DIY electroplay

bzzt!

Specifically, my question regards safe-but-painful levels of electricity.

I'm a biologist by trade, so I know the theory: "It's the volts that jolt, but the mills that kill" - a large pd (voltage) across a nerve triggers depolarisation and actually creates a sensation, whereas it is the energy dumped into tissue (by flowing current) that actually causes damage. PD drops across the heart are a Very Bad Thing because it would rather like to decide for itself when to depolarise and do the whole blood-pumping, life-sustaining thing. High-power current across the heart is a Very Very bad thing because you kill bits of cardiac muscle to boot.

So, what I really want to know is: What's a safe amount of energy/current to dump into someone for electroplay? Has anyone here "done it themselves"? How did you do it? There are tonnes of designs out on the net for "shock boxes" and stuff, of the classic handshake-buzzer variety (I'm leaning towards a low-voltage capacitor into a transformer, roughly similar to the design on the Frugal Domme's site), but they don't seem to actually mention silly little things like what value the capacitors should be, or the turn ratio for the transformer...can anybody help?

High blip and welcome.

Electricity is an old topic at the library you might want to give it a search. There is an in depth one here

Basically you have a good understanding of the biology. Myt from there engineering side there are bigh risks associated with DIY electrical devices. Without going over too much old ground my advise as an electrical engineer is dont bother the risk is too great. Besides the comercial units starting arround $125 US are pretty cheep. You could spend that on parts alone and still not have a reasonably safe toy.

Probably the main reason you wont find too much on spacifics on how to build one is liability.

If you just have to build one there are published standards for these types of things. You might try the websites for UL and IEEE for starters.

Have a shocking good time but a safe one. Cus you want to do it again. :D