Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/28/this-portable-duster-blows-tra.html
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The discounted price is a mere $US120.
You can buy an actual air compressor for less than that!
(And I would not be surprised if the actual air compressor is quieter than this hand-held banshee.)
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Towelie is unimpressed
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I use one of these hand pumps on an old pop bottle (without the water, obviously).
Costs next to nothing and does the job. You might have to pump for quite a while to get to 260mph though.
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I use squeezy rubber bulbs.
If you’re searching for them on eBay or whatever, try the search string “rocket blower”, so named because the thing can be put down to sit on its four rocket fins. The ORIGINAL rocket blower is a Giottos product, but there are Chinese clones everywhere that work just as well.
A “desoldering bulb” is smaller but will also do the job, until your hand gets tired.
(Unless you have used it as an ACTUAL desoldering bulb, sucking unwanted molten solder up into it. In that case you must make sure the solder-bits have been completely removed from the bulb, before you try to use it as a blower and then spray conductive metal bits all over whatever you’re trying to remove dust from. It’s also possible to get a rubber bulb - usually with a brass nozzle, in case you’re trying to identify this type - whose rubber perishes, so it then sprays bits of perished rubber all over the guts of the camera lens that your friend is trying to remove dust from. It is then acceptable, if you ask me, to laugh, and thus damage your friendship with that person.)
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They do look fancier than the ones you get by searching for ‘ear syringe’.
I don’t have one of the ear-syringe ones (I’m slightly annoyed by the fact that they are obviously not actual syringes), but I think they’re even smaller than the solder-sucker type.
There’d be no harm in buying and trying one, though.
(I just did a quick eBay search, and it seems they can be had in several sizes!)
The reason why I’m thinking about this right now is that I very recently had to blow years of accumulated dust and cat-fluff out of a computer (and all of the heat-sinks, and all of the crevices…). My big rocket blower did a very good job, almost as good as actual “canned air”, without giving me some kind of repetitive-strain injury.
Preadolescent mayhem device. Should probably buy two
You should never use canned air - not only because CFCs or whatever, but because when you spray it into your sensitive electronics to clear out all that dust, you’re also spraying in the non-air propellant chemicals, which then coat your electronics with a fine layer of glue, which any new dust accumulations will stick to. Then you do it again, but you have to use more canned air to get the dust out, and it still doesn’t quite all leave, but hey, fresh coat of glue for new dust to stick to!
Any of the alternative solutions suggested in this thread are great, but do yourself a favor and never use canned air.
You shouldn’t use an air compressor to dust electronics. Compressed air can condensate moisture inside the tank, which can then escape as water droplets when released onto your sensitive electronics. This can then, in turn, encourage your device’s magic smoke to escape. You wouldn’t want that.
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misread as poop bottle. was startled for a split second.
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It’s rather brave of them to allow comments on these.
Skymall comes to mind.
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There’s a Subway in Ottawa whose hand dryer is akin to the downdraft of a Harrier Jumpjet. I came out of the mensroom sufficiently stunned to comment to the guy making my sandwich. He just smirked and said, “Yeah, we asked the technician to set it on max.” A few months later we were visiting the city and I specifically took my 12 year old son to this store to experience it.
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