- This is the most expensive Xbox controller in the world.
It's made of one and a half kilograms,
so that's a little under four pounds of solid gold.
And you might be wondering how we made it.
- So I just got an email back from Expert Castings,
they did some test casts and they can do it.
- Yes.
- It's going to be about
one and a half kilograms of 18 karat gold.
- Wow.
- Which is going to be $87,500.
- Well, you only live once,
gold Xbox controller here we come.
This video is brought to you by the VOLTA 2.0,
a universal reliable, fast charging magnetic cable
that works across all USB devices,
including with data transfer capabilities.
Check it out today at the link in the video description.
(upbeat music)
Lets take a moment to appreciate
just how challenging this is gonna be,
by cracking open this pulse red Xbox Series X controller,
starting with the battery cover I guess.
For this assembly we pull off the outer shell ,
starting with these hand grips
at the back and then remove all the screws, including IAS,
this sneaky little boy, under the sticker here.
My warranty is now void I think, and woo ah!
Wow! That is a complicated part.
If we want the functionality
of the finished controller to be exactly the same though,
we're going to have to recreate this one for one.
And that won't be easy.
Thin components, particularly ones with lots
of intricate detail are especially difficult to cast.
That's why we won't be attempting this here in our own shop.
Which brings us to Expert Castings here,
in beautiful downtown Vancouver.
But as grand as the entryway looks
things are about to get down and dirty.
Unlike ourselves, Expert Castings are just that
experts with accolades like being one
of two places in Canada
that can work on a Tiffany pierce,
and making jewelry for Disney, 50 Shades of Gray,
Once Upon a Time and many more.
Now, they first tried to convince us to cast our piece
in bronze, then gold played it.
This is generally what's done for movie props
like this one right here.
It's way cheaper and usually gives a better results anyway,
but problem is, this was one of those videos
where we came up with the title first
and then figured out how to fill in the gaps later.
So we were stuck cutting a fat order
of pure gold to the Royal Canadian Mint.
- They just brought this over and look at it,
we have one kilogram of gold right here.
So this is, a professional engineer's salary in my hands,
and it's shocking how heavy it is given like the size.
I'm surprised how small it is, look at this thing.
- For casting, you first have to create a negative
of the shape that you want for the metal to be poured into.
Adam is gonna be taking care of this step called sprung.
Wax gets heated up by low temperature soldering iron
and stuck to parts of our controller.
This will create pathways for the gold to pour into.
In the past, rings would be painstakingly
hand carved out of wax,
but now most parts are just 3D printed.
Some parts they cast all the time, like this anchor,
so for that, they've created a negative
that they can inject wax into using this wax pot.
All of the pieces on the sprue need to be organized,
kind of like an upside down tree.
This shape makes it easier for the molten metal
to flow into the cavities,
while also making it easier for air to find its way out.
That's critical, because it's super important to
accurately weigh the plastic and the wax on the sprue,
and use the density of those materials compared to gold,
to figure out how much metal will be needed
to fill the mold.
Too little metal,
and there won't be enough force pushing down into the mould
or it might just not fill it all,
and too much metal, well that's just wasteful,
and that's very expensive waste.
Now we need to create the investment,
which will harden around our sprue.
Simply add a 0.395 ratio of water
to plaster powder and a large bowl,
and then combine with a kitchen mixer for two minutes.
Place the mixture under vacuum for one minute
40 seconds to remove bubbles, pour the plaster into the mold
and place under vacuum again
for another minute and 40 seconds.
From here, the whole thing is placed
in the Kilns at 700 degrees Celsius overnight.
This will give the wax and plastic
time to melt and then burn off leaving only voids behind.
Now we're basically ready to melt the gold,
but there's one problem.
Our hunk of gold is too big.
If it makes you feel any better, this is much more painful
for me to watch than it is for you.
So if you could go to lttstore.com
right now to ease the pain, that'd be great.
Thanks.
Now you guys might've guessed
that during this chopping process
tiny flakes of gold will fall off.
It's not too bad, the flakes coming off
of our piece here total only about 10 to 20 cents,
but they do add up.
They actually sweep the floor here
and the benches every day,
chuck it in this big bucket
and in a year it can catch about a $100,000
in tiny pieces of gold.
Our second problem is that
the Royal Canadian Mint is awesome
and they're four nines gold bars are just two pair.
But okay, seriously though
even pleb American us mint gold,
would be much too ductile for actual use.
In fact,
it's so soft
that it would probably deform in your hands
the first time you got a head shot
by some 11 year old in Call of Duty.
So then, someone here we'll be
expertly creating our alloy using 450 grams
of gold per 150 grams of alloy blend.
We're using number 220, which is 12% zinc,
11.5% silver and 76.5% Copper.
Blends are chosen mostly
for the color that they produce,
and ours, should give us a nice orangey yellow look.
Finally, it's time to melt some metal baby.
Using an induction oven,
the gold is heated up to 1100 degrees Celsius
and our mold is then removed
from the Kilns at 600 degrees Celsius.
The thing is if the mold is too cool,
then the gold might solidify
before it fills in all the cavities.
Before the gold can be added though,
all the air in the mould has to be replaced
with an inert hydrogen nitrogen mixture.
This helps prevent the gold alloy
from reacting with the air while it's molten.
So when everything's ready
they just lift up the center column
that's lined up with the center sprue of our mould
and all the gold flows in.
Is it going, is it going?
Did it go?
Can I see it?
Oh, oh molten gold therein,
Is it good?
- Yeah
- Oh that doesn't sound very confident.
We didn't put in enough gold, ooooooh
The concern right now is that
there's a bunch of tunnels,
that the gold is supposed to flow down,
and there's one that it didn't go down
but there's like five that it did apparently.
That's what she was poking at.
She was poking to see if the tunnels were full.
Let's see if it worked ladies and gentlemen, there we go,
woo, oh
- [Adam] Tragic - Farmer.
Oh, wow it's heavy.
- [Alex] I guess we might not even need
to worry about that though
'cause that's covered.
Like all of this in here you don't see.
- [Alex] Oh, because of the--
- [Adam] So we're just thinking of to holding it together,
I think it's fine.
- Actually you, you might be right.
It's actually the texture.
Oh my God, it has the texture of the Xbox controller.
I mean, I know I shouldn't be surprised,
but it did, it kind of looks like ass hey.
- [Adam] Right?
Like that's--
- [David] I wish my ass looked like that
- [Adam] Tens of thousands of dollars
and it just doesn't look like anything.
- Tens of thousands of dollars of ass.
- Of course what you saw was only
the back piece of the controller.
So the front, the shoulder and trigger buttons, as well as
I don't know, whatever you call these back pieces
in the battery cover,
were all done ahead of time due to size limitations.
So, with a combination of a soap bath,
scrubbing with a toothbrush, scraping with a pic
and even some actual removal of the material.
This,
will turn into this.
Now, this was our first cast and it was pretty good
but there are some small surface finish problems.
Once it's cleaned up, we should be able to go from a more
a satin like finish to a super shiny one
like you actually see on this corner here.
Of course, there are still some problems
that we have to solve like for example,
what do you gonna do about the parts
where the sprue was joined to the original plastic?
I don't know, but I can't wait
to see if the thing actually comes together.
So this is it, ladies and gentlemen, test fit time.
Oh,
that's it.
Okay, where's my battery cover at?
Alex can you be my third hand here?
(laughs)
Oh man.
Once all the sprue crap is on there and this fits together,
this is gonna be crazy.
Guys, do not miss the next part of this,
and don't list the segway to our sponsor drop.com.
Done guys, we need that sponsor dollars,
like, bring on the raid shadow legends.
No, but seriously drop.com is featuring
the control keyboard.
It's one of their top selling keyboards
with over 11,000 sold and why not?
It's got a solid CNC aluminum frame,
a built-in switch plate, RGB lighting, Q and K firmware
for excellent customizability, hot swappable key switches.
And your choice of Cherry MX, Kiowa or Halo switches.
It features a floating key design
with dual USB Type-C connectors and weighs 964 grams.
The only way it could be heavier,
is if they made it out of a heavier metal.
(laughing)
So check it out at the link down below.
If you guys enjoyed this video and you love crazy projects
maybe you'd like our water cooled PlayStation 4.
That's right.
We did one of those away a while back,
we don't have anything current gen,
look, we're working on it, okay?