Recreating An Antique Carbon Torch (Oxy/Acetylene Alternative)
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- Опубліковано 13 кві 2020
- Building a carbon arc torch has been one of the simpler projects I have tackled lately, but I think it will also prove to be one of the most practical. Without an oxy/acetylene torch there are few other options that can heat seized nuts quickly enough to free them from a rusted bolt. Vehicle repairs will certainly go smoother in my shop with this torch on hand.
It's been on my mind how important charity is in the world right now, and especially for those who were already in desperate need before current events. I will just add one charity here that I hope some will give to, but if you have other charitable preferences I encourage you to donate wherever you feel it will do the most good. childrenshungerfund.org/give
You can find the carbon gouging rods I used in this video here (this is an affiliate link): ebay.to/3ba3YPP
Thank you to my Patreon supporters, and especially my top patrons: Enzo Breda Lee, Jon Hartmann, TheBackyardScientist & Eugene Pakhomov
Thanks for watching!
For those interested, this did not actually work very well for making synthetic rubies. It throws off more carbon dust than a single rod as I used in my previous video, and so rubies that I attempted to make were very contaminated. This may however work pretty well if used as a heat source in a small furnace, with a closed crucible in the middle.
Did you make the project producing a flammable gas with the arc torch? if you did can you provide me the link video plz ?
How many amps you need for this?
How many amps do u need? Thx
@@SY_Vlog24 you need 30 - 50 volts and 50-200 amps
@@rolandasa.1112 thanks 🙏
The forbidden chopsticks.
@@burtmcgurt3584 only problem is even if you blow, its still hot. Forbidden noodles
The devils chopsticks?
@@burtmcgurt3584 Why cook the food as you eat when you can just swallow it raw, shove the rods down your throat and just Boil it in your stomach acid?
Also, if you're making water or synth gas, don't die of carbon monoxide poisoning, kay? We all like this channel.
same goes for trying to compress it into a normal steel tank.
We should pass the hat around and buy him a sniffer 😁
Its impossible to get carbon monoxide poisoning from HHO or "water gas" as it has no carbon in it...
@@marshmallowkiller Wouldn't the use of an arc welder with carbon rods possibly introduce carbon into the mixture though?
If he's using the carbon arc (sorta hints at that) to produce synth gas and/or water gas, carbon monoxide will be part of the process. If you're thinking electrolysis, then yeah, no problem-- but synthesis gas utilizes partial combustion of carbon to make CO along with molecular hydrogen. Water gas is hydrogen, CO, and when coke was used, a mishmash of random hydrocarbons.
*Oxy/Acetylene bottle runs dry*
Nighthawkinlight:
"Okay so here are my Zeus-Chopsticks"
Funny, I was going to say from here on in thou shall be dubbed "The Chopstick Welder"
@@-Vuce after posting I saw there was already another dude with a chopstick comment, so I guess you can say:
'Hungry minds think alike'
In my country it is illegal to buy any gas
@@cucginel1941 even oxygen tanks? O.o
Andrei JUXTAPUS not even propane?
Thanks for the video. I made one of these setups when I was 14 using carbon rods from D cell batteries, some wood, lamp cord and I used 2 lead weights in a pan of salt water for a rheostat. Plugged the thing into the house current and made a pretty respectable arc. My father came running out and said I was making all the lights in the house blink. Good times.
BTW the old search lights use this same carbon arc process and they have some sort of timed auto-feed mechanism for the large carbon rods. My Electronics school administrator was the only family in the US rebuilding the old WWII search lights back then and I've been able to inspect a couple of them up close. The ingenuity of the builders of society never cease to amaze me.
The Birkeland Eyde Process for creating nitric acid from air water and electricity always held a weird fascination for me. *sound of throwing envelope into the suggestions box*
Julian Wälde i love that idea!
I been thinking about making nitric acid that way for many years. Maybe one day i will. Should be able to concentrate it with an all glass distilation aparatus. It can even be concentrated without sulfuric acid, meaning you can make useful nitric acid with nothing but air
Shannon où hello how ça marche pour faire de l'acide nitrique s'il vous plait?
Ben - I've got one of these you can borrow for a while if you want to actually handle one in person. I'm in Canada too, I'll mail it to you if you want. There's a couple things I think you haven't figured out (like that as rods burn down, you need to adjust the angle permanently). Pretty simple fix. 2 changes: 1 - Add an adjustment bolt with knob that limits how far the handles can be pushed apart (their max springout). 2 - Replace rubber band with a spring pushing them apart. You always have a bit of spring to it so you can light, but how far apart they go afterwards depends on the bolt. Also in my half-made list of videos from 10 years ago I've got a tutorial for making one on the cheap. Cheap heavy gauge cord is almost always best to be old jumper cables. You can usually pick up old ones for $2-10 at a garage sale.
It's pretty easy to keep the rods spaced with thumb pressure, but I did consider an adjustment bolt.
@@Nighthawkinlight - The idea is that you just snap it shut to light it, let off, and then it's automatically held at the correct separation without having to use any squeezing pressure. They were used in part to preheat larger slabs of steel prior to welding, so you'd get sore holding them at the precise distance you want all the time. I think the knob is usually a knurled bit of steel as a thumb screw, so you can gradually decrease how far apart they're pushed. Or, maybe it's not done by separation but by rotation. I forget. I'll go play with them tonight and make a short video for you if it's anything interesting.
I also have one commercially made, I find it very hard to use to braze with but good for gouging and cutting through thickish steel..
I love how casually you play with insane amounts of electricity. Excellent message at the end too, it doesn't take but a small candle to light up the darkest room so live you life as that candle where you can!
I love that analogy
I love how you introduced the aspect of economics into this, I have so much respect for that because you’re not a wasteful person! I know it’s so obscure and so dumb that I’m making this comment but I really thought it was cool that you talked about the financial aspect of this project (specifically the cable). If we had more people like you who wasted less, the world would be a much better, cleaner, and more beautiful place
Arc gouging whip needed and air compressors you will be able to cut any weld loose with percision and not damage base material. It how we remove suspension hangers from a frame after there worn out and need a new welded on.
Oh come on brother, why take the easy route when you can us a cheap oxy/propylene torch to wipe a weld off in the midst of a wretched spray of bb sized globules and the constant threat of gouging because we haven't updated the shape of the torch in 100 years?
I'm rubbish at welding thin steel material such as car bodywork. However, I have done some serviceable work using carbon arc brazing. I found it to be fairly easy to control and capable of quite gentle heating, when required.
A similar gizmo used to be used in cinema projectors back in the day before xenon arc lamps. They were carbon arc lamps and got up to some scary brightness
Those Xenon Arc Bulbs are like hand grenades if dropped.
If you ground your work piece with a clamp and use your carbon rod to make the heat you can blow compressed air just behind the arc to effectively make a very clean gouge. Their are manufactures that use trade names like 'Air Arc' ect. But, you can give it a DIY try if you need to gouge and need a very clean, plasma cutter like, finish without a lot of surface prep. Works in all metals but you may not like the carborizing effect on aluminum or bronze.
When I worked in oil and gas they still used Arc-Air for destruct of old sections. They were using big heavy duty things, sounded awful and loud, like hells workshop!
In my last job I saw guys using arc air gougers, they wild
Your ingenuity is always intriguing. Thank you for all of the entertainment and education you've given me and my family over the years.
When I was a kid my dad bought a Lincoln Buzz Box welder and it came with one of those torches. I remember watching him use it and eventually got to use it.
One might be had at an estate sale or farm auction .
Thanks Ben, for never disappointing with a video. And hats off for your shoutout to the helping organizations!
I would love to see a solar panel project
They used them for stage/street lighting quite often, and there was a clockwork mechanism to advance the rods automatically. Should be a easy search to find the designs.
Yep.
Electromechanical actually, not based on time. They self regulated based on the resistance of the arc.
And search lights on tow boats!
When I have a rusty nut I can't loosen I wack a carbon rod in my welder ground clamp, another in the hand piece and get her glowing, because it doesn't have an open flame you can heat things in sensitive places like near plastic components, fuel lines, brake lines etc. great on old farm equipment
Wait, what? First of all, to cut something like a nut/bolt, you only need 1 rod. Attach the grounds clamp to the metal. (He has 2 because you can't attach the grounds clamp to anything when using this to make his rubies.) Second, the lack of "an open flame means absolutely nothing. This is radiating just as much heat as a torch. An open flame doesn't have anything to do with the heat it is putting off.
@@xenonram No, if you just use it like a shorted welding machine you're heating everything in the path of the current so you're wasting tons and not isolating the heat.
Again, no. If he's shorting the rods across a nut then there's no way in the universe that the nut is going to reach cutting flame temperatures before you get it hot enough to break loose. Lower temps, shorter heat times. How would that not be better for nearby sensitive parts?
@@xenonram1. He only stated he used a singular rod.
2. The heat is 100% more isolated, DEFINITELY different from a torch; which forces gasses to deflect off of what you're heating, inevitably heating things next to it.
Think; if you blow on sand, what happens? That same thing occurs when you blow a propane torch at sand; you'll notice both hot air; and sand, moving away from the center of the torch. This in turn heats the surroundings much more than a current based heat source.
3. It's hotter than oxy-acetylene, at a much smaller point. It'll make it through the material it's pointed at before heating the material surrounding it.
4. What is "Black body radiation"? Google it, and then rephrase your last statement to make actual sense in reality.
Wow. This is incredible. Love your channel, and your content is very well paced. I’ve learned so much from you already. Thanks!!!
you're a good man mate, taking time to do you're ending to help others is extremely virtuous , need more people like you on this ball we live on, love your work mate
This is awesome. I had seen a video TKOR a long time ago where he makes a furnace and melts metals. But this method of making it into a torch makes the application much wider.
👍👍👍👍👍 for the shout out for kindness and helping people.
As for you and your torch, you're just having too much fun dude❕
That brings me back... I remember accidently stumbling into this effect when combining a few carbon rods and adding power to them when I was 9-ish or so. I definitely had a bit of fun with them :)
lately, you make the best videos of all my subscriptions... well done man, keep up the good work and best wishes...
Thanks for your thoughts! And what a groovy setup you’ve got there!
Simple but efficient, really nice! I had never thought of this.
Brilliant, just discovered the concept a few minutes ago and Im gonna build me one of these tonight!! Thanks!!
ABSOLUTELY OBSESSED WITH THESE VIDEOS. Kepp em coming. Thanx
I can't wait for the next video! They recently started putting food bank donation options in card readers at my local store so it's super easy to give money.
You are the sweetest man! Not everyone understands that some problems pale in comparison to others.
Awesome seeing you try out your viewers suggestions!
I love your projects and your channel. I wish you to become more succesful. 💗💗 you deserve it.
I've build an Arc furnace with my father like the one Grant Thompson made. We used it to melt some copper. Just because we can😁 Awesome project👍
Many thanks for sharing this video. You can melt steel with these two arc rods .In the fourties there were many steel melting furnaces working on this principle. My neighbor few miles away has a antique arc melting furnace to melt 1ton of steel but its collecting dust because its energy inefficient.
I wonder how this would work in the production of calcium carbide?
Calcium carbide, which is mixed with water to produce acetylene gas, is produced by mixing lime and coke and heating it in an electric arc. Being that lime and coke are essential precursors in the Bessemer steel process, methinks that back in the day when electric arc furnaces began replacing the Bessemer process, someone got the idea to chuck those precursors in the furnace to see what would happen.
I wonder how much calcium carbide a small setup like this could yield...?
Good point at the end mate! Always nice to think of others
Thanks Nighthawk. You are really a talented young guy. God bless you from Kenya, Africa
A carbon arc gouger. I used one of those in high school, made short work of 2” plate . It had a compressed air hose to blast out slag, pretty showy!
I looked at that children's hunger funds project. Stunning! What a beautiful project!
Ooh I’m so excited to see the gasometer back in action. HHO gas collection?? I can’t wait to see it.
I have this capacity with an old 40A stick welder. The ground clamp has an opening in the handle that fits the positive probe and they are aimed together to touch to strike an arc for the carbon arc torch mode.
I'm always up for flammable gases and I'd love to see some more torch use.
Nice job on the torch nighthawk, well done
Love your experiments! The recent lightbulb video was very interesting. 👍
You have some of the coolest videos.
Great video as always.
Thanks, great video/info. I'm going to make one myself. 👍
I built a similar torch years ago. I use it a lot for brazing and heating material for bending. FYI the temp is about 11000 F, more than Oxy-Acytl. However, the rods you have are for arc gouging and are not the best for this type torch. Try to find some carbon arc projector rods or old Craftsman carbon arc torch rods. You will be amazed at the difference. Much less buzzing and a softer flame. Also, the carbon rods out of 6 volt lantern batteries work well too but are a pain to extract & clean and are kinda short.
You could get the wires from a set of heavy duty jumper-cables.
Or just use the damn arc welder wires anyway
Hah! I had the same thought to use an arc torch to make the rubies. I managed to find one to buy so I’m going to give that a try.
If I may bring a suggestion to the table: I would drill two holes in the two wood pieces. Then I would insert two rods. At the moment, you have technically a lever and your working with the short levered side. With the rods, the ratio between the lever lengths is smaller, giving you a precise control over the distance between the carbon.
I had a pair of these back in the 80s and wish I hadn’t binned them now as I need to do some brazing. I managed to braze my existing fuel tank filler tube to a decent condition petrol tank sourced from a scrap yard as couldn’t afford a new replacement in those days.
Fun! I've actually pulled out a DVD RW to see if I can find a large enough beam splitter for a interferometer spectrometer that is picking up from the hot lens removal cheap 4K camera spectrometer where I've been wondering about methods other than diffraction grating (with HDD actuator & Blu-ray RW diffraction grating or just a fixed first surface or not first surface DVD RW diffration grating). So, bringing this all together is I've been thinking about ICP and Arc Furnace methods to make another range of spectrometers DIY home brew sample sources. Awesome projects and thanks for sharing! Neat to see. Looking forward to the what looks like more than simple electrolysis method! The world of electrochemistry awaits!
Great project!
You're a kind soul.
You are a goodman mr.
I love your videos. Thank you.
Hey iv been watching your channel for many years, whoa isn’t that crazy, years... anyways stay safe, be sure to be prepared if an accident would occur because you’re dealing with some potentially lethal stuff man
Loved the video! I see the wonderful YT algorithm is also screwing you over. Stupid videos, or videos that don't help or educate others, seem to get all the views. Keep up the great work! Stay safe.
Yeah views are a little screwy right now but I don't really get worried about a video until a few weeks out and it still hasn't picked up. I'm noticing they're really slow to take off these days but if the stats are good they usually do ok.
I have some that come alive 2-3 months after uploading, and others do nothing no matter how good or interesting the video is. YT is a mystery.
Simple and effective ... excellent..!!
Your line of thought is the same as mine a few months ago... Except 1000x the power. I'm constrained by my two 35w power supplies and pencil graphite so smaller scale but still very very hot.
I scored a few boxes of arc carbons a few years ago at a scrap drive I was volunteering at. Someone brought them in thinking they were copper, because they were copper plated. They just wanted a place to dump them. They've been in my shop since, waiting for me to get a stick welder so I can use them for this! The packaging suggests they were originally meant to be used a film projector.
Mark those green wires with something (felt tip marker, paint, etc.) other than green or white for safety.I Either of those wires can kill!
Your communication skills are tops!
Nice one - i never knew you could get carbon rods like that. Ebay here i come !
Guessing from the pipework, C2H2 from CaC2 + H2O is coming next ;)
Outstanding!!!
also before light bulbs became practical carbon arc lamps were the only way to have lights with a high output. all filming lights during that time were basically boxed lightning! also they were used in flak-spotlights. I think these lights are an incredible interesting topic.
Very cool! I will try to DIY the same :)
Aren’t plasma cutters basically this but with additional compressed air to burn and blow the metal away?
Plasma cutters run a lot higher voltage than typical arc welders. 90v or so vs. 30v. And there's no need for carbon because you'll have the compressed air to cool the copper tips.
You can however connect your ground clamp to your workpiece and just use a single carbon arc, and hold your air nozzle in your other hand.
Look up Arc Gouging. Blow compressed air over the arc and puddle, removing the liquified metal. It's fun.
Plasma cutters don't have consumables. (They call the tips "consumables," but that's like calling the paint on your walls a consumable. Everything is a consumable given enough time.)
@@xenonram mean you consume the paint to put it on there
Was thinking that, but plasma cutters don't cut non conductive materials.
Highly recommend a set of polycarbonates underneath the face shield.
For 1 a lot of light can get in through the back and reflect into your eyes and also particulates and dust.
Way to to go as I was binging your videos just last night.
By the way I was rewatching your carbon filament bulb video and I remembered something I did a few years back
I had a bottle stopper through which I shoved two wires and the inlet from a fridge compressor, on the wires I mounted a thin graphite rod for a mechanical pencil and burned it in air for a short time which caused it to burn all the wax in it and also become even thinner. then I put the whole assembly into a soda bottle (in my case it was an old torpedo bottle I had, which I think had the ideal shape to withstand being evacuated). Keeping the compressor running I could run this bulb on 12 volts from a computer power supply, and even despite the enormous leaks through and around the cork the light burned quite brightly for about half an hour until the computer power supply gave out the ghost, it was a rather low power unit and also about 20 years old.
I had a video or a photo of it that I don't know where it is, which was terribly unfocused because the camera I had back then was broken, I'll try to find it.
On a similar note to that and this, check out the Yablochkov candle on Wikipedia, it's a type of carbon arc lamp that does not need mechanical adjustment of the electrodes. Coming to think of it you could have probably used them as torches too.
Wow! Wonderful. 👌
I've welded some things with this method, usually a porus weld and ends up with a higher carbon content due to the carbon rods, either way, it's way more challenging then TIG
A few ideas- make silicone carbide and other interesting materials such as silicone as they started doing using the great electrical power of the Niagara Falls. It is worth reading about the industry’s that arose there.
About the flammable gas part, i'd sure like to see some synthesised hydrocarbons. I was researching this stuff a while ago and couldn't find much about it.
Hydrogen gas from a hydrogen generator.
Making you own shielding gas would good to see.
I would like to be able to do that.
@@Nighthawkinlight Google AtomArc :) Shielding gas needs not always be argon. These mythical old machines did work, and apparently quite well. Just an exotic process that never found many applications....may even be a vid on youtube....
@@Nighthawkinlight Sorry, Arcatom, not Atomarc. Important, because the other is some strange electrode brand by some company....
@@Nighthawkinlight Maybe co2 from a reaction of baking soda and Vinegar ?
Very cool!
Thats terrifying and i love it
Brilliant!
Awesome thanks 👍👍
I had one of these growing up in the 70's...
This reminds me of the show Rought Science, they used a makeshift carbon torch to melt gold in one episode
For a second there I thought you were going to pull the "oh hello didn't notice you there with my welding goggles on" schtick.
Very cool DIY project. Definitely don't see these around much anymore. Also, this setup could easily be modified for atomic hydrogen welding, by using tungsten electrodes instead and installing some nozzles in a way to direct hydrogen gas down the electrodes. An obsolete process nonetheless known for its very high quality and clean welds much like tig welding
You are genius. Really.
i have a suggestion: thre is a type of HHO generator that i always wanted to build, using simple physics keeping the 2 gasses apart and allowing them to stay seperated
for that you get some PVC Tubing, and create a U shape, an electrode on each end of the U, and run power trough it, that way the hydrogen produced on one electrode will never mix w/ the oxygen on the other electrode
id love to see that actually tested as i have never gotten around to try it myself
Cool ima try that
I was dead set about to have flashbacks of doing carbon arc gouging
A suggestion and then an idea.
Suggestion: Add a nozzle just behind the arc (or far enough back to not risk arcing to the nozzle) to be able to both blow a shielding gas _and_ direct the heat from the arc through forced convection rather than letting passive convection carry a lot of it straight upwards (similar to how a Jacob's ladder uses a jet of gas to move the arc upwards)
Idea: If you make the nozzle exchangeable you could put a small diameter one for blowing very fine jet of oxygen right at whatever it is you are heating, add a poppet or solenoid valve to the O2 line (one which is safe for O2 use) and then presto you effectively have a poor man's plasma torch.
Actually I forgot you'd need a shielding gas around the oxygen jet in order to not oxidize everything and to actually cut with any usable precision.
actually on further though ignore the O2 jet, it'd probably just end up blowing something up, best not mes around with that aspect until hospitals are no longer overburdened (just in case).
Have you considered making a limelight? I believe they used to br pure carbon rods they're not the metal coated ones
Awesome!!
hell ya man ! 🤘😲🤘 your the best.
I experimented with an old carbon ark welder once. Freaking hard to weld with.
Are you going to do more woodgas experiments? I really enjoyed your biofuel series and i'm craving more on it.
Next thing I'm doing is close. I'd like to revisit woodgas properly this summer.
I done this in kidtime with hardwood dryed charcoel and 12 volt solar plate . Charcoel is very brighter then griphite evan in very low power .so i play with it
If you want to feed it shielding gas, then use sulfur hexaflouride or argon. There was a video of someone using argon in a DIY carbon arc furnace.
Yikes, I don't think I'd want to be anywhere near sulfer hexaflourine gas being scorched by an arc.
I'm surprised that such thin cable can handle that current, however I also don't know what current your running it at!
And for a moment I thought you'd be generating oxygen and Hydrogen using dielectric breakdown, but an arc welder doesn't have that voltage, but striking an arc under water and drawing it back a bit as your setup seems to suggest would bring water to the point where it can decompose thermal..
Look forward to seeing what you do with it! :)
Graphite has decent resistance - it limit current in circuit.
Those will be H2O + C = CO + H2 reaction, require high temperature which arc will supply.
Thin? That's like 2 awg.
@@xenonram Look again. That is two conductor + earth/shield. A single conductor of 2AWG would be as thick as the whole cable. The one used includes a lot of additional insulation(That would derate the cable even further). I'd be surprised if it was a quarter of that.
All this is just guessing however, without @nighthawkinlight telling us. :)
@@ElectraFlarefire What NightHawk used is definitely thick; looks like it could indeed be 2 AWG, in any case not thin.
I have been watching some other videos of other people's and they might have been using 10 AWG...?
I'd like to know..
FYI, you can parallel smaller wires to work for a larger amperage. They need to be the exact same length and terminate at the same location. So using two 12 guage wires terminated at the same location on each end of the wires would equal 40a capacity because 12 guage is good for 20a. If you add a third, you get 60a and so on. Can be cheaper to find smaller wires but jumper cables are also a good option for larger wire leads.
I did this for my welding extension cord used 3 14 gauge cables. 50 foot. Works well
Note you should expect a few percent loss for safety reasons. If one is shorter (it will be due to human nature), one will carry more than the other. I'd just do (wireAamperage + wireBamperage) * 0.98 or so. There's the 2% loss for "the pliers slid a mm when I cut it"
A very interesting project. Can you tell me what power supply and the wire specifications did you use ?
Could you just use one rod and use the work piece as the other electrode like in a TIG welder?