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Soldering Safety Workflow

Run the Soldering Safety Workflow MicroSim fullscreen

About This MicroSim

Every club has a soldering safety list. Almost none have it in the right order, and order is what actually keeps people safe -- a rule you remember after the burn is not a safety rule.

The three bands are the whole point. Before is the setup you do once: iron in its stand, air moving. During is the pair of habits repeated on every single joint, and the second one -- returning the iron to its stand between joints -- is the one that gets skipped when a student is impatient and a mentor is looking elsewhere. After is the part nobody rehearses: a joint stays hot enough to burn for several seconds, and a switched-off iron takes several minutes to cool enough to pack away.

A mentor who has walked this sequence once, in order, can run a soldering table. A mentor who has only read the five rules cannot.

How to Use

  • Hover a step to preview it; click to pin its full explanation.
  • The three bands group the steps by when they happen: setup, every joint, and afterwards.

Lesson Plan

Bloom level: Apply (L3) -- demonstrate

Learning objective: Given a soldering task about to start, the learner sequences the correct safety steps before, during, and after making a joint.

Before the sim (5 min). Ask the group to list soldering safety rules. You will get a set, unordered, heavy on "don't touch the hot end." Write them up.

With the sim (10 min). Walk the three bands. Ask which of the group's rules land in which band, and which bands came up empty -- it is almost always After, which is where the burns happen.

After the sim (15 min). Have each mentor narrate the full sequence aloud while miming it at a cold bench, before any iron is switched on. Narrating it is the demonstration the objective asks for.

Check for understanding. Ask: "You have just finished a joint and want to check the wire is held. What are the next two things you do, in order?" Iron back in the stand, then wait ten seconds -- in that order.

Embedding This MicroSim

Paste this into any page of the book, adjusting the relative path to docs/sims/ for the page's depth:

<iframe src="../../sims/soldering-safety-workflow/main.html" width="100%" height="762" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Specification

The full specification below is extracted from Chapter 16: Physical Computing and Electrical Safety Basics.

Type: workflow
**sim-id:** soldering-safety-workflow<br/>
**Library:** Mermaid<br/>
**Status:** Specified

Purpose: Sequence the before/during/after habits so a first-time mentor can rehearse the order, not just the individual rules.

Bloom Taxonomy: Apply (L3)
Bloom Taxonomy Verb: demonstrate

Learning objective: Given a soldering task about to start, the learner sequences the correct safety steps before, during, and after making a joint.

Steps: 1. "Warm up iron in stand, ventilate area" (Before); 2. "Iron touches only the joint" (During); 3. "Return iron to stand immediately" (During); 4. "Wait 10 seconds before touching joint" (After); 5. "Iron off and cooled before storage" (After)

Interactivity requirement: Every node MUST carry a `click` directive opening an infobox with that step's full explanation, e.g. `click step2 call showInfo("during-iron-touches-joint")`.

Visual style: Top-to-bottom Mermaid flowchart with three color-coded swimlane bands (Before/During/After) behind the step boxes

Implementation: Mermaid flowchart rendered inside a small wrapper page at the sim-id path, with a JavaScript `showInfo()` callback that populates an infobox beneath the diagram on any node click

References