this is a new surprise........

...I'm getting excited about this and I don't even really understand it.

 

[navarre]

House current is just enough current to make your muscles contract, so it's more deadly than the higher power lines. Nasty stuff, that house current. NEVER play with that. NEVER!

Truer words were never spoken.
House current kills more people each year than all others combined.

 

[njlauren]

House current can kill, at 120 volts most circuits are 15 or 20 amps. However, when house voltage kills it isn't because your muscles contract and you can't let go, it is generally because the shock causes the heart to stop. A/C because it is cyclical (reverses direction) goes through 0 volts 60 times a second, and as a result you cannot let go. DC at high voltages is the bitch, because it is unidirectional and your muscles contract and cannot let go. Electricians often work with live circuits and wanna know how they figure out where the wiring isn't color coded which is hot? You got it, they touch it. I when I do wiring stuff around the house often do it with live circuits, have gotten plenty of shocks over the years, and could always let go.

Tens units and such are low voltage and more importantly use pulse DC, so they are relatively safe as long as you don't use them up high (yes, you can play with electrical toys on the nipples and such, but you have to know how to do it completely safely), below the waist you are in good shape.

 

[dkak001]

Is there a recommended safe amp/voltage? I am curious about this, but I don't know much about tinkering with electrical things. Kind of scary to make it go wrong.

Sorry, I had to chime in here...

Let's get something clear. From a safety standpoint:

Unless you are an engineer who has studied these units closely, DO NOT TRY TO MAKE ONE AT HOME! Even then DON'T Make one at home! Just don't do it.

But, if you are curious, they use a high voltage low current pulsed waveform. (Even the DC units typically use DC that is turned on and off at a fixed rate.) 50Hz seems to be preferred for muscle and nerve repair. The amount of energy that can be delivered is limited. (Thought intense, it is still limited!) There are relatively complex switching power circuits in the units. It's not just mains AC, or a 12 volt battery.

Again, don't try this at home. Even if you are a professional. Just buy the damn unit!

Don't kill yourself, and Good luck!

 

[njlauren]

I have to agree, I have seen kits for home made tens units and such (lot more common back when Tens units were so expensive) or schematics for them, and while with something powered with 9 volt battery the odds of causing a serious problem is relatively small, it is still there, and why bother. I have seen commercial tens units for 50 bucks or so from dealers on amazon and e-bay, why bother? On top of everything else, unless you are good at wiring, the odds are the unit you build may not work very well.

 

[OnceFuturePoly]

I hesitate to mention this, but just for the historical record, a lot of work has been done using the speaker outputs of a stereo system.

People depended on the limited current output from the amplifier for safety, and created "custom" music to get the wave forms they wanted. There was a lot of trading in .wav files.

 

[dkak001]

I hesitate to mention this, but just for the historical record, a lot of work has been done using the speaker outputs of a stereo system.

People depended on the limited current output from the amplifier for safety, and created "custom" music to get the wave forms they wanted. There was a lot of trading in .wav files.

Sounds like a way to end up on a episode of "1000 ways to die"!

FYI, I measured an car audio amplifier pushing 102V peak across a 2ohm load with a NIST traceable scope. That's over 5000W peak. Not exactly the sort of thing I would try to tie myself to

 

[Shankara20]

Unless you are an engineer who has studied these units closely, DO NOT TRY TO MAKE ONE AT HOME! Even then DON'T Make one at home! Just don't do it.

I agree!

My zap toy for years was a PES-Powerbox with a large selection of attachments. I used it exclusively for self-stimulation and Shank do like his zap!

 

[DVS]

House current can kill, at 120 volts most circuits are 15 or 20 amps. However, when house voltage kills it isn't because your muscles contract and you can't let go, it is generally because the shock causes the heart to stop. A/C because it is cyclical (reverses direction) goes through 0 volts 60 times a second, and as a result you cannot let go. DC at high voltages is the bitch, because it is unidirectional and your muscles contract and cannot let go. Electricians often work with live circuits and wanna know how they figure out where the wiring isn't color coded which is hot? You got it, they touch it. I when I do wiring stuff around the house often do it with live circuits, have gotten plenty of shocks over the years, and could always let go.

Tens units and such are low voltage and more importantly use pulse DC, so they are relatively safe as long as you don't use them up high (yes, you can play with electrical toys on the nipples and such, but you have to know how to do it completely safely), below the waist you are in good shape.

I'm not going to go back and forth with you on this, because the people here don't know who is correct. Our posting battle will do nothing more than to confuse them, and fuel the phobias more than they already are. What I will say is this...

High voltage is not going to be the killer, in and of itself. High voltage will surely burn you and if it travels through your heart, most likely kill you. The human body is mostly water and electricity and water really like each other. So, your heart will most surely be burned in the process, or at least damaged enough that it won't beat correctly after such a large voltage spike. I am talking about AC or DC voltage here. High is high.

Static electricity is a form of pure voltage. We've all experienced a static electrical zap, I'm sure. There is a lot of voltage in that shock, but because there is no current, it will only give us a quick jolt.

Lightning is mostly voltage, but because it is so high, it will probably kill you, although there have been instances when people have lived through a lightening strike, because they were somehow grounded from it. Grounding has a lot to do with how electricity travels. It looks for a path to ground so if there is none, you aren't going to be shocked. And if there is one that is not in the path of one of your vital organs, you might just get a severe burn and not be killed.

I read about one lightning strike where a golfer was stuck and they said that because he was sweating and his golf club was touching the ground, the path of the voltage went along the outside of his skin and down the golf club to ground. They said his sweating and the fact that the club was touching ground was what saved him.

You'll see barns and many buildings with lightning arrestors on them to divert a lightning strike from hitting the building and send it to ground. If you happen to be the highest point out on the golf course, you might be seen as a quick way to ground by a lightning strike. And don't go hide under a tree, because that's just another way to get stuck. Trees are also good lightning arrestors.

It doesn't matter what voltage is involved, it's the current that will kill you. And it's the level of that current that causes you not to be able to let go. Now, when talking about current, you don't need very much current at all to kill you. It's the current that makes your muscles freeze, not the voltage.

And because it doesn't take very much current to cause this, AC current, the common household wiring system in every home is very dangerous. Most home systems have different stages of current, anywhere from 10 to 30 amps in most cases, when talking about the normal electrical outlets and lighting circuits. AC in the U.S. is running on a 110 or 120 volt line and in the U.K. it's running on a 240 volt line. The voltage level might seem high, but because the current is so high, AC is very dangerous to mess with.

It takes a very small amount of current to kill. Sure, the voltage it rides on can hurt you, but current will kill you much easier. It takes a strong amount of voltage to hurt you, while even a small amount of current will kill you.

Most DC systems we see today are very low current systems. Thinking about TENS units, they are very low current systems. They are mostly voltage. Yes, they are stepped up from the normal 9 volt battery that is running them, but the amps are small. That doesn't mean a TENS unit can't hurt you, because it can. That's why they say don't use one above the waist. If you hook one up so the current path is through the chest wall, that's very dangerous. Like I've already said, any current traveling through the chest wall is very dangerous. There are some TENS units that are safe for use above the waist, but even with those, if you are not experienced with how electricity travels, even those can be dangerous.

AC is very dangerous because of the amount of current that is always present. Under no circumstances should someone play with house current. While any DC application with say 20 amps of current present, it too would be very dangerous to mess with. As already stated, it's the current that freezes your muscles, not the AC or the DC voltage.

When I ever talk about AC, I'm talking about house current because it's so common in our world. When I talk about DC, I'm talking about much smaller systems such as the insides of something like a computer (5 volts and 12 volts DC), which you can damage easier than it will ever hurt you. We have a lot of things running on DC, but because we don't see systems with high DC as common as with AC, we don't usually have to worry that much about getting hurt by it. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule, but AC will always be a danger because of the high current that's present.

Incidentally, I always turn the current off when I wire something. And I test it to be sure it's off, too. Yes, you can touch a wire to see if it's hot, and that's not going to cause your muscles to freeze up. You'll feel a tingle touching with your finger or see a spark touching a hot wire with a screwdriver. While you might feel you know enough about electricity that you won't ever get hurt by connecting wires that are live, personally, I don't think it's very smart.

As for the part of your post that I bolded, I've included a simple chart that explains just how little current it takes to hurt someone. There is a danger level where you are more likely to be killed. Above that and below that, you will either feel a tingle, or a severe jolt and probably a burn. It's the middle area where your muscles will freeze.

http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~p616/safety/fatal_current.html

 

[njlauren]

DVS-
I can't disagree with you, obviously, about current killing, static charges can run pretty high and not do anything but make you hair stand on end, after all. I think the real answer with electricity is to treat it carefully no matter what it is, the low current in a tens unit if used wrong can kill you by disrupting the heart, for example, and the 110 in a household branch circuit can kill you given it is 15 or 20 amps, as can high current dc. And yeah, working with live circuits is dumb, especially when it is easy to shut the breaker off, it is why it is there. I was just commenting that having touched live AC at 110 volts/15 or 20 amp circuits, I never had my muscles contract where I couldn't let go (I once touched a piece of copper pipe I bent to pick up some jackass hard wired 110 into and I dropped it and i was told it was because the a/c doesn't cause muscles to contract because it reverses direction and at T0 where the oscilation goes from negative to positive, there is no current flow per se as well as 0 voltage......could be I was old wrong.......doing some reading on line they indicate AC could cause your muscles to freeze, but citings are all over the place. One thing with A/C that makes it more dangerous (which I should have thought of) is it can cause the heart to go into fibrillation, whereas DC will simply start the heart. The difference is as I know from advanced first aid classes, is that if the heart is stopped it is a lot easier to get pumping again then if it fibrillates, you can get a heart to restart via CPR (roughly a 15% chance, but still) if it stops, you can't if it fibrillates.

In any event, I agree totally with you, I know enough just to be dangerous and it always pays to be wise, being a gearhead I have seen people get seriously hurt and saying "gee, a battery is only 12v) (and yeah, also can put out 300 amps when starting a car....). Not gonna talk about the hobbyist with a tube amplifier not realizing the kind of juice the power capacitors on those store............

In other words, treat it with respect.....

 

[OnceFuturePoly]

{snip}
Incidentally, I always turn the current off when I wire something. And I test it to be sure it's off, too. Yes, you can touch a wire to see if it's hot, and that's not going to cause your muscles to freeze up. You'll feel a tingle touching with your finger or see a spark touching a hot wire with a screwdriver. While you might feel you know enough about electricity that you won't ever get hurt by connecting wires that are live, personally, I don't think it's very smart.
{snip}

I have a pair of safety glasses with pits on the front of the lenses. I accidentally cut through a piece of 120v house wiring, and there was a shower of sparks as my cutter completed the circuit. Without the glasses, my eyes would have been sorely damaged.

And no, I just assumed the power was off... :caning:

 

[DVS]

I have a pair of safety glasses with pits on the front of the lenses. I accidentally cut through a piece of 120v house wiring, and there was a shower of sparks as my cutter completed the circuit. Without the glasses, my eyes would have been sorely damaged.

And no, I just assumed the power was off... :caning:

I think we've all been there, one time or another. Well sometimes it takes more than once, but hopefully we all figure out before the last time sticks.

Electricity is invisible. You can't tell if a wire is hot or not, without touching it or testing it. That's part of its mystique for me, and I also think that drives some of the phobias people have about it. It's like the evil that lurks in the darkness or under a child's bed. What we can't see and what we don't understand is always worse in our minds.

It's like the rule carpenters have for cutting wood. Measure twice and cut once. Assume the wire is hot. You've only got a 50% chance it isn't.

 

[DVS]

DVS-
I can't disagree with you, obviously, about current killing, static charges can run pretty high and not do anything but make you hair stand on end, after all. I think the real answer with electricity is to treat it carefully no matter what it is, the low current in a tens unit if used wrong can kill you by disrupting the heart, for example, and the 110 in a household branch circuit can kill you given it is 15 or 20 amps, as can high current dc. And yeah, working with live circuits is dumb, especially when it is easy to shut the breaker off, it is why it is there. I was just commenting that having touched live AC at 110 volts/15 or 20 amp circuits, I never had my muscles contract where I couldn't let go (I once touched a piece of copper pipe I bent to pick up some jackass hard wired 110 into and I dropped it and i was told it was because the a/c doesn't cause muscles to contract because it reverses direction and at T0 where the oscilation goes from negative to positive, there is no current flow per se as well as 0 voltage......could be I was old wrong.......doing some reading on line they indicate AC could cause your muscles to freeze, but citings are all over the place. One thing with A/C that makes it more dangerous (which I should have thought of) is it can cause the heart to go into fibrillation, whereas DC will simply start the heart. The difference is as I know from advanced first aid classes, is that if the heart is stopped it is a lot easier to get pumping again then if it fibrillates, you can get a heart to restart via CPR (roughly a 15% chance, but still) if it stops, you can't if it fibrillates.

In any event, I agree totally with you, I know enough just to be dangerous and it always pays to be wise, being a gearhead I have seen people get seriously hurt and saying "gee, a battery is only 12v) (and yeah, also can put out 300 amps when starting a car....). Not gonna talk about the hobbyist with a tube amplifier not realizing the kind of juice the power capacitors on those store............

In other words, treat it with respect.....

Yes, you really have to watch those capacitors. In school, we used to put a charge on some, and then lay them on a table for someone to come along and pick up. It's just one of those juvenile tricks played on the new students that don't always think. But there are some capacitors that can kill you. And don't ever mess with an old CRT picture tube, if you value your life.

That copper pipe you picked up might only have had the hot wire attached, so if you weren't grounded, you wouldn't have been shocked. I was up in my attic once, testing wire connections and found a wire nut that wasn't doing its job. Because it would take a lot of effort to go back down to the breaker and shut the current off, I unwrapped the tape, removed the nut, separated the two wires, then reconnected them, twisted them tighter, and then reapplied the nut and fresh tape.

I wasn't wearing gloves and I didn't use pliers with insulating grips, but I knew that as long as I didn't touch both wires while they were separated, I wouldn't be in danger of getting shocked. Yes, there was a spark when I reconnected them, but once they were connected, the current had a direction to go that was more efficient than through my body. And I was also on dry wood rafters, so I wasn't in danger of being grounded. I do remember feeling the vibrations of a slight 60 cycle hum when I twisted the two wires tightly together. Even though I knew I was OK, that's a feeling you just never forget.

 

[dkak001]

I can't help but chime in here. Since we are turning this into a physics/engineering lecture...

The current it a bolt of lightning is on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 amps. It takes some tremendous voltage to initiate the lightning (though typically not enough initially ionize the arc path !?!). Once the path is ionized currents are tremendous. Bottom line is there is both voltage AND current in lightning. That however is static electrical potential.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that voltage and current are the caused by the same electrons. It's impedance (or resistance for those of you who don't believe in reactance) that sets the relationship between the two. You can't have one without the other. (Except for the a fore mentioned static electricity, which builds electrical potential by collecting electrons, however even then there was a flow of electrons to build the static charge in the first place. But I digress...) Without sufficient voltage to override the resistance of a body (any item, including human body) minimal current will flow. Yes, current in once sense kills, but voltage is the driving force to override the resistance to induce the current flow that can kill you...

For example consider that putting your fingers across a 12 volt battery usually won't hurt you, however dropping a wrench across it will cause probably thousands of amps of current to flow (I've measured 2600 amps delivered from a car battery on low a impedance short). Resistance of the body or wrench is the difference. Again current may kill, but voltage causes the current to flow.

The bottom line here, in the case of most of the electricity we encounter, voltage and current are impossible to separate. You basically can't have one without the other.


Now, back on subject (sort of). In the case of tens unit's I've looked at. They typically have a step up transformer to couple the energy to the outputs. The transformer itself is designed to limit the current at the output. They also appear to have additional resistance or capacitance in series with the outputs to act as current limiting devices.

The bottom line is these units are isolated current limited devices. They may be able to deliver hundreds of volts, but the potential to deliver energy is limited by impedance in the form of a small magnetic path in the transformer core and high winding impedance and by series impedance elements in the output. The high voltage potential is there to override skin resistance. Once that's overcome, there isn't much energy behind it. Just like my sister's mutt; Tens units are all bark, and no bite

I wouldn't knowingly tie myself to any source of electricity for pleasure/pain unless I knew it was designed to have limited energy delivery potential, and was designed for the purpose of pleasure/pain/rehab.

Of course, what do I know!

Carry on!

 

[Stella_Omega]

dammit, all I want is a couple orgasms. And maybe a little bit of exhibitionism.

 

[dkak001]

dammit, all I want is a couple orgasms. And maybe a little bit of exhibitionism.

Agreed! This has become a bit off topic, sorry for contributing to that!

But, If you plug yourself into a wall outlet, please please please post pics!

 

[Stella_Omega]

Agreed! This has become a bit off topic, sorry for contributing to that!

But, If you plug yourself into a wall outlet, please please please post pics!

I suck at documenting the process, sorry.

 

[Shankara20]

dammit, all I want is a couple orgasms. And maybe a little bit of exhibitionism.

feeling I am very familiar with myself

 

[DVS]

I can't help but chime in here. Since we are turning this into a physics/engineering lecture...

The current it a bolt of lightning is on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 amps. It takes some tremendous voltage to initiate the lightning (though typically not enough initially ionize the arc path !?!). Once the path is ionized currents are tremendous. Bottom line is there is both voltage AND current in lightning. That however is static electrical potential.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that voltage and current are the caused by the same electrons. It's impedance (or resistance for those of you who don't believe in reactance) that sets the relationship between the two. You can't have one without the other. (Except for the a fore mentioned static electricity, which builds electrical potential by collecting electrons, however even then there was a flow of electrons to build the static charge in the first place. But I digress...) Without sufficient voltage to override the resistance of a body (any item, including human body) minimal current will flow. Yes, current in once sense kills, but voltage is the driving force to override the resistance to induce the current flow that can kill you...

For example consider that putting your fingers across a 12 volt battery usually won't hurt you, however dropping a wrench across it will cause probably thousands of amps of current to flow (I've measured 2600 amps delivered from a car battery on low a impedance short). Resistance of the body or wrench is the difference. Again current may kill, but voltage causes the current to flow.

The bottom line here, in the case of most of the electricity we encounter, voltage and current are impossible to separate. You basically can't have one without the other.


Now, back on subject (sort of). In the case of tens unit's I've looked at. They typically have a step up transformer to couple the energy to the outputs. The transformer itself is designed to limit the current at the output. They also appear to have additional resistance or capacitance in series with the outputs to act as current limiting devices.

The bottom line is these units are isolated current limited devices. They may be able to deliver hundreds of volts, but the potential to deliver energy is limited by impedance in the form of a small magnetic path in the transformer core and high winding impedance and by series impedance elements in the output. The high voltage potential is there to override skin resistance. Once that's overcome, there isn't much energy behind it. Just like my sister's mutt; Tens units are all bark, and no bite

I wouldn't knowingly tie myself to any source of electricity for pleasure/pain unless I knew it was designed to have limited energy delivery potential, and was designed for the purpose of pleasure/pain/rehab.

Of course, what do I know!

Carry on!

Why do I feel we've started into some kind of chest pumping thing here? Is it really necessary to go this far into the topic of electricity? I'm trying to keep people interested in the subject of electroplay, not take them into an engineering classroom. I don't know if you've noticed it, but I can already see people's eyes glazing over. But of course, what do I know? What do you say we keep the conversation to a level the normal sex pervert is going to understand.

 

[Shankara20]

What do you say we keep the conversation to a level the normal sex pervert is going to understand.

~~o Sounds of Shank being pulled back into the conversation ~~o

 

[kingem125]

Simply just touch a 9 volt battery to the subs toung or attach a lot of batteries together at one point meaning tie all the wires together or have multiple...

 

[Stella_Omega]

Simply just touch a 9 volt battery to the subs toung or attach a lot of batteries together at one point meaning tie all the wires together or have multiple...

How is a 9v battery to the tongue going to give me an orgasm?

It might get YOU into the local news, if you try it on someone with a weak heart.

Sit down, shut up, and listen to the people who actually know what they are doing.

 

[DVS]

How is a 9v battery to the tongue going to give me an orgasm?

It might get YOU into the local news, if you try it on someone with a weak heart.

Sit down, shut up, and listen to the people who actually know what they are doing.

A 9 volt battery touched on someone's tongue shouldn't bother their heart any more than being shocked by static electricity or being startled by something or someone, maybe like when trying to stop a case of the hiccups. Or course, if they have a weak heart, the startling might not be a good idea to stop the hiccups.

The battery has enough voltage to hurt, and because the tongue is always moist, it will make a good conducting surface. I know people who actually check if a 9 volt battery is good by touching it to their tongue.

I don't advise it, but I don't think it will really harm someone. I guess it could be used as a punishment for a sub, but I don't find it very erotic. It's just another silly and juvenile prank like the ones we did in school with capacitors.

Now, hooking several together in series (connecting batteries + to - and + to - in a chain) might give someone a nasty jolt because that will compound the total voltage of each battery into one larger voltage. Connecting several batteries together in parallel (connecting batteries + to + and - to - in a chain) will not give you more voltage, but more current.

You see both of these principles used in applications such as flashlights, radios, DVD players, etc. that use more than one battery. It's not possible to tell which type of connection is used in these applications without opening up the device to see how the batteries are wired. Some circuits need a higher voltage to make the device work (batteries in series) and some add batteries to make the device last longer between battery changes (batteries in parallel).

But one 9 volt battery isn't going to be that dangerous. On the tongue, it will give you a nice little jolt, but on dry skin, the resistance will be so high, you won't even get a good enough connection. Make the skin wet and you might have better luck, but it still won't be dangerous.

Because human skin has such a high resistance against the small 9 volt charge, it would be the water that's conducting the current flow. Press the battery against wet skin to see for yourself. It might take a little while to work, but when and if it does, you'll know.

And it wouldn't reach your heart on its own. In fact, the contacts of a single 9 volt battery are similar to the contacts of a double pole TENS unit. The + and - contacts are very close together, so the charge would only travel that short distance and no further.

An orgasm? If you want to try it, a moist clit might be wet enough.