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How to bend acrylic pipe perfectly.
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Step 1:
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Measure the inner diameter of your pipe.
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Mine is 18 millimeter and outside is 22 millimeter.
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Step 2:
Get a silicon rod that fits on the inside of your pipe.
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Mine is a medical silicone rod and it's exactly 18 mm.
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Step 3:
Cut your silicon rod to length and then
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cut a taper at one side.
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Drill a hole through the tapered side.
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[drilling noise]
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Step 4:
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Use a really strong string and thread it through
that hole you just drilled in the silicon rod.
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I have noticed that bending a thin metal wire and
using that as a kind of a needle really helps with this.
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Step 5:
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Here I'm putting some corn flour starch on
the silicon rod to make it slide easier.
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You can also try washing-up liquid or soapy water.
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And that's all the preparation done.
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so we can finally thread our silicon rod
through the acrylic pipe.
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Put on some gloves and start up your heat gun.
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[heat gun starts]
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Step 6:
Bending the acrylic pipe.
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Try to heat up the acrylic pipe as evenly as you can.
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You can adjust the temperature by
moving the silicon rod
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closer or further away from the heat gun.
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And in my experience the further away
you are and the more patience you spend and
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the slower you do this step
the better the result.
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Once you feel the acrylic softening up,
you can do your bend.
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I like to try to stay in the heat of the heat gun
but a little bit further away.
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Constantly keeping the acrylic warm
while I'm doing the bend,
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and then removing the acrylic from the heat gun
when I'm happy with the shape.
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[poink]
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[water swishing sound]
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So this was my first try and it's not perfect.
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You can see here I let the heat go
a little bit too far.
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So we have these ugly bubbles
and the whole pipe is a little cloudy.
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I think it was because
my gloves were really oily.
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So it was a stupid choice of gloves.
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The corn flour starch
normally doesn't cloud my pipes
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But for the second try I wanted to use
washing-up liquid and clean gloves instead.
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Let's see how that went.
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For the second try, I went with a really tight radius.
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And as you can see here, I think I got greedy
and went with a little bit too tight radius.
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The pipe looks clear though.
No more cloudiness.
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And, I would recommend you to order more material
than what you need for your project, because
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you will have some failed pipe.
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Practice makes perfect as always.
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Okay!
Third time's the charm.
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[pop]
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(silicon rod falls to the ground)
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(marble rolls on the floor)
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[clang]
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Whoever said that perfection does not exist
and that it's a fool's errand to pursue it...
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did not look at my thumbnail picture in 4K resolution.
[chuckles]
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Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
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It's a true pleasure to bend acrylic pipes
and now you have to make up a project.
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just to be able to experience it.
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The reason why I'm bending so much acrylic pipe
right now is because of the Marble Machine X.
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♪
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Here I'm using bent acrylic pipe
for marble transportation,
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connecting the demagnetizer
with the marble conveyor belt.
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And higher up on the machine I have connected
the outlet from the conveyor belt and
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the fish star with the marble divider.
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And also, the marble divider itself
is made from bent PMMA pipe.
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[♪ unreleased/The Marble Conveyor ♪]
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I have just started to work on the most difficult acrylic pipe
bending project of the whole Marble Machine X build.
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I need to connect the marble spreader that
I built in plywood with these metal rails.
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And all the pipes want
to collide with each other.
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I need to find perfect routing
for this to work.
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Here I'm working on channel 22 which is
the last channel of the vibraphone.
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And there's a total of 38 channels.
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So I need to make 38 individual pipes.
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And I'm using a TIG filler rod
to create a bend template,
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[whoosh] to get a feel for
what kind of geometry I need a pipe to be.
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Then I can use this bend template
to create a general shape for the pipe.
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O! O! Oh! Hold on!
What's this beauty!
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[angelic sound]
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If you remembered,
I found this stud-welding CNC machine,
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eh, that I thought was amazing
and I reached out to them and
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asked if they wanted to collaborate.
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And then something truly beautiful happen
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Because you the viewer, started to
leave comments to HBS explaining why they should
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collab with me on the Marble Machine X.
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My favorite was that they should lift up
an artist from the sunken cost vortex.
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[chuckles]
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[angelic sound]
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I went back to send an email to HBS
and when I opened my email,
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I found an email from HBS.
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That's thanks to all your comments.
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Thank you so much for sticking up
for the Marble Machine X and
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thanks to HBS for being positive
towards the project.
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I send some requirements and they sent me
this test piece.
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And I just want to show you
how extremely precise this is.
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Here I'm using a micrometer
which is measuring in millimeter.
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When you hear the first click
of the clutch of the micrometer, [click]
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That's when you should read your value
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[click]
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18-0-0-2 (18.002)
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I'm actually measuring quite crooked.
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So if I had the place to measure more straight
we would get even better result.
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[click]
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19.015
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This machine is down to
thousands of a millimeter in precision.
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It's just so promising.
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[click]
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20.008
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[laughs]
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(imitates evil laugh)
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Shout out to HBS.
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We're looking at...
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using my manual programming pin system
that I already built
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for me when I'm composing music for
the Marble Machine X,
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and then using this more sturdy,
reliable, pre-programmed and precise
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stud-welding programming pin system
from HBS for the world tour.
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So we can have the best out of
two worlds there.
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I'm completely side-tracked
in this video now.
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I'm just so happy about this prospect.
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Let's go back to some
PMMA pipe bending. Shall we?
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[French:] Alors!
(Alright!)
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I'm using the template [poink]
and creating the general shape
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and here I'm making a little mark,
so I can cut it to length.
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And then I can open the marble spreader
and see if the pipe fits.
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And this first pipe actually fits perfectly.
You can see the marble is coming out there.
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♪
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The first pipe is easiest.
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The consecutive pipes are going to be
much more difficult because
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they have the problem of
colliding with each other.
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This is the moment where I realized
I made 3 pipes and I have 35 pipes to go.
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[chuckles]
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Phew!
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[applause]
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[♪ unreleased/The Marble Conveyor ♪]
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In situations like this where I need to do
really repetitive work,
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which happens a lot on a Marble Machine X
due to its 38 channels,
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I keep myself going by repeating
an inner mantra.
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It goes like this:
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It goes like this: "world tour world tour world tour"
[chuckles]
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But seriously I totally underestimated how
time-consuming it was to make these pipes.
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So, over eight hours later I had
managed to do 11 out of 38 pipes,
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and I had to call it a day.
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I will return to finish this task as soon as possible,
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but for now, I could just check the pipes I have made,
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and they seem to work well.
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[marbles clattering]
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[marbles clatteringon the floor]
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[♪ unreleased/The Marble Conveyor ♪]
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[sound of marbles falling into the box]
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♪
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[clang]
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♪
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[marble clatters on the floor]
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[marble clatters down the stairs]
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At this moment I felt like a vampire.
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It was like the marbles showed me
the way out of my studio and into the Sun.
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I spent a little time inside my Studios.
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So I was, so happy strolling around with the camera
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[frogs croaking]
Listen to this frogs outside my house
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[croaking continues]
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[wind noises]
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This is 24/7 [chuckles]
This goes on!
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This is my apricot tree.
I found the first apricot the other day.
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You see it?
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You see it?
There!
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It's an apricot!
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So cool!
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There's a huge rose here on the front of the house
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I got my 'Skeppshult' here under the rose
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He's having a good time there.
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It's like Ferdinand.
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Yes! It's smelling the flowers
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[chuckles]
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BBC Planet Earth, (has) got nothing on me.
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Okay! So, thank you so much for watching
and believing in the Marble Machine X.
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See you next week!
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[Marble Machine X winding down sound]
[frogs croaking]
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// Subtitled by Wintergatan Writers. Join our team on discord. //