How does a cotton candy floss machine work?
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2015
- A look inside two different cotton candy floss machine heads.
Cotton candy, or candy floss as we say in the UK is made by spinning ordinary sugar in a drum with a source of heat. The sugar crystals cant escape from the spinning drum until they are in a molten state, and then the drops of molten sugar are thrown from the drum centrufugally, making long thin strands of sugar floss in the process.
The amount of times my late night questions to myself hav lead me to this channel.. Nice one geez 👍🏾
7
Perfect
I'm here because I'm considering buying a cotton candy machine.
Thankyou for posting this. I used what I learnt to make a repair to my own CF unit. The brushes on my one were dirty and making poor contact. I cleaned them and it is now up and running ready for this summers season. Thanks Big Clive....
That's a very interesting information. I always wanted to know how a cotton candy machine actually works :) thank you very much for the information.
I always thought the heater/head thingy is earthed through the motor shaft.
That was a bit of an eye opener this video. Love it !
I initially thought that too, but they are separated by the slip-ring assembly in this unit.
Excellent walkthrough of the mechanism!
I remember the gas-fired cotton candy machines at the local fairs growing up in the 80s-90s. It was mesmerizing to watch!
thank you for making this video. I now understand the principles behind candy floss, as opposed to just how to operate the machine.
ahah fuse burns through a wire and effectively bypasses itself! that is awesome
It really is such an odd thing. An faulty that fixes itself hahaha
norman garcia lol yeah and they were probably saying to themselves "oh wow it magically stopped blowing fuses all on its own!" :D
ble" Chinese industrial machinery and I get that safety is not at the forefront of design....at all.
@@martinsquier6937
Here at Pro profit Co.
we assure you and your family that are number one Goal is prophet and not safety.
Some of our manufactured goods.
may contain faulty safeties and wiring and non-regulated voltage but that is because we care.
that you do not suffer when you die at the hands of our product.
Your 4kW calculation made my man-brain start thinking about how to "amp up" a machine like this. I'm thinking clothes dryer drum, multiple propane weed burner torches (restrictors removed, of course), and a petrol engine. You'd need a conveyor to keep it fed with sugar!
And no outer drum, so it just coats everyone and everything in floss.
bigclivedotcom foam parties are passe, floss parties are the thing. oh and a little something for the burns
+bigclivedotcom I approve of this idea immensely
+bigclivedotcom I welcome our candy floss overlord
Dude that's still to small, think bigger, like something with a cement mixer!
Between you and Engineering Explained i've probably just covered about 8 months of engineering school over the past few weeks.. Lol..
+Peter Moger Must be a very poor school then ?
+Azzy M no, but low trasmitability
You have. Some of us pay for school and it’s fucking sad. If you have half a brain and the internet in 2020 sky’s the limit
I came here to find out how they make fibre glass, because I went it will be almost the same as making candy floss, just much hotter and with glass instead of sugar. And I do trust BigClive for explaining stuff in an easy to understand way. Thanks Clive, I now understand how to make two types of fibrous stuff.
Is it glass ? It burns you know .
So many years it took me to find this out. I had to get morally ready for this knowledge. :) Thank you, Mr.
Great video. Perhaps they figured that if you touch the center and get burned, you might as well get shocked, too. :)
Thanks for putting a smile on my face and for giving me a laugh today. I had forgotten how easily "fifteen ohms" can sound like "fifty gnomes".
Thank You. Love learning new things!
Thanks a lot for this wonderful video explained everything on cotton candy.
The 240K fixed resistor limits the maximum power to the heater by delaying the trigger to the latter part of the AC half-cycle even if the pot is cranked all the way up (to minimum resistance). Nasty harmonics put onto the mains along with all the other bad things. Thanks for this video, BC, nicely done!
Very interesting video Clive, I never knew how those worked
I was long time thinking of building this from junk and after this video I think I have a great idea. Thanks for show and tell.
You can buy the bare components on AliExpress.
Very interesting and well explained. Many years ago at the Lammas Market in St Andrews I saw a wee girl with her mother. The little girl had a stick of candy floss, and just as I came level with them she asked her mother "Can ye like it sae much ye dinnae want it?"
US wiring is black=hot, white=neutral, green or bare= ground(earth). That would be the single phase colors for 120volts. Red is also hot, usually used in 240V circuits or 3 phase systems, and often used in 3-way and 4-way switching arrangements. Three phase gets a little more fun:
Black, red, and blue = Hot 120/208V 3 phase wye,
yellow, orange, brown = Hot 277/480V 3 phase wye, but also I think delta.
240V delta three phase is extremely rare but may use the same colors as 120/208, I'm not sure. With delta, you also have what we call the bastard leg. On a 240V delta system, the only way to get 110 without an additional transformer, is to use the center tap of one of the pole transformers as a neutral. This gives you two legs that are 120 volts line to neutral, and the third "Bastard" leg is 208 V to neutral. Don't accidentally connect a single phase lighting or receptacle circuit to that leg unless you want things to go bang.
As soon as you drew the holes i knew how it worked lol. Thats how easy you made it to understand lol
Yay! I've always wanted to see one of these!
Thank you sooooo much for sharing your knowledge, really makes learning fun :)!!
Good video clive... always wanted to know how these machines worked.
Thanks, wondering how that machine works - makes sense!
Ha! I love the self healing fuse!
It's an economical fuse.
It know the money and time spent fixing it. was eatting into the cotton candy makers profit.
I use to work on the Gold Medal Ribbon brand machines that were in a place I worked. The only repairs I had to make in 6 years was replacing the ribbon heater about once a year which if I remember right was not fun to do, had to take half the head apart to get to the terminal screws.
+sublimationman Not one of my favorite jobs when I worked for CEC entertainment. (Yep, I used to be a service tech for a huge 6' tall rat/mouse). Ours was an older Gold Medal Brand with double ribbons for higher output. Extremely well built! However the dingbat employees would always forget to burn out the remaining floss/sugar mix and it would cake up inside badly.
I've always wondered this!.. Thanks
A more elegant solution, avoiding the brushes, would be an induction heater, or maybe even some strong permanent magnets around the rotor to heat it by eddy currents.
mikeselectricstuff Induction is probably viable. Not so sure about the magnets, since the heater is running at 1kW or more. The brushes are probably the cheapest option though.
I don't think eddy currents would cut it. You'd probably need generator windings to power the elements, and a really strong motor to drive it all, in order to come up with that kind of wattage.
+bigclivedotcom In which case the motor will power the heating. Motor too big and expensive
bigclivedotcom the heater for melting a bit of sugar should be 1kw are you really sure ?
We talking about melting a spoon full of sugar.
very nicely explained
yes here in america our common household wireing is black, white, green (or bare) we use a split phase system, meaning we use 2 slit phases of 110 to get our 220 for heavier applainces. Black (and red in 220-240) is live, white is neutral and green (or bare) is ground.
True, true. Image showing single (normal outlet) and then 3 color codes for 2 & 3 phase 220v)
www.electronicshub.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/US-Color-Code-for-Electrical-Wiring.jpg
It's a single phase, with 2 legs from a center tapped transformer.
Known as "Fairy Floss" in my corner of the planet.
I never saw the mesh or holes before . I knew something had to be there .
The gas flame heater is more practical for me especially in a carnival lot far from an electric power pole .
And the fans purpose was not clear until now . Thanks . I learned more from this one video than from all the " wire candy '' diy videos . The diy candy was funny like motor wire crunchy and the machine they made fell apart but was edited out with a thumbs up grin . Crunchiing on his straw candy
Well fuck me, I just typed in "How was candy floss invented?"....watched a couple of videos that didn't really answer my question and then clicked on this without realising it was you until I heard your voice and immediately became intrigued !!!
You have covered al hell of a variety of topics
Dentists could have them in their waiting room, (to ensure a return visit).
.... Enjoying you videos Clive, ....well done Mate.
P.S. Be nice to our cricketers. (In Cardiff).
Heaters usually have more resistance at higher temperatures, so your calculations should be off by a bit.
Informative !!❤
In the US, the majority of cotton candy machines use machined barrels with diagnal cuts in them to flow the sugar from. I'm pretty sure they just use lrge induction motors, and maybe use heat transfering bearings?
I always wanted to know this... thanks
I once saw a cobweb maker that works very similar to this. A fan was added to the outside of the drum to blow the 'webs' , and instead of sugar you used bicycle puncture repair glue.
+mickenoss The spinning drum version. The newer type uses a compressed air line blowing across the tip of a hot melt glue gun.
+bigclivedotcom Cool, haven't seen those before :)
Hot glue sticks might work too
But i almost died from blow in insulation was on my respirator mask and when i pulled it off i inhaled some and it stuck in my throat . I ended up trying to inhale it to dislodge it . I managed a pin hole breathing hole and it took a minute to inhale a breath . That went on for hours . Ugh Nothing else to do . I had laryngitis for a year at least . Watch out for that blow in insulation . It is in attics . You cannot talk or yell or call for help if you are choking .
Dont let kids play in it or play snow with it . Tell people it can kill you no joke .
very informative. thanks.
Your videos are always interesting. I wonder if anyone has built an inductive based heating well so that it would be electrically isolated.
Who figured out how to make cotton candy to begin with? Genius
I'm wondering if you could use some type of inductive heating and temp regulation like a "Met-cal" Soldering iron. They work off the specific properties of a magnet losing its ability to have magnetic flux at a given temp depending on its composition. So when used as a thermal regulator they are quite stable and don't burn out or drift over time like a thermistor might.
Wow
good job
👍👍👍👍👍👍
Could you give us a demonstration of them working? Don't think I've ever seen one working before. Having said that, I've never eaten candy floss either.
As a child we used to get candy floss from a coin operated machine. This was in a local café.
You put in the coin, take a stick and then twirl the stick in the machine between the spinning drum and the outer wall. The machine automatically dispensed some coloured sugar into the spinning drum.
You get fully automated candy floss machines now. They load and rotate the stick while the drum itself rotates to simulate twirling the stick around the drum.
Thank you! :)
Here in Italy, yellow/green is always aearth, blue is always neutral, and everything else is to be considered live at all times.
Live wires are usually black or brown though.
"The live brown bear sat on the green earth and looked up at the neutral blue sky" or something similar is how we were taught in Physics at school here in the UK/Scotland. But.. if you think of soil as earth rather than the planet Earth then you would think of the colour brown rather than green, so it's a very silly thing to teach people.
Thank u sir nice information
Oh dear, "Chinese fairground equipment" is NOT a phrase that inspires confidence.
I guess cotton candy is made in the same way as glass fibre insulation, only the insulation is in a much higher temperature?
I think the glass is dropped onto spinning drums.
You'd get the same shock from bare 'electric' oven top. Ingenious! you just need to put a sticker that says 'WARNING : ELECTRIC SHOCK INCLUDED'
I once bought Candy floss of a seller down Ryde sea front (many years ago), the seller and the candy floss machine where inside a "Ice cream" style van, as our hands touched I got a shock....Static I thought, but now after seeing this.....?
Thanks . I have a 110v machine ordered . I belueve a gas heated spinner head will fit and a plumbers torch might heat better . But I imagine it might catch fire to a spinning cone .
I am amazed at the screen mesh . Is it there or is it not there on the spinner head that will be on my machine .
Some modern machines don't have the mesh. Just a thin gap at the top of the sugar kettle. The gas machines are relatively safe and can have very high output.
The moment when you realised you wrote the name in the wrong spot. Priceless.
Thats so interestng
Is iT Postbank to put a switch netwerk te motor and THE Hector to put THE motor uit while THE heator is stil runing?
I wonder if you can make glass "candy floss" using similar machine with more heating power and glass instead of sugar.
+Александр Санников Fibreglass insulation is made like this, but the molten glass is poured slowly into a spinning perforated bowl to extrude it into the fine strands.
Why is it. things you can eat and things you shouldn't eat.
look so much alike
Putting a fuse on neutral, wat! Even if the fuse blows, it still will have mains potential on the wiring, still not safe. That machine would be marked a failure at UL as soon as they opened it up.
The usual wiring colors for the US:
Line has black or red with occasional blue.
Neutral is white generally, I haven't seen other colors as neutral.
Ground is bare copper or green, or green with yellow stripes.
Isn't it great to have the Underwriters Laboratories.
And general health and safety guidelines.
I inherited this exact cotton candy machine-looks like a robot. Same heating element. Worked great. Recently, the hearing element finally got too brittle. I bought Nichcrome 60 wire. Seemed to be about the same size. I made the zigzag coil by wrapping it around a piece of metal. Each time I turn it on, the nichrome melts and the fuse blows. Any thoughts on how I can fix this?
It may be a higher resistance heating element. You might be able to buy a compatible element.
I just loved this presentation of yours, I just happened to fall onto a video of a cotton candy machine in progress and became totally fascinated. 50 videos later with reviews I bought a toy one online at Amazon as a joke for my room mate's birthday yesterday along with other more sensible gifts. I just tried it and you must have seen these toy ones which DON'T seem to have anything spinning unless it's underneath the yellow heater. in any event, it was fun and thinking I could buy a more professional one if this took off. thanks for this and I think I will buy a little sturdier one at Christmas. NL PS this toy one came with an LED wand which does all sorts of lighting tricks...neat
Are you sure the melting point of sugar is 160 degrees Celsius, as it says it's 186 degrees Celsius online? Also which voltage on the industrial candy floss machine needs to be selected to achieve the required temperature/melting point temperature, as taking the Temperature higher than the melting point causes the liquified sugar to hit against the pan/collecting bowl and get stubbornly stuck on it where it forms a "sugar-ring" around the entire collecting bowl rather than giving it a chance to cool down and solidify into strands/webs when airborne?
Can you please do a video on a 3in1 battery booster pack repair.
I have ofter wondered how the machine worked.
+bigclivedotcom I'm building a "machine gun" that shoots a continuous stream of cotton candy, and I've been looking for an appropriately sized flossing head for parts. Do you have any information on the larger head you disassembled in the video, or what machine it was from?
This was from a poor quality machine that had low output and was problematic. The highest output machines tend to use gas heated heads. The cotton candy gun is going to require a custom designed floss head to get a high enough yield in a small area.
Thanks for the response. The plan was to use a (appropriately fused) lipo string to run a commercial flossing spinnerhead at ~150%-200% it's rated power for a short period of time. The project will be fairly involved, but any hardware that I can experiment with would help.
Do you know about thr maintenance of Cotton Candy Machine ? Is it hard to do it ?
Could you let me know if there is anything inside worth keeping for an amazing use?
Not really. Maybe the motor.
@@bigclivedotcom ok, thanks.
What causes the machine to stop heating?
You're right. Black = Hot, White = Neutral, Green = Ground. I've also seen Blue and Brown used in some lower end electronics as well. I would assume that Blue is hot and Brown is Neutral.
In Europe we use brown for live and blue for neutral.
thank you post
The machines here in the states are typically 3 - 4 times larger than those..
Those must be novelty versions and not professional ones?
ElfNet Gaming I think it's a small commercial machine. The proper professional ones are much bigger.
there are types of cotton candy machine that produce from above instead other machine can you explain?
I suspect this unit was intended for USA market. Never dreaming some idiot would bring it to UK and just swap the plug.
115 is a tingle (unless you’re standing in a puddle)
240 not something to play around with.
I have one of the machines with the small black spinner head..it works great but you MUST always soak the spinner in hot water after EVERY use to get the unspun sugar out of it, or it will clog.
The owner of the racetrack across from me bought a set of China made ebay specials for the concessions..a snowcone machine (actually two, the first one never even powered up and the second just buzzed loudly then burst into flames); a cotton candy machine like the larger one in the video.. it ran ok for about three events (a total of about 3 hours running time) before the heater stopped working, accompanied by the smell of burning electronics (the heat control appeared to be a standard 600w rated light dimmer, not the beefy triac shown here); a popcorn machine (with the motorized kettle) that surprisingly is still working after 3 years; and finally one of those roller hot dog cookers. (I don't know if it still works.)
I was going to try to fix the cotton candy machine for her, but there was a falling out when they cut my pay without notice. (I announced the races.)
For commercial use it always makes sense to get a proper locally made unit. It will pay for itself quickly.
@@bigclivedotcom Indeed. They are notoriously cheap when it comes to buying stuff for their business, but have spent literally thousands of dollars on junk racecars and other crap. Then wonder why they aren't making any profit from the track.
The only thing that still works over there is the P.A. system I designed and installed for them. I used 2 QSC CMX300Va amps (in bridge mono, 600w direct drive of a 70v line) a Bheringer ZMX8210 mixer and Furman PL PLUS -C surge protection strip. I drive the spectator areas and the pit area separately, with about 24 horns at 32w each.
It works well enough to be heard over the noise of the cars, without being too harsh.
The only problems they've had is when they burn or weedwhack the weeds on the pit area fence, they wouldn't pay for conduits to protect the wire and it frequently gets cut or burned.
is it big clive or big c. live?
+HErbaLRoOTs Big Clive.
I wonder how fast you could spin such a machine before just spraying hot sucrose everywhere. I tried to look up the tensile strength of cotton candy, but it looks like whoever actually bothered to test that was really bad at SEO.
3000 rpm i think i saw
are you willing to give me the name and year of the model so I can avoid it when I buy one of these machines? hopefully I can get on made in the U.S.
what is the required motor speed?
I mean , what RPM for good result?
Fast as fuck.
How i wish i find this machine in my country,..
Hello. Could you assist me? I bought this candy floss machine, but I'm having trouble getting a good puffy cotton candy. Thanks
Properly gathering the candy is an art. I once worked in a place where only the owner was allowed to run the cotton candy machine because the rest of us just made lumpy bags of sugar.
hola una preguntica se puede poner en vez del pequeño poner el grande
Creo que el tamaño sería limitado por el calentador.
What’s a triac? And what’s a diac?
İ think that the technical term for a resistor should be a heater.
And I thought candy floss was handpicked cloud.
Hello sir can I purchase the head parts from you please reply me
It looked like the plug on that machine was a 2 prong US one, but I take it that it was not polarized with the larger neutral prong. The construction of that machine looks like it was built in the 60's or 70's which would explain why it was not properly earthed. I am surprised it even handles 240vac when I would guess it was only ever designed to handle 120vac. Now I want cotton candy after watching this video!
The two prong plug was for connecting the unit inside its enclosure. The token gesture earth was the black wire in the other loom.
kuhrd China I think uses 120 Volts like the US does but they have hardly any standard electrical code and use whatever color wire is handy during manufacturing. I took apart a chinese 2-way radio charger and all the wires in it were black..
ElfNet Gaming I believe China is 220v. Hence why a lot of the more dubious products are perfect for me to slap into 240v.
maybe.. IDK to be honest, I know the US is not the only country using 120 volts..
ElfNet Gaming you are on the internet look it up
Just got done watching Monkey King and got my wondering how cotton cany machines work
pls help what if u put the wrong suger i put grape drink mix and when i turn it on it shoots out seeds and it smoked what do i do to fix pls help me pls
is floss popular in the UK?
It's traditional at fairgrounds and seafronts.
Forget about it Clive, it's Chinatech.
I think you are incorect about where the floss liquid exits. All of them seem to release the liquid in the center. The mesh seems to be to ventilate The heating element
There are two types. The dish with plate where the molten sugar exits at the edge, and the heated mesh where it exits through the mesh as it melts.
Power for AC supplies would be half of what you mention here. P = (V*V)/(2*R)
Finally the comment I was looking for ,when machines have the option to work with 2 different voltages,in both the machine works with the same power (watts) that means if using 115 volts the current is 20 amps when you use 230 volts the current will be 10 amps...
+bigclivedotcom hello could you please tell me where I could get one of the kids toy cotton candy spinning head because mine is missing the top abd it looks exactly like the one you had
I'm afraid the only way to replace the head on a cheaper unit is to buy a new unit.
+bigclivedotcom ok thank you
you may try to make it from aluminum base, and then using cnc machine..
or you may try open some chinesse website like aliexpress..
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
nice to meet you . (^o^)
Americans invented the cotton candy machine, Americans are very smart 👍 👍 👍 ❤ 🐹
How to make downward machine?
I had a machine that used the head with the black ring on it and it clogged up after 2 days
You just need to soak the head in very hot water for a bit and it will unclog.
black is usually neutral or ground in america. alternating with white. live usually being red, blue, or green. if for some reason red blue and green are the only colors there, green is likely ground with blue being neutral.
+Tetra Digm green and brown are typically ground or earth in oklahoma. not sure why green would be live anywhere.
erm...i never said green was live somewhere?
Tetra Digm
"live usually being red, blue, or green" your third sentence :) it happens to us all.
james lawrence oh derp. my bad. i fucked up when i typed that. i meant if for some reason all 3 colors were present, in the last part rather than how i stated it. but when theres only one of those 3 colors, its usually the live.
+Tetra Digm If you live in Maine it's especially fun, because for some magical reason every other house is to Canadian standards, with Canadian color-coding. :D
Or, the house may be ancient, and all the wires will be white, because plaster and horse hair were used for insulation 100 years ago. . :'D...
For people wondering, yes, black is a live colour for United States code; as shown:
PG: bare-wire, green, green & yellow; N: grey, white; L: black, red; L1: black, brown; L2: red, orange; L3: blue, yellow
Why phase-3 power supplies can have either blue OR yellow is beyond me, especially when earthed, since earth can be green and yellow, so that might be a deadly trap for young players. I suppose I can see the logic behind using warm colours for live (three phases using brown, orange and yellow, though for L1 I would be partial to red), but it seems to make little sense.
Not that it matters anyway, a lot of electronics is working with what you've got.
I once came across a 3-phase chandelier in Belgium - they work off 2 phases to earth, the result of a kludge at the end of WWII when the entire generation plant was destroyed and had to be rebuilt quick.