Hey everyone! The theme in this week’s comments is “that can’t possibly work because the ball will compress under the pressure and blah blah physics” Except that it does work. There are other YT channels demonstrating it working, and you can buy commercial devices that do this. So let’s let that one go and enjoy the act of making something just for the joy of making it!
@@wildin13 Unfortunately it didn't work for me. Years ago I made a pressure vessel etc... I could hear balls were compressed under pressure because they made clunking sound when I shook the vessel. I left them for a couple of days IIRC and then opened it. Balls were completely dead, much worse than they were before pressure treatment
More interested in fatigue due to cyclical loading of the pressure vessel (after seeing the time lapse)...of course it is the same material used in kegs...so I will go have a beer and shut up while I contemplate it some more:)
Two weeks elapsed between measurements so obviously the moon is at a completely opposite phase and the change in the acceleration of gravity was obviously not accounted for. ;-). Or the barometric pressure and humidity changed between the two measurements. Personally I think I'd go with the second, as story you can spin would sound more convincing.
Quinn - You always find ways to make your videos unique, and delightful to watch! Some true gems: "Crack it open like the skulls of our enemies" "Covered in genuine organic Muppet skin" Both brought big smiles to my face.
A Lil tip for pipe threads is you should only be able to get 3 turns easily by hand. The total length is 9 complete rotations 3 by hand 3 by wrench 3 left showing. A tip I picked up as a teenager and have been cutting leak free threads ever since. Happy cutting everyone
Also, they make groove joint pliers (generic channel locks) that have smooth jaws with rubber bumpers, so you don't need to scratch every shower head tube you install. Learned that tapered thread tip too late for two showers. Fortunately I still have 2 more to redo...
Hi. I have a lot of experience repressurizing tennis balls and making pressurizers for the purpose, and it absolutely does work. 32 psi is a bit high, and many "dead" balls will collapse before reaching that pressure. You can see the pressure gauge take a little dip when that happens, and I can see it happening in your video. I often pressurize actual tennis ball cans which are clear so you can see the balls "pop" and collapse. New balls are shipped at about 14 psi. Dead balls generally won't collapse until about 20 psi, and relatively newer balls can handle much more and still remain spherical so they will slowly gain pressure. I generally repressurize at 20 to 25 psi. If any balls collapse at that level a lower pressure must be used for a week or so, then the pressure can be raised. Collapsed balls will not gain pressure. Some brands of balls repressurize better than others. And it is possible to overpressurize balls, they are "extra bouncey" for a while. 15 psi is a good pressure for like-new storage, 20 to 25 psi for repressurizing. Higher pressures are faster but have more risk of overpressurization. Of course the balls do lose fur and become lighter with use, so after some number of outings they do need to be retired from tennis and used for other purposes. Thanks for another fun video.
@@r3tr0n17 Recently I came across a new one on amazon from Spain that fits on a common ball can using a split ring and large threads and goes to 30 psi with a gauge and pressure relief button. It is filled with a schrader fitting like any tire. This one works quite well, I've been testing it out for a couple weeks. I prefer to pressurize to a lower pressure where the balls don't collapse and then work up. You can easily see them in the tube. If any collapse then lower the pressure till they return to spherical, increase to below where they collapse, and wait a few days, then work up from there.
Of course the proper paper painter's tape for pressure fittings is yellow, not blue. However, blue can be used to adapt metric to imperial threaded fasteners.
I used to do a lot of homebrewing and yup, they love using odd threads as a safely feature and it does keep you from screwing something on that isn't rated for pressure but... It also forces you to buy only their parts or parts their buddies make.
Probably also some silly regulatory thing about food safety. The same thing is why RP-SMA exists for antenna connectors on home wifi devices - because if it allowed a "standard" connector the FCC would require everyone with wifi to have ham radio license or whatever incase they attached a higher gain antenna than approved with.
Look up CGA fittings to see some really weird threads. They are used as mechanical interlocks so you can't accidentally hook up the wrong lines to compressed gas or fuel cylinders. For example, contamination in oxygen lines can be an explosion hazard. There is also a system called DISS which is used for medical gases (don't want to give a patient nitrous if you intended oxygen).
A determined idiot can make an adapter to make an nitrous bottle fit onto a manifold meant for oxygen bottles. Yes this has been done and yes it had terrible consequences.
Interesting experiment Quinn. Fortunately my dog has shown me the inside of hundreds of tennis balls. In about 3.3 seconds she can have one completely filleted, surely some sort of record. Its quite interesting how 2 of the balls were actually worse after the "re-pressurizing" I'll think about that all night while I can't sleep because this puzzles me so...Thanks...for another great video.
Definitely a head-scratcher Denis. I would have liked to see her make an acrylic, stepped go-no-go gauge. A stepped tube to check the size growth of the balls. One would think the pressurized balls would grow slightly. You have to wonder how much smaller they get in the pressure chamber (hint: a clear acrylic lid would work for this). Anyway, everyone knows if you want to make a cockroach BIGGER you simply put it in a vacuum chamber and suck. They easily triple in size before they explode. So, if were trying to make the tennis ball bigger, one would think a vacuum would work. And it would guaranteed, until of course, you released the vacuum, when it would be smaller than ever due to the leakage theory. Clearly one of the balls gained pressure, so one might assume it to be the ball that leaks the most, and let the most air in. If that is correct the balls with the least change are the best and just need a longer amount of time to fill but will hold the pressure longer as well. Let's try to get some sleep and we can discuss this more tomorrow after I clean the cat off the wine press. See 11:06
Just to let you know, the "in" side is designated for gas pressure to enter the keg using the GREY ball lock fitting and the "out" side is designated to use a BLACK ball lock fitting. Yes! The grey fitting will fit on the out post but will leak as per your initial pressure testing. As the two posts are of different sizes. The "in" side is slightly larger than the "out" side. So, there for you somewhat built it backwards. Great vid none the less! 👍
Glad of the whole honest thing going for this girl, and that she actually created a way to measure success, instead of just saying, "Hey, those look much firm and much more bouncy"
I must say, that was the most unexpected content for you channel I could imagen: A pressure cooker for old tennis balls?? Really? YET: it was fun, interesting and I learned stuff! Yay Quinn!!!!!
Quinn, you were the 1st machine channel i started watching. Because of your early influences i recently purchased a PM930M mill with all the options. Great machine. Glad i did it.
You are in incredibly passionate and knowledgeable teacher. You make it easy to learn. I am also a passionate teacher but have much to learn from someone like you. I'm knew to machining videos and am amazed how much depth of knowledge is required to do milling with precision, safety and efficiency. Keep up the good work.
"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from; furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model." -Andrew Tanenbaum
Our dog can't stand the feel of the fur in her mouth. Very funny when she participates in fetching games with my daughter's dog. Jealousy dictates she runs after the ball on her turn but she tries to barely hold the ball between the tips of her teeth 😁
I had a similar experience trying to cut threads to adapt a fire extinguisher into a pressure vessel (after watching your single-point threading video). The measurements were wild and didn't match anything I could find. Super fun watching my de facto machine shop teacher work through a similar problem.
A cat being strangled in a wine press. You have such a way with words. It took quite a while to even make this comment as it was written between gales of laughter.
In regards to the portable band saw table, I think that it would make a great project to build one. You are a hobby machinist after all. I think you have the skills to tackle it and it would be nice to see what you make based on your own wants/needs in a table.
I feel that threads may be one of the few places that I'm fine with security by obscurity. If you can cut that thread, you should know what you're doing.
Dogs everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief for saving access to their toys. Taping on the pressure gauge was reminiscent of Ichiban Moto humor. . .Nice work.
I love the fact that there are so many people here quoting physics as the reason that a thing that does work, can't possibly work. This is logic akin to "bumble bees can't fly because their wings are too small to generate sufficient lift" and (my favourite) "the earth is only 6000 years old because we added up the average generation age from Adam to Abraham, then added 4,000 years". @Blondihacks, you are the goddess of mansplaining magnetism. Keep it up, you're brilliant!
Fun random fact - high-end Mitutoyo objective lenses for microscopes use an M26 by 36TPI thread. I've never found a reason beyond "we wanted to make it as inconvenient as possible to attach them to things."
In reference to your bandsaw table dilemma, for what it's worth, I purchased the Swag V1.0 Portaband Table and just clamp it in my vise when needed, and store it under the bench when not. No need for a table that takes up a bunch of room. Also, keep up the great work!
That was an interesting venture! It was entirely new to me, not a surprise though, I fill my tires with dry nitrogen, because it leaks out slower, larger atoms. It the balls are "leaky" the pressure will seep in, and rejuvenate. If they are relatively impermeable, it won't do anything to them. Aircraft tires are inflated with dry nitrogen to maintain any real pressure at altitude. Thanks.
Tennis balls are pressurized by droping Inside a few grains of an inorganic compound, if memory serves me well an iodine compound, that sublimates and pressurizes the ball after the ball halves are glued. You can hear them rattling inside when you buy new balls.
About .600 on a 1/4 NPT. NPT threads are kind of like that song Hallelujah, the 4th, the 5th, the minor fall and the major lift, you just have to play with it and then once you figure it out just remember it.
Great video Quinn! I loved the solution and as always if you don’t make it as a machinist, I would gladly come see you at any open Mic night in a comedy club.
Hi, Quinn You might try purging the container with helium, and using helium to represurize your tennis balls. Helium is a much smaller molecule that oxygen, and Nitrogen that make up most of our atmosphere. and thus will move more quickly through the rubber membrane of the ball. We used to use helium to leak check things that were to be held under very high vacuum with helium. Very small leaks were easily located, and many times disassembly of complex apparatus was avoided. You might have a helium bottle for your TIG welder. Tim
I could watch this all day. I created something similar with ag pipe with the blue liquid sealant, end caps and a bike tube valve. Firstly, ag pipe flexed on the ends which looked like it would pop off. It also had a small leak and would loose pressure over about two days. Secondly the balls would rapidly loose pressure after about 10 minutes of playing. I think you need to lightly re-heat the rubber with maybe a paint gun to vulcanise the rubber of the balls. If you would like to see a pic let me know.
3:20 ooh yes, I remember! That was the first of your videos I watched, thanks to Rex Krueger! :D (Also since then I'm very unsure whether I should trade my woodworking shop for a nice machinist shop… 😅)
Speaking of niche sizes, the pegs that fit in my bedpost for the side rails to hook onto are 19/64". I found them from one guy on eBay and that's it. So puzzling!
If a little pressure is good, a lot should be better! The relief should let go around 50psi. Another wierd nut is the one that holds the pulley on a GM alternator, it's something like .662-18. Kind of 5/8 fine. Ask me how I know. When you were sleuthing out the keg thread I was saying to myself "not a normal thread". This is also something I found out by doing.
"A cat being strangled in a wine press"? Is this a Sprocket approved saying? I THINK NOT! That was pretty neat. Interesting and handy information about the threads. Thanks, and Meow to Sprocket.
12:10 that right there is the rationale I used to convince myself to buy a lathe. “Where the heck will I find a 9/32-24 LH tap and die to restore this bunch of old stanley handplanes? The lathe will pay for itself by the 2nd part I make!” Well, that was a lie. And it sounds unbelievably silly when I say it to other people. Still, the most fun I had after I bought those hand planes. Take that Stanley Rule & Level Co. ! (Defunct 1920).
If all you were/are doing is chasing threads its possible to make taps and dies. Use tool steel, then harden, o1 can be done with a torch I believe. Hardened steel would be good enough to tap mild steel at least once or twice.
I’ve run across a few threads I couldn’t identify with a machinery’s handbook in hand. I always blamed them on drunken engineers or loose cannon machinists.
I wonder if you could design a table for the portaband that is foldable or something. Something you could easily disassemble and store away when not needed.
Find an old 5 gal. paint pressure pot. We've used it for pressure and vacuum for projects, just used a 3/4 inch/75mm disc of acrylic for the vac. The only drama is the bottom is parabolic.
@@Tater1337 I found a nerf herder on the internet who will sell a mated pair. I could start a small muppet farm as a hobby and sell the skins to pay for their upkeep. Think I'll crowdfund it. LOL
Fun… one of my favorite sayings is “The only difference between SCIENCE and just screwing around is writing your results down”. I find this helps drop the intimidation factor or the stigma that science is boring from the process of science.
I recall hearing that from Adam Savage, in an episode of Mythbusters. Don’t know if that’s originally his or if he credited it to someone else. It hits a sweetspot that can change the mindset of a teenager or young adult so effectively and so fast, in time to influence decisions that would last a lifetime.
Oh there's other factores involved, in science we need to follow the same procedure when conducting experiments so that they can be replicated by anybody else, in screwing around you might not follow the same process twice and in some instances the best way to discover something is to modify only one variable at a time, it is time consuming but that's precisely the beauty in finding out something that can and will make things easier and faster for others. Saludos.
@@MikhelBL respectfully, hogwash…. I would concede that most of what you call out becomes important as one progresses down a line of inquiry and ever-finer points of cause and effect are teased out but that shouldn’t be confused with the initial point of entry for having a question then testing that question observing and recording the outcome, and it is that initial point of entry where I would contend Science begins.
@@cav89- it is very likely that I picked up this initial thought from one of Adam Savages videos from his Tested shows. It definitely was not my intent to imply that it was originally mine in any way.
I used a 5 gallon corny coke syrup keg for a while as an air compressor tank over 120#. I sacrificed the stainless fitting by gutting it and tapping 1/4" npt. If I recall it was quite thin at one spot but held up sketchy as it was. Fun note when my brother cleaned his syrup kegs for homebrewing he found cockroach parts inside the little poppet valve :)
Wonderful for you to be able to craft this. However, for us mere mortals & brewers, we just by an adapter from Ball Lock to NPT from Foxx industries in Denver.
The "non-standard" thread for the tank is party so people Cannot use standard plumbing, worse Used plumbing, that can pollute a Food system with lead and more dangerous stuff. Also prevents stolen 5 gallon syrup tanks from Post and Pre Mix Commercial soda fountains to easily be reused. Most Post Mix system at restaurants now use small non-pressure bag in box and syrup is pumped out and just throw out in normal trash/recycle when empty. That solved many problems with old pressurize syrup tanks.
I am wondering if the reason the experiment didn't work was because the tape was upside down as you stated. Perhaps during the time between tests the balls forgot if they were supposed to get a higher number or lower so they decided that some should go for the higher number and others go for the lower number. Since they didn't want you to feel bad, they came to this compromise. Just my two cents worth and thanks for another great video. 😀
Balls can colapse if they are severaly depleted from their original pressure. If this happens then the pressure will need to be increased slightly start at 10 for a week, 20 etc. If you have a window this can be easier to monitor
Thank you Quinn! Do your fingers ever get stage fright during intro recordings? Can’t wait to get a lathe……so I don’t have to spend countless hours in the HD/L fitting aisle,trying to get here to there😎
The muppet skin thing was priceless - I thought only our family used that one! A version with pixelation of the 'cleaning the tailstock taper' is advised for younger viewers 😂
That whole thread engagement issue is actually more common than you might think, even today with all our fancy CNC and standardization. I worked QC in Aerospace for a few years. come across some parts from a supplier that would not fit our thread gauge. It was close; would thread on about 1/3rd way, but that is not a pass by aerospace standards, and the whole lot was this way. We sent our gauge off to be re-calibrated thinking that was likely the issue; but no. Then the engineer came hounding me claiming it went on sufficiently and I was just being picky, ect. I insisted, the thread is wrong, IF the thread was correct the gauge would travel the full length and seat firmly at the head of the bolt - that is our standard for passing threads. He threw a fit and got someone to approve the parts without testing them. That cost the company a multi-million dollar contract. They may have needed a spring pass or two, they may have been cut wrong/close, but not close enough. IDK, but they didn't fit my gauge, so they were wrong, the customer agreed with me and a few years later the shop closed down. Sad really cause I really liked that job, shop, and crew.
one thing that makes me wonder:when you pressurize the balls from the outside they just get compressed themselves til the inside pressure of the balls meets the surounding pressure in the tank..For letting air moleculs in you would have to create a pressure difference which is impossible with a ball or so.So i dont get how that can work.
The only thing I can think of is that with the ball pressurised (and therefore made smaller) you have the spring pressure of the ball itself trying to force itself back out. If the pressure inside and out remain the same due to air bleed through the skin, the ball should gradually return to its proper size...? I feel like you'd need to significantly over-pressure it to get enough deformation to make it work though, 32 psi sounds pretty low.
@@Juffington might work in theory,yes.But about how much difference in pressure are we talking?New ball is about 1,6 to 2,2 atm.So not that much of a difference as i assume the balls cant build up more than maybe 0,1 atm. with their structure.The effect might get bigger with way more time
Your pressure vessel is a smaller volume version of the same tank used to hold soft drink syrup for the soda fountain at your favorite fast food restaurant.
Maybe if you stuck it in a Freezer under Pressure. As the Balls want to contract, maybe they would pull the Air in? Or just get a really thin Needle and Air them up heating the Needle when pulling it out to seal the Hole?😁
This thread thing has driven me nuts. I use one of these (larger) kegs in a portable rig for thawing potable water lines… I have a 12 volt sprayer pump attached one side of the keg to pressurize, and the other side has a coil of rigid DOT plastic brake line that I feed down the frozen water line. A sump collects the returned water to the suction of the sprayer pump. No watery mess, and I can thaw 25m of waterline quite rapidly. If you asked me which combination of hydraulic, plumbing, or airline fittings in SAE, Metric, or BSP I used out of the 40 year old collection of odds-and-ends, I’d just quietly go off in a corner and weep. (And I have to thank Japanese engine builders for introducing me to BSP threads. I swear, I get my hands on a time machine, a whole lot of fastener “inventors” are going to have mysteriously similar head injuries.).
I think you are being a little unfair blaming the Japanese for using BSP threads, those threads came from British engines. All the Japanese did was copy those engines and make so many that it was not economic to change to other thread sizes later.
@@markrainford1219 It just took me by surprise. It’s not common at all in my part of the world. 2000lb of collected bits and bobs for far too many styles and standards in my shop, and nothing matched up, much to my chagrin. Thankfully, there’s a hydraulics shop 20km away that seems to have every fitting, coupler, and adaptor in any thread style known to man. Except maybe those food service ball lock bits. :)
Some time after the failed attempt to change US to metric system of measurements (or was it a little before?) there was a joke I still remember. It went like this: No, no! The Americans DON'T hate standards! In fact they love standards so much that everybody has their own ones...
18:17 microscopic level? I'm pretty sure we're talking about atomic level here, and yes, it's pretty normal for gases to permeate through rubber, that's why people use metal gaskets when you need absolute air/vacuum tightness.
@@markfergerson2145 I admit I don't know the difference in size (and I'm not in the mood to look it up) of a hydrogen molecule and a helium atom, but I would guess they should be very similar, and people successfully stop helium from leaking using metal gaskets, specially when you are not dealing with large temperature fluctuations, that could make the different expansion rates of different materials undermine the seals over time.
@@markfergerson2145 That I didn't know, I always thought that a metal barrier would stop even hydrogen, since the atoms are so tightly packed together.
@@markfergerson2145 Depending on the choice of, like say, the kind of aluminum grade there always will be intercrystaline leaking of H2 and He along the atomic lattice. Maybe in analogy with the oldfashion castiron carter pans. But were wandeling of the tennisballen issue. Bey!
My guess at the reason for the odd thread is to prevent the use of items not meant to be used with "safe for human consumption" products. Essentially you can't go out and buy any unsafe (say made with lead soldier or similar) products and use them.