{"id":35888,"date":"2020-04-15T10:19:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T17:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=35888"},"modified":"2020-04-15T10:19:41","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T17:19:41","slug":"drop-in-auto-darkening-welding-helmet-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/drop-in-auto-darkening-welding-helmet-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Drop-in Auto-darkening Welding Helmet Lens"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"epyt-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  id=\"_ytid_86221\"  width=\"480\" height=\"270\"  data-origwidth=\"480\" data-origheight=\"270\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-oI7OtaX9bY?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;modestbranding=0&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=0&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><strong>Tools (Recommended):<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/B071Y73G8B\/seanmichaelragan-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">OriGlam Solar Auto Darkening Welding Helmet Lens <\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Transcript:<\/strong><br \/>\nHi, I&#8217;m Sean Michael Ragan, and you&#8217;re watching Cool Tools.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any experience welding, and probably even if you&#8217;re don&#8217;t, you likely recognize that the lens on this helmet is of the auto-darkening variety, which means it&#8217;s got a layer of liquid crystal inside that&#8217;s connected to these photovoltaic panels right alongside. When you strike a welding arc, the light from the arc itself generates enough charge in these panels to reorient the liquid crystals inside here and make the lens go dark.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re sentimental, like I am, about hand-me-down tools, you may have one of these old-style flip helmets lying around. These take removable filter inserts that have a constant optical density and which are of a standard size, so you swap in a lighter or a darker lens depending on what kind of welding process you&#8217;re looking at.<\/p>\n<p>The good news, if you do have one of these sitting around somewhere, is that you can now buy really cheap auto-darkening lens panels that fit this standard size, so you can just drop one in and have an instant upgrade. These panels come in a range of prices, and this is literally the cheapest one I could find at just nine bucks including shipping. As of this video, a new helmet with a built-in auto-darkening lens will cost you at least three times that.<\/p>\n<p>No, the quality isn&#8217;t great, but it&#8217;s not a complicated device, and so long as you&#8217;re careful not to physically break it, it should last quite a while. And it does do what it&#8217;s designed to do pretty well.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what flux-cored arc welding looks like inside my old flip helmet through a constant-density glass filter, and here&#8217;s what it looks like through the auto-darkening drop-in lens. Your field of view is not as wide as you&#8217;d get from a modern helmet, but it&#8217;s wide enough to see what you&#8217;re doing, and these old-style helmets do let you flip just the lens out of the way, like this, which is a feature most new-style helmets do not have.<\/p>\n<p>OK, thank you for watching. As always, you&#8217;ll find affiliate links down below the video. If you&#8217;ve seen anything here you like, please do check those out, as well as our blog and our podcast over at cool-tools.org. We&#8217;ll see you next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OriGlam Solar Auto Darkening Filter Shade<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":35889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2337],"tags":[2361],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35890,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35888\/revisions\/35890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}