[Captions by Mary V. at Y Translator] We've got a really fun experiment today
brought to us by YouTube user Daniel Burton
who wants to know if we can use kinetic sand to cast molten metal.
[Music]
We've done a few different experiments in the past
using sand to try and cast metal.
And so I think this is an interesting progression.
Kinetic sand is this weird polymer covered sand
that does a pretty good job of sticking to itself
just a little bit.
So, the sand really bonds and it doesn't pour
like individual grains of sand.
It almost pours more like a sort of a liquid,
like a clumpy liquid.
It's weird.
There's a good chance that one of the reasons Daniel
wanted to see us try casting molten metal in this
is that it does a good job of taking mold shapes.
In fact this sand comes with a few different molds.
Let's look at what happens when we pack the sand into those.
[Music]
Boom!
The grains of sand that make this stuff up are really small
so you can pick up some pretty good details here.
You can see the inlaid brick texture.
That's a part of this cast.
[Music]
Similarly, let's try taking this piece, and pressing it down into the sand.
[Music]
Once again you can see it picked up quite a bit of detail.
Here's the basic idea.
We've got about 4 pounds of this kinetic play sand.
We're gonna try a couple different methods
for making molds in the sand,
and then see if we can cast melted metal into it.
First up.
I think we're gonna try some aluminum,
and because this sand comes in a plastic container,
we're gonna try transferring some of it into this frying pan.
And as a first experiment, I want to try casting a handprint.
So I'm going to take this sand,
throw it down into the pan,
and try and press my hand in, maybe press all of the sand down around it.
So it really does a good job of keeping its shape
then we'll melt some aluminum see if we can pour it in.
Okay, I think I've probably got a pretty good hand print going on here.
That's a handprint.
Pretty good detail.
Not like fingerprint level of detail, but it's pretty good detail still.
I have another test I wanna do.
I also want to just do a test for how well
the sand takes molds that we make ourselves.
So I've got here this little King of Random logo
that I just made out of some MDF board.
We're going to see if we can get this pick up all the details,
and really give a good impression down into that sand for the metal to grab onto.
That's packed, but not super strong packed.
I'm most concerned about the dot inside the R
and little lines inside the O,
so I think I'm just gonna take a little bit of the sand,
and try and just drop it down into those spots.
So we know that there's already sand in them,
and hopefully, it comes out in the way we want.
Little bit of uncompressed sand on top.
Right here it goes.
[Music]
Hmm...
Didn't really stick very well to the parts in the little gaps and spaces,
so we have an okay outline, but we lost a lot of the detail.
This time I'm trying to not compress it quite as much
because it might be that
when it gets pushed too far into the mold,
it can't really release.
So this is pressed but a little more gently.
That one there turned out pretty well,
and it does have some tiny little cracks in the sands
just from not being compressed too much.
I think we've got a little bit of a trade-off.
But we would rather have the sand with some little cracks in it?
Or would we rather lose a lot of the detail
from all the nooks and crannies of our mold.
We've got some aluminum,
and hey, we've got our updated foundry with the fire bricks
as the insulation,
and at the bottom with our nicer top.
It's time to give this thing a real test.
See what we can do with it,
and we're gonna start by melting some aluminum down.
[Music]
We've got a nice crucible full of molten aluminum inside our foundry.
We're gonna pull that out, set it down.
I'll grab the pouring tongs,
grab it and then I'm first,
gonna pour it into the King Of Random symbol
and then everything else that's left over,
I'm just gonna pour into the handprint.
We're gonna see how they go.
[Music]
Flow.
[Music]
The middle fingerless hand.
It may be kind of hard to see 'cause it is really bright out here
but that might be on fire.
Yeah there's definitely flames coming off of that.
Smells interesting.
Probably not too good to be breathing in much of those fumes.
So I'm just gonna stop trying to smell that for now.
Now this is aluminum, which means it needs to cool off
for quite a while before it stops being liquid.
Can see this is still very runny.
Just pass the tongs right through it.
This one's thinner.
So it was able to cool down more and it's not solid yet.
It's sort of almost a a wet sand consistency.
I can stab into it if I try...
Poke it, dent it very easily.
We need to give those some time to cool off.
The comment request was to see if we could cast molten metal
in this kinetic sand.
And we're trying that with aluminum.
We've got our aluminum that we poured,
and those are cooling off outside because aluminum takes a while to cool down.
But in the meantime, there's something else I wanted to try.
The comment did not specify what type of metal.
So we've got a different type that we're gonna try.
First, let's make the mold then let's grab the metal.
Running a little low on these two sand colors.
So I'm just gonna mix them together.
Now for the mold on this version,
I have a tiny plastic replica of Grant's Head and Shoulders.
This was made by 3D scanning Grant while he sat in a rotating chair
and then printing it out on a 3D printer.
Pretty cool little thing.
So we can just have mini-Grant sitting in the studio all the time,
and we're gonna see if we can't make a mold of this,
and then cast it in metal.
What do you say mini Grant,
you ready to get face-planted into some kinetic sand?
Oh no, I don't want to.
Ha ha! Too bad.
Suish squish squish squish squish squish squish.
All right.
Moment of truth.
Do we have a mini Grant imprint in the sand?
Oh his hair sticking up.
Think we do.
We got Grant's face smooshed down into the sand here.
Lovely.
Obviously, this 3D print isn't the highest resolution in the world.
So we'll see how much of it gets transferred from the 3D print
into the sand into the metal.
You may have noticed that our mini Grant mold in the sand
is still in the plastic container that I was using before.
And I didn't use that
because I didn't want to melt it with molten aluminum.
So this time I'm using gallium.
I have here a couple of pounds of gallium.
Now if you're unfamiliar with gallium,
gallium is a metal with a melting point of about 85.6 degrees fahrenheit,
which means that this metal right here is about as warm as a bathtub.
At any rate,
it's easily cool enough to put your hands in.
It's really kind of neat to play with because it's pretty dense.
It is metal after all,
and it doesn't have nearly the danger or destructive power of mercury
even though it looks pretty much just the same when it's melted.
So here we go.
Let's see if we can pour some of our gallium down into our mold,
and cast a little mini Grant.
[Music]
Not too bad.
There we go.
I had a barrier kind of low on this one spot,
and as you can see, of course, it has spilled over the edge.
But that's all right.
We're just gonna let this cool down,
and then take it out and see what kind of result we've got.
[Music]
Our aluminum has partially cool down,
at least enough that I feel safe bringing it inside,
and setting these pans on a table,
at least with a cloth underneath it.
So now to cool these down the rest of the way let's try taking them out,
dropping them into this bowl of water,
which should both cool them off,
and help rinse off any sand stuck to them.
Missing a middle finger and the other fingers are puddles.
[inaudible] that.
I mean obviously, other than the missing finger and the puddle fingers
going around,
but the detail that that picked up is actually not too bad,
can see like the creases in my fingers a little bit.
Definitely got the finger shape.
Interestingly, the heat seems to burn out the color from the sand.
There is still some sand stuck to this but it's not purple.
It's just kind of sand colored.
As I said it definitely discolors the sand,
and then I would say it just straight up burns it
and it absolutely does something to the polymer.
You can see, if I just poked a little bit of this,
and scoop it with the screwdriver here,
it sort of sticks together very much clumped up.
Doesn't like to separate,
and then I can squish it back down to pack.
If I do the same thing to the sand here in the middle,
this just very powdery, falls to pieces, does not clump,
does not seem to pack back together well at all.
So it's completely dried up and burned up.
Let's see how deep I could dig before I get back
to some purple and sticking the sand.
So the color is still under there.
It didn't burn all the way through.
We've just got maybe, I don't know, an eighth of an inch sort of thing
of this just absolute powder.
No binding at all.
Kind of wonder if we can get rid of all that,
and still use the sand underneath it.
This is actually pretty interesting too.
You can kind of see the change
at it radiates out.
Here's the burned portion where all the color is gone,
and then fairly abruptly the color returns
and that's acting like the normal sand.
It's got the springiness, the stickiness.
See how our King of Random symbol did.
Not too shabby.
It's not perfect.
But it's decent.
You can see what it looks like.
Obviously, it ruined some of the sand,
but the sand does do a pretty good job of holding its shape
and containing the aluminum even if some of it does get burned up.
The aluminum looks all right.
Let's see how the gallium did.
Oooh, boy that is sticking quite a bit.
Might be because I had to put it in the freezer for 40 minutes.
[Music]
Over all, that is not too shabby of a casting
like it picked up some pretty crazy detail.
You can see the print lines in the gallium.
It did seem to get a little bit of the sand stuck in embedded
into the metal in a couple of spots.
That's in there a little bit.
So I'm not sure what exactly about that particular spot
and these other tiny little spots that was different from the rest of it.
But overall, I'd say we did get a pretty good casting,
and while it's not exactly a photo realistic sculpture of Grant,
it looks about as much like him as this 3D print did
so I'm pretty impressed.
Well Daniel Burton, you wanted us to try using kinetic sand to cast metal,
and I would say we got some decent results
with both the aluminum and the gallium.
Daniel Burton, thank you for your idea.
We're sending you $25.
Remember, if you've got any cool ideas, let us know down in the comments,
and if we use your idea to make a video,
we're gonna send you 25 bucks.
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