DIY induction heater that can BOIL STEEL

hey guys backyard scientist here a couple years ago i made an induction heater and i got to be honest with you guys it was kind of lame oh i feel like i cheated you guys sure it could explode batteries and bullets but the lock was made from easy to melt aluminum and i could only melt a small amount of steel in a super insulated graphite crucible i also never achieved my goal of levitating and melting metal so the goals for this video are to make an induction heater that's powerful enough to levitate and melt metal get steel hot enough to melt in the open air and do it all for less than twelve hundred bucks induction heaters work by switching electricity back and forth through a coil to induce eddy currents in the metal then have you guys seen that video by lewis weiss where he basically cooks a chicken just by slapping it a bunch now imagine you slap a chicken once and just hold your hand on the chicken not a lot's gonna happen right now slap that chicken 50 000 times per second and uh congratulations you know how induction heating works you actually need the electricity to go back and forth really fast because the electricity moving through the coil makes the electrons in the metal fly around back and forth literally slapping up the atoms which creates heat by friction on like a microscopic scale [Music] now we could try to do this like a biology dropout or we could use transistors to do the work for us these are called igbts and you can think of them like a switch basically all you need to know is that they can switch huge amounts of power back and forth through our induction coil all right let's put this bad boy together first it's the igbts then some thermal paste and then a cooling block to keep everything cool because these get hot then the bus bars capacitor and rectifier which take the ac and turn it into dc and then distribute it to the switches and then if everything goes well congratulations you've just made your first inverter okay i've been working all day to get this set up for the first test so i have everything water cooled i've got the fan the radiator the pump over here and a little power meter to tell me how much power i'm going to be drawing so let's try it let's see how fast we can heat up the steel bar look it's not hot but we're going to see how fast we can get it hot maybe even melting so let's try it here we go three two one two kilowatts oh it's getting red it's getting red oh it's up to oh my gosh 60 amps 70 amps 6 000 watts of power going into the steel bar right now look at that and oh my gosh it's gonna melt it's it's about oh oh whoa it did melt look at that oh that worked amazing that's like 30 seconds till it melted this this is this is one inch by a quarter inch that's a lot of steel so this coil that i made worked out great it's just a normal coil except for i covered it in plaster that way when i put the metal in here it wouldn't short out the coil and lay across the metal bars and short everything out all right check out something cool that i found out i found out that if i heat up a piece of metal till it's almost melting and then i can whip it and the molten metal will fly right off the steel bar check this out let's see if i can hit the gopro that is so cool you know i always joke and i say that it's impossible to set florida on fire but looks like i somehow managed to do it this time so now i have to condense all of this mess into a box but all those options were too small so i had to build my own box out of wood it's not pretty but it gets the job done it's also pretty light considering everything that it's got in it okay maybe maybe it's not that light i also spent all night cooking up something in the oven it's a little crucible holder so i can melt metals in it all right so here's a crucible here's a crucible holder and all this is is concrete and perlite i kind of mixed it together and i hope that the perlite kind of insulates the coil a little bit and all i did was kind of pack it in there and then use the crucible to you know hold it in place so let's try this out i made it easy to change coils here so all you have to do is unscrew this little copper nut right here and then pull off the tube like that and hope you don't spill all the water and then you can slip the new coil right on in there all right let's see if we can melt some aluminum shapes are hard so i'm just going to throw some aluminum in here all right we'll add some corns and let's see how fast this is let's see if it can even do it all right three two one oh wow i see it wow it's already red hot in there oh my it's going so fast wow that is really melting whoa look at that when i turn it on and off the aluminum bounces all right all right all right that is that is by far the fastest i've ever melted any aluminum that's crazy did you see how it was jumping like that now what do i do with it i wasn't actually expecting that it would work let's go on to the next experiment so it does aluminum super easy but what about magnesium this is one of these uh emergency fire starters that i got from the store let's see if we can melt this put it right in there like the whole block the whole block look at that it just goes boing straight up did you see that the rod just came out all right the thermal camera says it's uh 600 degrees oh look it's melting [Applause] whoa whoa whoa did you see that [Applause] whoa whoa whoa did you see that it almost jumps out oh my god okay that's kind of scary wow yep so uh magnesium also burns in air it's also we're saying it's also basically impossible to put out a magnesium fire why do you why do you do this i don't want to get the camera too close because i could fry the camera so now we have a bunch of uh uh magnesium that's on fire what do we do with it i'm trying to get a rod to like poke it oh it's pretty oh it's like a sparkler oh wow look at this it's stuck to the steel why is it i didn't know that look at it it's totally stuck to the steel so bright you can't even see this is wild what a beautiful and deadly sparkler i probably shouldn't hold it straight up yo right it's sticky like i wonder if magnesium gives off ultraviolet light i know it burns so hot maybe it does i don't know maybe somebody in the comments does know though all right now what oh yeah we can alright i've got some steel here i just want to see if we can melt the steel all right let's see look at that it's melting it's melting already oh my gosh that's so cool we're we must be like boiling the steel here's a pro tip for you guys always make sure there's no spiders in your gloves because uh you only make that mistake once so i've heard that molten steel all right here we go are you ready contact with water so i'm going to try to throw molten steel on this small three two one whoa that was so much bigger than i thought it was going to be that was so scary well obviously a tiny container like that's going to be impossible to hit so i added a second one but it was still impossible to hit that is so cool all right let's see if a molten steel actually explodes when it hits water are you ready we also tried throwing molten steel in a ditch ah it didn't explode but it was pretty cool and my pool oh no that was awesome oh my gosh but we just couldn't get the molten steel to explode all right now i want to see if we can levitate this piece of aluminum in this coil right here so i'm going to put this paper towel in the coil like this and then put the piece of aluminum on it and then when we turn it on i should just be able to pull the paper towel out and the aluminum will just float there let's try it hey look at that it's just floating there it works now is it gonna melt is the question okay look at that it stopped moving it's just sitting there hovering and now i'm gonna turn it off and uh back up all right here we go three two one hey it worked that was so silly but it was so cool so when i was making my first induction heater two years ago i saw the circuit that i'm using now and i was terrified of it it seemed so complicated but after two years of doing small electrical projects i finally got the confidence to go back and tackle the circuit and i believe that kiwi coke can offer the same benefit kiwi co offers super cool hands-on projects and toys designed to expose kids to the concepts in steam each monthly crate is designed by experts and tested by kids and teaches a new theme through hands-on learning and fun kiwico offers eight subscription lines each catering to different age groups and topics and each monthly box comes with all the supplies you'll need for that month's project kiwico believes that by learning the skills to problem solve innovate and create kids will grow up to change the world one day kiwi code's mission is to empower kids not just to make a project but to make a difference continuing to learn over summer break can make a big difference too and kiwi co crates are a great alternative to another day spent staring at screens now when i was growing up there was no kiwico crates but my dad still bought me science kits but digital logic projects was probably a little bit too complicated for a 10 year old so if you want to build your own domino machine or any other one of the kiwico crates head on over to kiwico.com mlp backyard and get 50. no a hundred percent off your first month your first kiwico crates 100 off a special offer for all of you who watch my videos thank you so i think we smashed the goals of this project out of the park i mean we could definitely melt steel in the open air with this we could definitely levitate and float aluminum that was super cool but when it comes to building or buying an induction heater the final parts list for this induction heater came pretty close to the cost of just buying one yourself and when you factor in the time it takes to build one of these and all the extra money i spent trying to find which parts work i would definitely say it's more worth it to buy an induction heater if you're looking to buy one and i would highly recommend building one yourself if you're into wasting months of your life so yeah that's basically it see you next video see you next video yeah okay bye

Channel: TheBackyardScientist

Views: 917,512

Rating: 4.9392991 out of 5

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Id: wKFnk4R54ZQ

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021