Guys look at that. That is absolutely crazy. What's up my friends welcome back today. We are outside
There's a clear sky, not a cloud in sight
The sun is beating down so we got out the solar scorcher because they jump down to the comments
And I found this one from Christie land
Sue who says can you cast metals with the solar scorcher?
So we're putting this to the test because there's no better opportunity to do this than today now for our metal melting experiments today
I got three different types of metals
I thought we could work with the first one is pewter you might remember the pewter from the video
I do with Collins key where we melt it down with a blowtorch and tried making fidgets spinners
I've also got one of the aluminum muffins that we got from melting down Pop cans in the backyard Metal foundry as well as one
Of these little brass ingots I made from melting Bullet shells
now the melting point of these metals is very very different. The pewter for example Melts at
250 degrees Celsius, the aluminum melts around 660 degrees Celsius, and the brass melts somewhere between
900 to 950 Celsius and I did that in celcius for my international fans
So let me know if you appreciate that so to get started
I'm going to take this solid pewter fidgets spinner that I made with Collins
We're going to direct the sunlight at it and see just how long it takes to get this thing liquefying if at all
Now some of you guys remember the solar scorcher. This is a lens that came off from a giant TV
And it basically acts as a giant magnifying glass and directs the light into a super hot laser beam which converges somewhere around here
We try shooting a little mist of water that we can actually see the exact focal point now
It's really interesting about this is I can actually hold my finger within an inch of that beam and not feel anything
But if anything crosses into it
It instantly burns into flames because that focal point is over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit which should be enough to melt metal how crazy is that?
Alright guys, so now that we know exactly where that focal point is let's go ahead and take one of our metal
Let's start with pewter and just slowly dip it into that solar laser beam and observe what happens
Alright, so there's our laser beam right there
We light it up. You can see
Just stick down here
It's thin right there and right about there's where we want to put our middle
Now watch your eyes because this is going to get bright here. We go
Dang, I can't even look at that
Trying to find that laser beam again. I looks like we're still in it. I
can actually see part of the metal starting to go molt in there if you look at the bottom you can actually see it shimmering
Shining splendid just got to keep that focus. Oh
wow, so piece of metal just dripped off on the concrete there and spattered
Guys look at that. That is absolutely crazy like just sticking this thing in the sunlight
And it started melting off, and it's on my sidewalk look at that your splatters and drips all over my sidewalk
Yeah, look at that. Just within seconds or in seconds
It totally starts liquefying at the top that's going to drip right down on my sidewalk
crazy
Alright, so apparently this thing will take down pewter without any problem at all
I think what we're going to do is take all of our pewter spinners and remelt them into a pewter ingot using a muffin tray
Okay, so here's what I've done guys. I've taken a board and set it across the solar scorcher here
I've got the pewter spinners inside of a muffin tray and when I set those on top
It should be in the exact focal point of our ray of sun this way I can keep them stationary I can keep them static
So the sunlight can do its full potential without me jiggling around in the focal point. See if it works
Alright, it looks like right about here
And there we go pewter away
power of the Sun do your stuff
Looks like that should be right about the perfect focal point look at that within seconds
You can actually see
The metal is boiling bubbling on top and I could stick my finger here and not get burned and yet its melting metal
less than an inch away
That is nuts
melting metal with sunlight guys
And not only that it's happening fast
Look at that. She's dripping away like nothing
This is a hundred percent solar energy. There's nothing else going on here
You can see the pool of liquid metal down at the bottom there
It's actually taking that down so fast I'm tempted to put another piece of pewter in there just to make a proper ingot
I'm going to add this little bit of pewter that we didn't finish up at Collins house
I'm going to put it into this mix so that we have one full ingot
I want you to see the power of this thing because if the sunlight melts this we're talking about the same power as my map
Gas torch so it was taken that down with that super hot flame which is absolutely incredible when you consider
There's no fuel source here except for the sun
There look at that. You can see exactly where the sun's hitting it and it just started melting
We are melting metal with the sun
So cool
He's got to keep it in that focal point for maximum heat
But it's keeping the whole thing liquid if you look down the bottom there. It's still whole Molten pool of pewter
It's working
In fact I can just throw that whole thing in there now. Just like an ice cube melting into a pewter pool
Everywhere I put that solar beam you can just see if I move that around a little bit it can actually direct where it starts
melting
Right over here a little bit boom
Look at that
That is a beautiful thing that
Thing is almost completely melted
But that is ripping hot you can see that's totally molten
Yep, there's nothing solid in there whatsoever
It's completely liquefied
So just skim some of that slag off the top and let it cool down
boom Molten pewter from the Sun
So what I'm curious about now is the sunlight will take down pewter so quickly. How will it react to aluminum? That's coming next
So quick update' guys. I'm a little bit discouraged by these results
I was really really hoping that sunlight would melt aluminium, but we've sat here for the last 20 minutes
And we've concentrated the sunlight on it. You can see that nothing has really happened
I'm sure this ingot is extremely hot right now, but it hasn't in any way liquefied
And I'm not sure how long it would take to do that
Now on the other hand you can see the pewter has completely solidified
And we could turn that upside down knock it out and have ourselves well petering it, but as far as the aluminum
I'm almost ready to give up if we can't melt aluminium
I know we won't melt brass now to be fair this doesn't get hot enough to melt those metals
It's just the quantity of the metal. We're trying to melt in this case
We've got quite a bit of math and even though this one little point in the middle is actually hitting somewhere around
2,000 Fahrenheit the whole block itself
Doesn't rise in temperature enough for the metal to melt and if aluminium is not going to melt Copper has absolutely no chance
I'm sure this thing is ridiculously hot right now listen to how it sounds and I for a little water on it
Dang
that was
extreme in fact that was so hot it looks like it was nearly ready to melt and
perhaps if we let it fit out for another 10 or 15 minutes it would have but
It's obviously not very practical method for melting metal all right. Let's check out the pewter can we knock that out?
Boom there's our pewter ingot
what's interesting about the pewter is it's got all these little bubbles on the bottom very interesting and if you wonder where those came from
It popped all the way around this little bubble, so those are we smooth on the top not really
Looks like craters on the moon there you have a guy's the moon's made of pewter all right?
So what do we got?
We know the solar scorcher definitely gets hot enough to melt pewter it almost gets hot enough to melt aluminum
It will not get hot enough to melt brass in large quantities, but there is one thing that I want to try
Maybe we can't melt in aluminum and get maybe we can't melt a copper ingot
But will it be enough to melt a brass cartridge casing let's give that a try for one final experiment
All right, make sure I don't get my head in that laser beam that could be terrible all right here. We go
Where's that focal point? Where's that focal point?
Somewhere around here, I imagine
This is my mind playing tricks on me, or is that bullet shell actually smoking? That's a good sign
It's changing color let me see it's turning a little bit yellow
Just going to play with the focal point here a little bit that looks like it's right about here
It's got some kind of a white film forming on the outside obviously some kind of reaction taking place. It's obviously getting hot
But I don't see any smoke. I don't see it going incandescent
I would like to see that thing melt I'm hoping that it will melt
Look at that. It's so hot. It's actually burning the wood
Yep, that's obviously hot just leaving scorch marks in the wood, but it's not melting the actual grass itself I
Got to jump in to be honest here guys
I was fully expecting this brass casing to melt and I think the reason it hasn't melted is because we've lost our sun
It passed the point of no return
We should have caught this earlier in the day
But in any case you can see this is so hot that when we set it down on a piece of wood
It actually scorches the wood instantly that's still excessively hot even though we didn't get it to melt
I think it's good to know because you're not always going to have ideal situations trying to cast with sunlight
Alright guys, so quick summary of what we tried here today
We tried to see if sunlight would actually melt metal and we tried three different Metals pewter aluminum
And brass what we found today was very interesting the pewter was taken down in no time at all it melts very very quickly
but also has the lowest melting point about
250 degrees Celsius now when we tried doing the aluminum ingot we put it in the sunlight for about 15 minutes with no noticeable results
The biskits was so hot it made the water boil to the point where we saw the latent crossed effect
but we never actually saw the biscuit melt now whether or not it would have melted over time who's to say and the reason we
Didn't get that muffin to melt isn't because of the temperature we actually did get up to a high temperature
But there wasn't enough energy from the sun to melt that much aluminum
Now if aluminum didn't work we had no hope for brass whatsoever
But we did try one of the cartridge casings and under some circumstances when the sun is directly overhead
I think this would have worked I have been successful melting steel screws in the past
So I'm not sure why we didn't do a copper cartridge today, however. It's good to see that
it doesn't always work the
Location of the sun the time of year your position on the earth these are all factors that play into whether or not this to
Be successful
So for practical use I would say melting metals like lead copper and obviously gallium yeah sunlights the way to go no problem whatsoever
When you get into metals like aluminium, brass Copper gold
I don't think it's really going to work on a practical basis
but it was still a fun experiment and we learned something new today and a big thanks to Chris neil and sue for putting a
Suggestion down in the comments below and helping make this video happen Christy go check your YouTube inbox. I'm sending a 25 bucks
Thanks so much for joining me for this video. I'll be looking for you the next one back to them
Watch where you put your fingers man
whoops
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