Adam Savage's Aluminum Foil Ball Cut In Half! (Ft. Waterjet Channel)

Subscribe to the Waterjet Channel: youtube.com/c/WaterjetChannel Watch the Waterjet Channel cut a CRT TV in half, per Adam's request: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVuDkvKqLEk Adam Savage Takes the Aluminum Foil Ball Challenge: https://youtu.be/q_YZX1SgZ5Y

Such an honor to participate in this project! PS hilarious you already knew what it would look like. A true expert

Me: “I can’t believe I watched a man hammer an aluminum ball for half an hour” Also me: “ooh a follow up video!”

It’s crazy how a lot of us grew up learning from this man on mythbusters. He’s got a massive place in my heart

Former waterjet operator here. Most jets use garnet as their abrasive medium. It's fairly hard as far as semi-precious gems go, but it's also much more affordable than harder ones like diamond or sappire. Depending on the model of jet and it's use case, the abrasive can range from a fine sand to a powder like consistency (can't really remember the grit range off the top of my head). The particular jet I ran was made in the late 90s and had an outlet pressure around 40k psi; newer models run closer to 100k psi.

"I'm gonna make a little display and send one of these halves back to you" This is why so many people love Adam Savage. He's so thankful for peoples help and generous enough to share his joy and ingenuity with them. I love the fact that there are loads of little pieces of Adams love and passion out there in the world just because he loves building things for himself and others, and always seems to want everyone he meets to have some kind of memento. It's so wholesome.

Adam is the most interesting man in the world, he can talk about an aluminum foil ball and keep me focused on this ordinary kitchen item for 8 mins. Amazing, keep making awesome content like this Adam 👏 I love it!

Adam taking 2 solid seconds to calculate 200 x 1 is my vibe

Would've been such a prank if they sent you the demon core instead

To polish that I’d strongly recommend treating it like a sample prep for microscopy. Vacuum pot in epoxy and then sand and polish. The epoxy will stabilize the foil and hold it so that it can be polished. Bonus is that if you build the epoxy containment correctly you end up with a beautiful display.

it would be interesting to see if you could hammer the relatively less dense center, and make a solid aluminum bowl

Getting some demon core vibes every time he brings the two halves back together.

Thank God. I haven't been able to sleep for the last 3 months. I just lay awake thinking about what the middle could've looked like. I can now return to my slumber.

The water does do a good bit of cutting. I run a waterjet myself and can cut through a baseball bat with just pure water. It's just much slower. The particulate added to the water stream is usually powdered garnet.

Just an engineering tip I remembered about when you were fitting the two halves back together, if you have any kind of component failure (e.g. fatigue) it's very important to avoid fitting the two broken halves back together or even touching the failure interfaces. The reason is that it can damage the failure interface and that kind of evidence contamination makes professional investigations more difficult. Not that it really matters in this context (it was cut in half for fun) but it's worth being aware of.

This is how I wish all YouTube videos were. The way they used to be. Funny, informative, and within a reasonable time without a bunch of fluff. Thank you Adam!

I can't wait to see the inside polished!

Garnet is the usual abrasive in waterjets. A valve opens and the water stream basically pulls the abrasive in via venturi effect. At least in the waterjet we use at work. And in a LOT of cases the water itself can do a huge amount of damage on it's own. Basically all plastics/rubber, etc, and even thinner gauge metals can still be cut with just water. Which we do to save money since garnet for us is currently around 55 cents a pound, so long cuts in thick steel can cost hundreds of dollars in abrasive.

Love how he and the Water Jet guys worked together on this…and then how he’s going to thank them. Awesome stuff.

I just love his energy. There’s nothing manufactured about this video. It’s just a man excited about his aluminium foil ball.