Fun video, but one note: You should always use sandpaper as if someone else is paying for it. It gums up faster than you think, and if your "250 grit" sandpaper is full of tiny particles that wore off and is now acting more like 1000 grit, it just means more wasted hours for you. It's fairly cheap stuff, so don't forget to change it often - certainly more often than seen in this video.

This is particularly important at the initial state where you're eroding down to a level - when you're just going through grits smoothing it matters somewhat less.

I’m surprised he still has fingerprints after all that sanding - impressive!

I also noticed he doesn't use gloves :)

Another fun video I found today showing up in related videos for this:

https://youtu.be/WtExoSMgvXI?t=260

These guys are sanding down the mobile CPUs and soldering jumpers to do a password reset. I didn't know this was even possible.

Kamikaze hack on XBox, was sold as a template for drilling a bondwire on a SoC. This is without the tempalte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gCYXb54oig

This is insane. How do they even figure such things out? Is it by accident or careful research of schematics?

It's just accessing the onboard flash memory. Sometimes the easiest way in to a given pin is through the top of the CPU package (obviously they are not hitting any actual silicon), if all the traces are otherwise buried in the board.

This video also includes a look at cross-sections of resistors, inductors, capacitors, and standard diodes too!

He would have great luck with a bench top belt sander with 250 grit, and sticking to the higher grits by hand for final polishing.

Much easier when you can let a power tool do most of the work.

Really neat, thanks for posting. Good example of cracking open the literal black box of these various electronics components to see what's inside

Does gritting with super fine sandpaper like he does can produce toxic dusts (inhalable) when working with electronic parts made of various materials...) ?

He was wet sanding towards the end which does help reduce dust. A mask would be wise though.

Wet sanding also prevents the sandpaper from clogging up as quickly, making it last longer.

a transparent belt-sander would be handy

This video seems a bit lacking in information. Very cool to see the actual innards of the diode, but it feels like a quick picture and 2 sentence description could cover the same amount of information.

Not sure I agree. The extra time and listening to him gave me some ideas on how the parts are used, and made. He talked about the materials and explained it in different ways. It's awesome to see what people are interested in.

But then how would you be served 3-10 ads?

YT premium FTW

A good ad blocker is even better. It would be awesome if it could also auto-skip in-video ads.

Best part is that ad blockers work all over the world, not just in the few corners where YT designs to let you pay to skip ads.

Try the SponsorBlock addon. Nobody's added anything for this video, but there are a lot of other videos that have their ads in its database.

I'm amazed when people mention getting interstitial ads on YouTube (or I even get confused sometimes when following a link from a website that launched YouTube, but doesn't register my ID). Happy 4+ year YT premium (formerly Google Play Music ) subscriber here.