Explosive Bat: crushing MLB records. Ft: Smarter Every Day

i've been wanting to hit a ball further than the baseball distance record for quite a while in another video i made this explosive bat which had all the right ingredients to do it it would just constantly break when i pushed it to higher powers i was only able to reliably hit a ball about 350 feet which is a major league home run but it's not setting any records that's just unacceptable allow me to introduce explosive bat v2 and explosive bat v3 which is a double barrel 50 caliber baseball bat it's powered by 27 caliber rifle blanks i don't really see reason why this wouldn't be regulation this is the type of thing where you do it once and they make a rule just for you this bat is insane and for the first time we're gonna get to see some awesome slo-mo of how it works and finally firing the wooden bat with three shells so 575 feet that's the longest verified home run 575 feet is all the way out of the stadium i've also decided that it only counts if i swing the bat for real going into this i was thinking oh it's gonna be easy but as i got into the math it turns out 575 feet is really hard the forces involved are insane this is what happens to my wooden back when you try to fire it with three shells more on that later i'm right up against the edge of what's possible and just in making this thing i crossed over that edge over and over and over [Music] but through those fires and flames emerged something really cool i'm not sure what to call it though explosive bat v2 is such a mouthful let's just call it the 50. i like how that sounds after my last bat video about 200 million people said i should do three shells so i know it's disappointing everyone wanted me to do three shells but i didn't i did four which is one more so let me break down my plan for beating the record so for step one i'm gonna hit the ball really really hard that's about it i'm gonna need a much stronger bat oh this is perfect so like i said this bat is gonna be powered by 27 caliber blanks these are normally used for driving long nails into solid concrete and steel i took this opportunity to totally rethink the bat i've been obsessed with the idea of giving the bat just the tiniest cap and still hitting a home run i call it the four gun salute the entire end of the bat moves and it has four individual firing mechanisms which actuate this four bar linkage the force of the ball hitting the bat will fire all the shells my new bat is so much easier to load than my old one you just open the breech load in your shells up to four which is pretty scary actually and check this out oh yeah i am so excited about this all right let's put it to the test i have my stand which lets me drop a ball onto a bat so i can try it out without putting myself in danger it was this exact moment i realized i majorly screwed up this bat is so much worse than my last one it could probably break my wrist which is a little scary and check this out i'm so not excited about this bat it's too bad this thing is a complete piece of garbage because there's a lot of cool stuff to talk about if it had worked i'm especially not going to get into the benefits of four separate firing mechanisms or the 12 iterations of the firing pins before i could finally get it to fire reliably there's a really basic physics problem for this to get launched up really fast and hard there has to be an equal and opposite reaction forcing the handle down this also generates a twisting force which is what snapped the welds and because my hands are also bolted to the bat they'll also get twisted and snapped that's a problem i should have done more engineering analysis but i just wanted it too much and i thought maybe for once i'd be able to full nature but it never works good night sweet prince i started an entirely new design from the ground up this is the way i should have done it from the beginning and the basic idea is that i'm going to take a slice out of an aluminum bat and put this firing mechanism in there and what will happen is when a baseball hits the top this piece moves it will fire the shells and then fly out super fast launching the baseball so here's what goes on inside the bat if we peel back the outer layer of the steel it's kind of complicated looking there's an assembly that can move like this on this assembly there's two firing pins here and here and there's some blank cartridges down here so when a ball comes in and hits this plate this mechanism will move down and these firing pins will set off these cartridges which will release a ton of gas which will shoot down this tube and then up these two tubes that'll shoot these up super fast because the pressure is really really high and that will send the ball flying when this flying piston gets to about here these rods will come into contact with these blue springs they're super super stiff springs and then they'll start to compress them which will slow this piston down so that it doesn't shoot out i'm just going to give you a little taste of what it was like to make this it was pretty intense a lot of machining almost everything was machined which means lots of tools some of which gave me some really annoying problems this is the most complicated part the chamber the pistons are a very precise fit as is the seal on the bottom that connects the chambers probably 90 of the time on this project was machining parts it just feels morally wrong to be doing this to a bat kind of felt good too though this is how i mount everything to the bat with these welded on caps i had some heat treated parts because they need to be very hard so they don't deform there's the firing pins hopefully you can now go make my bat except don't i think it goes without saying but don't try this at home i know i sometimes pretend to be careless for laughs but this is really serious business i do an enormous amount of precautions from engineering analysis to testing to wearing body armor and it's no joke doing this could kill you so just live vicariously through me and don't do it alright let's give it a shot [Applause] so this is exactly what i was afraid was going to happen it blew the piston out of the bat and it also broke the test stand i found the piece of the test stand hey what was that noise what noise this is a good point to talk about the hard parts of this design there were two really big really important problems to get right the first and most important was how do i keep this thing from exploding in my face from the extreme pressures of detonating these cartridges this is particularly important because i plan on holding this bat surviving these insane pressures is one of the reasons i have two smaller bores instead of one big one you can think about the pressure and the bores pushing out in every direction and the worst thing that the pressure does is it tries to split this in half so you think of all the pressure acting along this surface it adds up to trying to pull the whole thing apart so materials having to pull itself together to keep it from getting ripped apart and as this hole gets bigger the force is trying to rip the material in half also get bigger and the only way i can make it not go pop as i do that is to make these walls thicker and thicker so i want the holes to be smaller but the problem is as the holes get smaller the force pushing the pistons out also gets smaller so it's a very delicate balancing act to go as small as i can while still getting the acceleration and forced to launch the ball that i need by the way this phenomena of ripping the material apart is called hoop stress and it's the main thing that sets the thickness of propane tanks and pipes and stuff like that having two bores also keeps things from twisting and it distributes the force so the pushing plate can be wider without bending the second big challenge with this bat is that the moving end will be going up to 200 miles per hour if it works and my preference is to not shoot it out with the ball so i have to stop it with stop rods which compress these really stiff springs at the end of travel and the force generated by this is unreal so for my bat the forces are going to be up to 6 000 pounds just top the piston and it's all gonna go straight into these stop rods and springs that's three tons that's almost the combined weight of both my cars and that's normally what you apply to a steel rod when you snap it in half i think these stop rods broke because i used a higher carbon steel which hardened when i welded it i made some with better steel let's try them looks good let's try two shells welcome to hell let me make things lighter which will reduce the force [Music] that made things worse let's try forge bronze oops i didn't realize my dog was down here also they didn't work let's try different springs hey something different we didn't just break the rods i also broke the back i've got better welds better springs high-grade steel indestructible stops finally this thing has so much power i love it here's the knife edge that i'm walking i need these pistons to accelerate for as long as possible the longer they accelerate the faster they go as soon as they hit the springs they start slowing down and that sets the top speed i want the springs to be as short as possible so i get the maximum travel before i begin braking but if the springs are too short then my deceleration will be very harsh which will snap the stop rods this is why the ball goes faster when the stop rods break there's no springs to slow it down so it gets to accelerate longer have you ever wondered how to touch your wrist with all 10 fingers at the same time it's really easy just have the back go off while you're pushing like this here's what i came up with to keep my fingers safe i've got the pusher if the system blows there's no appendages in the path and there's no loops around my fingers to de-glove them if you don't know what de-gloving is don't look it up even more important is this clip-on safety amongst friends that's referred to as the safety boy it clips onto the pistons and completely blocks the firing pins it stays in the bat until it's ready to be used that way if you drop the bat or something nothing happens this is how i keep my fingers pointing the right way so i think it's time for me to test this thing and i'm a bit worried about the kick i mean just look at how it's slamming the wood but i don't know how i'm gonna get more information than i already have so i'm just gonna go for it i'm not scared i mean seriously what do i have to be scared of look i'm not scared why would i be scared it's totally fine it's a little cold down here [Music] oh wow this bat feels awesome there's very little kick actually it looks like i'm getting about 75 to 100 miles per hour off the tee with one shell which is a real improvement over the previous bat did you notice it's super quiet all the exhaust gas comes out of these ports on the side of the chamber and gets routed to the top of the bat through the support bracket that's also a gas manifold the top of the bat is packed with stainless steel wool if i made it out of regular steel wool it would probably catch on fire i kind of wish it was louder no exhaust sounds like this you can't not smile all right let's see how far we can hit outside looks like i'm getting about 300 feet off one cartridge see how two does that was a terrible hit and that was really loud sound like a gun that sound was the dying breath at the breach the breech is a piece of steel that sits behind the shells and it keeps them from popping out of the chamber when you fire them the pressure of firing them wants to shoot them out really hard and i didn't feel like properly designing this part so i did the old engineering trick of just making that a thick steel and that usually works this is the first time that's ever failed me so to fit any more steel in here i'm going to redesign and remake this top end i hate doing things the right way but there's no way it's going to survive at three and four shells if i don't do this all right new design for the top piece made and machined it lets me have a solid half inch steel breech i did my homework this time and this should definitely probably not bend it is now 5 a.m and this is the only time i can attempt a 5 or 600 foot hit at this field because i don't want to worry about 600 foot foul balls and people so this totally sucks i take one hit and the bat broke it was also the wimpiest hit ever it went like 10 feet i think you see the ball right there oh man the damage is worse than i thought so here's what i think happened a ball came in and just barely hit the corner or edge or something which was enough to fire the system as the system started moving it just kind of pushed the ball to the side and then it was free to shoot out like a rocket this made it slam into the stop springs much harder so they were pulling down super hard this way which bent it into this very annoying potato chip shape i would really strongly prefer it not bend in half like this whenever i have a bad hit so that means i get to redesign and rebuild the top end again i think you know the drill at this point i've made so many of these overall i've made more than 100 custom machine parts for these bats i hope i can get this working because it would be a huge waste of time although let's be real it's a waste of time anyway all right we're going all the way to four shells just to see what happens one shell piece of cake as always here's two looking good i haven't done three yet because it keeps breaking but it's surviving many times or wrong this is fantastic [Music] now four oh my gosh the power is unbelievable but unfortunately yeah it broke but just look at that kick oh man i really want to fire this four shells shattered my grade 12.9 volts which is good that means i'm getting a lot more force than i thought i was where did the screw heads go found them man those must have gone flying and then i had kind of a big brain moment which is i'm putting all this effort into making these stop rods not break but the stop rods can't break if there are no stop rods right all right it's time to pull out all the stops this bypasses the muffler and makes it so much more satisfying to use a good friend is letting me use his property and this is really important because the whole no stop rod situation i'd prefer the piston not go flying 600 feet so i've tied it to this bucket with kevlar line it's like a little parachute here's how far the ball goes without any charges so we did a little horse and round with one shell and then we gave it three that was pretty good yeah you can say that again that was pretty good so they're claiming the ball went all the way over the trees into the neighbor's yard which is incredible there it is 708 feet but it only counts if i swing it so time to get suited up and give it a whack foul ball the foul ball was actually my piston flying into the woods so you know what that means i get to remake it 710 feet is incredible and it totally obliterated babe ruth's record and it made me realize i'm really close to breaking another record there are these guys down in alabama i think some guy named dusty or something they made this bat spinning machine that was hitting the ball they say 720 feet i think i can beat that if i can tune the system the problem i'm having is i can't see what's going on and what we've been planning this for weeks dude what are you talking about let's go do it [Music] this is like holding a ferrari well well let's combine our powers and uh let's just do awesome things so we're using destin's high speed camera to figure out what's actually going on and then use that knowledge to do even more awesome things [Laughter] oh yeah like cheap chinese fireworks is what that smells like all right the first real hit really cool you can see the stop springs bouncing and this is not how i expect the ball to interact with the bat it's more like launching it so a normal collision is like 500 microseconds or something this is three three and a half milliseconds of contact it's an eternity there are organisms that lived and died in that amount of time the thing i was most excited to see was four shells destroying everything that was really cool but where was the destruction oh there it is destroyed the stop springs i know where to get some destruction let's hit the wooden bat three two one wait should we give another countdown oh my gosh dude come on dude stuck all right oh golly it's like by a thread three two one okay one okay [Music] i am so glad i didn't try swinging this bat with three shells that's the first time you fired three in the back really that's why i didn't fire three in the back so i had a good feeling this is what was gonna happen this video was already too long for me to get into the weeds of all the stuff we saw and everything we learned but a lot of cool stuff destin is gonna be making a video going more into the weeds that i'm just glossing over here so you should check it out on smart everyday if you are one of the three people who doesn't know what that is he's diving into the details of what happens when a ball hits the bat it's not really a bounce it's weird when i first met destin it just did not compute i was like how can someone be this nice and cool something's off here what is he really up to but it turns out that's just how he really is so go check out his stuff and you're not gonna regret it the last thing i really wanted to see is four shells with no stops whoa dude that's pretty cool my people have called me holy cow we're out here trying to beat babe ruth's record and destin's record by hand it is difficult because i am not very good at swinging a bat which the high speed makes extremely clear i think the technical term for this is loft have you heard of that term no it stands for watch i'll show you right here which stands for lack of freaking talent oh yeah oh my goodness i'm terrified of this thing i'm too much yeah because i know the guy that made it because you know it's gonna crush your record oh is that what we're doing we're in the smack talk area now yeah you're pretty tough when you get body armor i see why you'd be afraid of it we got a couple all right hits then we got this hit which flew forever and this quad was about 50 milliseconds from getting completely pulverized which would have been awesome the control system on these quads is just unbelievable how this didn't crash is just spectacular so this hit looked amazing it was flying over the trees it looked at least as good as the other 700 footer unfortunately we don't have a camera behind me because destin was too busy trying to crash my quad and dealing with a high speed and i was too busy trying not to die we did see where it went the only problem is it landed in this field this is like finding a spherical needle and the world's largest haystack i searched with the quad i searched on foot i searched for hours and i thought for sure this was it that's some stupid mushroom the bat was still working i would destroy this mushroom been out here for three four hours this is the ball that's just not meant to be found i'm 99 sure i broke babe ruth's record because it went over the road which is right at the record line but did i beat dustin i just don't know and it's bugging me you can come to alabama would you consider that we can fire the uh supersonic baseball cannon at it well yeah duh what were you i mean like what were you even talking about i mean just think about it mad batter this this plus supersonic baseball cannon all at the same time yeah yeah we should do that what happened we italicized it oh dude so we have the letter pi now yeah are we done unless we can find the other one i just realized that this would be so easy to turn into a golf club let me know if you think that'd be worth doing these videos are very costly to make and take an enormous amount of time if you enjoyed this video please consider subscribing it really helps me out and it also helps you out because you'll be in the loop when i post new stuff if you'd like to support these videos directly you can check out my patreon and the final way you can help out is by checking out any video sponsors here's the part where i tell you about this video sponsor kiwi co i think a lot of you are gonna actually really like this it's a good thing the number one question i get asked is where did i learn to do all the things required to build my projects and my answer kind of surprises people because i think they expect me to tell them what college i went to the truth is a lot of what i know how to do most of it i learned outside of school and in fact it started when i was about four years old or so my dad is awesome and he gave me all kinds of opportunities to get my hands dirty and build things and make things for example when i was five he gave me this kit which is just some components and a board and a soldering iron and he said go to town make it and then he left me alone in the garage i i think he remembers a bit more supervision but nah and these were incredibly formative experiences that gave me confidence and abilities to then make more and more complicated things as i got older i was even making videos about them this is my energy efficient house proposal from i think the third grade i think my video skills have gotten better but you can be the judge kiwi co is a service that sends you a project crate every month with everything that you need to make it it's like a steady drip of self-directed hands-on learning so i'm about to tell you may shock you i have a kid a daughter to be exact she's still a little bit young for the hydraulic claw but i think she could be there any day what do you think will happen if i put the big syringe in instead of the little one exactly maybe she's not into mechanical engineering that's fine there's eight different lines for different age groups and interests not only are the instructions top-notch but there's an entire magazine made for every single project that breaks down what's going on it draws connections to the real world and then there's a bunch of different projects like building a hydraulic elevator the fact that you have all the pieces to build other projects is so cool i attached my welder to the end of this arm and i almost welded awesome can you imagine the amount of skill you would develop from a couple years of building projects like this every month and the world needs more scientists and engineers and just people who know how to get their hands dirty and make and fix things i can tell you from experience the best thing you can do to expand your kids mind and get them comfortable with technology is to give them hands-on learning with kits like these so whether it's for your kids a relative or honestly yourself give the gift of knowledge and bask in the joy of knowing you gave a gift that's gonna have long-term value and leave a mark i'm super grateful to have been exposed to this type of stuff growing up go to kiwico.com stuff made here and you'll get 50 off your first crate and don't forget the holiday season is this close and these make really good gifts not only do they not rot the brain it keeps giving all year long so that's pretty cool if you do this you can also feel good because it helps support me in the channel and it enables me to build increasingly bizarre and insane things so thank you for that you

Channel: Stuff Made Here

Views: 5,398,253

Rating: 4.9681773 out of 5

Keywords: baseball bat, stuff made here, explosive, powder actuated, powder actuated bat, swingless golf club, technology, home run record, babe ruth record

Id: Puo6Vgcbxps

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AnAppariti0n]

Engineering = A combination of science, math, and trial and error.

Awesome video

[u/rubiksman]

This guys channels is the most genuine demonstration of applied engineering I’ve found in a while. He’s a wholesome genius.

[u/ItsDijital]

It is crazy how smart and capable Shane is.

There are essentially two classes of youtube engineers. There are the super popular, mainstream big flashy project guys, and then there are the super smart yet way too technical to be popular guys. Shane manages to be both of these guys, something that I am not aware of any other yt engineer being capable of. When I first found Shanes channel, I was convinced he was actually a team of engineers. But nope, he is just a dude with the flashiness and creativity of the big boys while also possessing the smarts and capabilities of the mumbling basement dwellers.

[u/the320x200]

It's great that YouTube lets people put all the iteration and process into the videos that would get cut from time-crunched shows like Mythbusters.

[u/EmpireofAzad]

When the world looks like the Fallout aftermath, this guy is going to be well equipped to deal with the inevitable Supermutants.

[u/craders]

Here is Destin's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zHegXvEwdI

[u/insultant_]

This guy has an entire machine shop in his basement?

[u/Pinecone]

It's cool that Destin was in the video but the ending was terrible. No final result.

[u/OkaySweetSoundsGood]

This dude is an unbelievably talented engineer. Deserves every bit of recognition this channel can get.