WEBVTT

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["Road to no compromise vibraphone"]

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Let's clean up this mess!
Road to no compromise vibraphone!

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[cheering sample]
[♪ unreleased/Work ♪]

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Check this out: These are the 22 Matrix Sentinel marble gates for the new vibraphone drops.

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In the last episode I built this vibraphone drop system 
with all the metal rails

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[MMX Playing a vibraphone scale]

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and then I took the angle grinder and just removed like ten days work.

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In this video I will explain to you exactly why I needed to make this redesign.

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But before I explain that I'm so excited to actually start to build this

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so let's make some plywood pieces on the CNC.

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Ever since I came up with matrix sentinels for the drums of the Martin Machine X I have been toying with the idea to use them for the vibraphone as well.

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It took me a day to design this assemby in CAD and it consists of laser-cut metal parts and CNC cut plywood parts.

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I'm going to start making these marble shuttles, that feeds a marble every time a note is played.

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[music continues]

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[boom]

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When I was at ThinkerCon in Alabama I met my maker idol Frank Howard.

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He has the same CNC machine as I have and I asked him what end mills he's using for plywood

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and he was: "compression bits".

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I had never heard of these kinds of end mills before, they're also called "up and down", and the special thing

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is that the flute direction is changing in the middle of the end mill.

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So in the top of the end mill, it's cutting down,
and in the bottom, it's cutting up.

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So on the top of the plywood the end mill will cut down and on the bottom of the plywood it will cut up, which results in much less tear out.

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Normally, I had a great finish on the top of the plywood but a little bit of tear out on the underside

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which is expected when you're using the down cutters that I normally use. I was really excited to see if this made a difference.

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[music continues]

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[melody starts on vibraphone]

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To cut into tight corners you need to use a smaller diameter tool, and I only have this

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up cutter for metal and you can actually see how it's leaving a little bit of tear out

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on the top there. Just because it's an up cutter.

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[music continues]

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At this momentI realized I forgot to pass for some unique marbled shutters that has a relief cut, to clear these washers.

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I also saw that I had some interference on some relief cuts. I needed to redesign them to make them longer

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and I checked the simulation for this extra cut very carefully, to not ruin my already cut pieces.

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Today me and the CNC machine were kind of best friends and it did exactly what I asked it to do.

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[music continues]

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[part lands in box with a thud]

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[music stops]

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Okay, there's only one single operation left to do for these marble shuttles before they're completed:

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I need to pilot drill two holes for the L hooks

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and old Martin would just go to the drill press and hope for the best,

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but new Martin knows that when you have a repetitive job like this;

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to pilot drill 44 holes
- and I want them accurate -

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it's better to invest some time in setting up the operation.

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So I'm going to do this on the CNC machine,
do it properly.

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I cut three locating slots with different tolerances and found that the middle one had the perfect press fit

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and here I'm using a custom-made mallet that a French maker and youtuber sent me: Olivier Verdier.

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He has a fantastic channel, so check him out on YouTube!

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It does feel very proper to locate these plywood pieces with a custom plywood mallet.

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Thank You, Olivier, I love the mallet and I love the "Puy lentils" as well.

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Here I'm reaping the rewards from my upfront time investment in making this into a CNC operation,

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it's just to repeat the same two paths over and over again, and the results are immaculate. Love it!

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[laughing]
Close!

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[audible noise from the activities]

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[Martin singing softly in Swedish:]

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♪ Livet är en sand som i ett timglas rinner. ♪
("Life is the sand in an hourglass flowing.")

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♪ Låt oss leva upp den lilla tid vi hinner. ♪
("Let us live the little time we are given.")

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♪ Åh, du dyra liv som tynar och försvinner. ♪
("Oh, the precious life that fades and vanish.")

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♪ Livet är en sand som i ett timglas rinner. ♪
("Life is the sand in an hourglass flowing.")

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[bass beat start]
[♪ spring gang: You Left Behind ♪]

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[arcade game achievement samples]

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[music goes airy]

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[bass reintroduced]

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[arcade game achievement samples]
[music stops]

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Me and Wilson has leveled up enough to take on the mini-boss of the assembly; the bottom plywood part here

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You can see that it has a seven degree tilt and that is because the marble shuttles are moving perpendicular to the Marble Machine X

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but the vibraphone is mounted at a seven degree angle.

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I started by drilling holes for M5 bolts and then I use a ball-end cutter to cut these apple shaped marble grooves

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and then I used a two millimeter end mill to cut the "internal walls" slot.

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Those slots will separate the two marbles in each "apple".

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Here I'm using a three millimeter bit to cut a thin groove for the vertical L hook that will go straight through this plywood piece

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and I ran into problem with this operation.

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The wood chips had nowhere to go and they got packed up and they broke off this little tool.

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I tried redesigning the tool paths and using another tool, but I ended up breaking that as well

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so I redesigned the tool paths again.

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In the end I solved this by cutting only four millimeter deep and then pausing the machine and vacuum cleaning out all the wood chips, out of the groove.

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Then cutting four millimeter again, vacuum cleaning and then four millimeter deeper and so on until I was through the whole plywood.

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Definitely learned a lesson here to actually plan for proper chip evacuation on tight operations like these.

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Here I'm using that same compression bit, that I talked about in the beginning of the video, again.

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I'm cutting the larger internal slots and then I'm cutting the contour

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and I have to say it works so much better than a straight down cutter.

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The result is actually perfect!

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There's no fraying or no tear out on the bottom of the plywood and that saves me a lot of sanding and just

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generally leaves a more professional-looking part.

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[camera shutter sound]

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I don't remember when I made those burn marks, I must have welded on top of this plywood or something,

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but they will be hidden inside this assembly, so no worries!

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[vibraphone music beat]
[♪ unreleased/Helping Out ♪]

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On the top of the assembly we have these PMMA pipes and the marbles come through them into this 20 degree wedge transition piece

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and looking at the top of the piece we can see that we have spaced the holes to fit the PMMA pipes

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but when the marbles go through this transition wedge

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they go closer to each other which means that I have to split this piece to be able to machine the shape on a 3-axis CNC machine.

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If we look from the front you can clearly see how the

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transition from the PMMA pipes goes narrower, in through the top metal piece.

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Setting up the two paths for this operation was by far the most complicated, because I had to

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indicate the pieces correctly and I had to be able to turn them 90 degrees and machine them from different sides.

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I started by cutting the two long plywood rectangles. I plan to use the resulting pockets for indication.

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I forgot to hog out the radius in the corners so I'm just doing that manually here

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and now you can see that my plywood rectangles can indicate perfectly into the corner of the pocket.

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By doing it this way, the machine knows exactly where my plywood rectangles are situated and I can start the machining of the shapes.

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[music continues]

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I left rectangular blocks on the side of the piece so I can take them out when I'm done machining from one side.

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Turn them exactly 90 degrees,

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indicate them towards the same corner and run the next tool path;

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machining from a completely new direction. This way I can achieve the "quote unquote impossible shapes" on this three axis CNC.

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[music continues]

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So in this little plywood wedge there are 22 marble paths that go at a compound angle

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and I really love the challenge to try to make these kind of difficult 3d shapes on a

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three-axis CNC machine from plywood.
I think it's really fun

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[music continues]

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[music stops]

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When I first heard about CNC machines, I thought they'd work like this:

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You put the machine in your workshop. You put the power on and you press Start.

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While the machine is making your perfect part, you do this:

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That is not the case, in my case.
It actually feels more like this:

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[panic alarm]

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There's a lot of manual labor, the machine is actually really really stupid in itself.

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If you tell it to do something, it will do it
even if it's a bad idea!

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And to figure out what is a good or bad idea, is entirely on your shoulders

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but this is a specific rabbit hole that I really love in the Marble Machine X process.

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I never get tired of cutting Baltic birch plywood on the CNC.

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[marbles dropping]

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[lauging]

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Great!

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We're done with the plywood parts procurement of this assembly.

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I have to wait for the metal parts from the laser cutting place

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until we can put this together and put it on the machine.

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In the beginning of time
I made an assumption.

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In engineering you should not assume anything.

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My assumption was that a vibraphone bar wants to be hit in the middle, so we designed these holders for that.

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Then you guys helped out by posting brilliant comments saying that there's better sound off center:

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[confirming that off center has a clearer tone]

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When this information reached me, we had already made these vibraphone holders,

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so I made a video showing that I'm gonna do a compromise.

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It was hitting closer to the sweet spot, but not *at* the sweet spot.

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But I thought I was going to be ok.

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You guys again, were like screaming in the comments field:

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"Why don't you just shift the bars like this?" and I was like:

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"Ah, no - the resonator pipe has to be centred",
I thought.

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And then I made a test and the resonator pipe was super happy to be off centre.

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So even moving a centimeter from:

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[playing examples, on an off center]

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The vibraphone is the lead singer of the Marble Machine X Band:

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It requires very very special conditions to perform.
Basically a needy bastard.

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I don't know if that is a trait for lead singers, but anyway...

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I'm a needy bastard band leader myself,
I just don't sing.

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Your suggestion proved to be absolutely, probably the best

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and I hope you understand why I assumed what I assumed at the time

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and now when I have the whole picture I can see this much more clearly.

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The vibraphone was just screaming for the matrix sentinels solution.

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Thank you for commenting and thanks for helping out with this build!

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I'm really touched by the amazing support from the crowdfunding campaign,

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all the new Wintergatan backers who are supporting my dream. I talk about it more and more,

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it's because it's growing and becoming more and more important.

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I can hire help around me:
It frees up my time to actually think

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about just where a marble should
hit the vibraphone plate.

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I could not live with this horrible harmonic!

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When we could have a clean transient with a good fundamental

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of the "singer of the Marble Machine X".
Thank you for watching. See you in the next video!

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What?

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[fanfare playing]

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[noise from trying to light the match]

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[ignition!]

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Yay.
[laughing]

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The milestone I never wanted to reach, okay.

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I just want to say seriously thanks for following this journey.

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Click like on this video if you believe I can avoid episode thousand.

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["I Believe"]
[vibraphone tone]