20 kV Diode Teardown [video] (opens in new tab)

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!

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.

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...) ?

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.