I want to pop an air bag

Nope, haven't tried it. Your dismantler may be able to give you some wise counsel.

One anecdotal account...my stock broker's daughter had an accident last year in which the bag deployed. The girl's leg was cut, but the damage from the bag deployment was more painful and took longer to heal. Surprised me. It created a friction burn.

To suggest that you be careful would be anticlimactic.

I have to ask why you want to "pop" an airbag outside of a car.

As was mentioned, be very careful, because you are dealing with the equivalent of a small explosion and that expanding bag can fling loose parts at very high speeds.

We are carrying out some fairly basic research to help with product development. The whole test programme will be elevated to something more formal once we have established that we are moving in the right direction.

We will build a little test rig to ensure staff are protected at the time of deployment. We now have two seats (and another 10 ordered) and it's all becoming quite exciting.

We are close to firing our first one now. I am satisfied that I understand what is needed in the way of volts and amps for the inital charge to fire and we are building a test rig to protect the users (ie ME).

Will report on events if anyone is interested.

Sounds interesting. If the constraints of the project permit, please post an update.

On Dirty Jobs they just hooked that puppy up to 12V. Fired a bucket fairly high into the air.

Dave

This is typical. Most airbags are designed to restrain an average unbelted male. So when someone smaller has one deploy, they end up getting hurt or killed.

----------- Alex

There was a recall on Camry steering wheel airbags a few years ago. After the dust settled, the parts department ended up with all these undeployed airbags lying around that they could do nothing with (can't ship or toss a live airbag, I suppose). So, what other option did we have than going out back to the field behind the dealership with a pair of 30' leads and a jump box. That was fun. If you set them upside down, you get an easy 40 feet of loft. Then they right themselves in the air and the airbag acts like a parachute, softly returning the unit to earth. We started having artillery-style competitions, marking out landing zones and massing with firing angles, but then we ran out.

-Discaimer----we, including myself, are factory trained and ASE certified pros who happen to love blowing up airbags and have enough sense to not hurt ourselves or others. Don't ever do this, because it's dangerous and such.