This Object Should've Been Impossible to Make

[Music] foreign hey guys uh Adam Savage in my cave with a project that I've been thinking about for a long long time this is a Klein bottle we've covered these on the channel before uh this is uh one in the manufacture of the inevitable irascible uncomfortable Cliff stole uh and we've covered this on the channel before we've talked about a Klein bottle it is a uh effectively as sort of a mathematical projection of a surface that has of an object that has only one surface like a Mobius strip except uh in three dimensions Etc but that's not what this video is about there are other videos to go learn about the the the the the decline bottle the reason I bring this up is because if you've gone down any Klein bottle uh excursions you will have come across the wonderful glassblower Lucas Clark uh he is a Creator naturally good move of glass and uh in chatting with Cliff about all things Klein bottles starting a long time ago one of the things that Cliff Stahl said to Lucas was well the Holy Grail is the boys surface but that's impossible so don't get lost trying to make one of those and the the spoiler alert Lucas went and figured out a way to make a boy's surface now this is the boy's surface that he made he made this for Cliff he made two of them in fact one is slightly more refined than the other the more refined one is for Cliff the less refined one is for me uh with the Proviso that I make a mount for this appropriate to its weirdness and its station now Lucas reached out to me almost a year ago it and it took me this long to get around to this project for really good reasons like knowing Lucas's amazing work and what a hero Cliff stole is I wanted this Mount to be great and I've been thinking all sorts of different ways I lived with this sorry I lived with the less refined one uh on my bedside table for a few weeks looking at it holding it up and I now have a point of view on how this should be displayed and I'm that's what this video is I'm going to make a museum mount for the boys surface what is a boy's surface you need more math education than me to say it to understand it that here is what I understand and I'm going to say some words I don't exactly I know that these words are roughly correct but I don't know precisely what they mean a boy's surface is a mathematical projection of the inversion of a sphere like a Klein bottle right here in a Klein bottle where the where the mouth goes through the surface of the bottle this is where it cracks into the fourth dimension and even that is a phrase which I understand is technically correct even though I don't quite understand in here what that precisely means the same is true for the boy's surface I understand the terms around which I understand that there are terms around which it's described the mathematical projection of the inversion of a sphere I really don't quite understand how that translates to this object that feels like one of the bones of my inner ear writ large however it is a pretty naturally beautiful object um and I spend a long long long long time staring at it before its structure started to become at least somewhat understandable to me um I think that's the lesson I have to check at any rate my holder should be able to accommodate either one uh that's what we're doing today we're making a museum amount for a boy's surface it's going to take probably three days that's my guess oh and I'm gonna use a new base material very exciting all right let's get started I want to talk about the progression of what I was thinking about mounting this uh Lucas supplied a couple of cloches I guess that's what you call a bell jar he called them cloche which I love um and these were for displaying these as a as an idea potentially my issue with these is that um [Music] is that okay this object has uh trilateral symmetry is that actually a word probably is this has three loops that repeat uh and it it sort of has a triangular symmetry under certain circumstances right when you lay it down you look at it from above it's got a triangular symmetry when you lay it like that or like that and as I look at this I find that a less interesting way to display it I mean you could just do that and have this on a black base right you can you can put this on a black face my issue is is that a museum Mount any kind of Mount wants to engage the viewer in a story about where you're looking and why when I look at this even if I raise this up in here even if I sorry even if I raise this up inside here [Music] I still end up with a story I mean in a way I feel like it leads the object to be less interesting than I think it actually is and when I've spent some time holding this thing up and looking at it what I found was if I see [Music] if it's placed in a in a in a way in which it's one part of its symmetry is immediately obvious my brain tends to erase the other possibilities for symmetry that hurt my head when I spin this around and look at this so part of me does not want to just display it like where the Symmetry is really apparent part of what I want to do is display it so that the Symmetry is off and it makes you keep looking at it to sort of figure out where the Symmetry is that's how I want to display it so I don't want to display it flat I don't want to display it as a you know in the 120 degrees where all the stuff is shooting off why are you keep pulling off I want to display it slightly off kilter because the story is it's symmetries are not immediately apparent that's the story whereas if I displayed it just like this you'd be like oh okay it's a three lobes then that's kind of neat it's way weirder than that which is okay so I think I've done a reasonable explanation I made a uh this circle a few weeks ago and my idea is that I can hold it in that orientation slightly off its main kilter like this and I dig it um but what I needed though is I need some cups that will grab the edges of the glass cups like this that I experimented with in brass so what we're about to do is we're about to take a piece of brass Rod like this that I had here we're going to bend it into a circle again like I did then we are going to drill some holes for threaded rods 632 threaded Rod here and then we're going to make a three little uh 632 threaded plungers that I can use to tighten in and hold this thing in its orientation I hope that that is enough strength to hold on to it um I've been to shops where they make Museum displays man and it's a it's a it's a difficult Enterprise it is a really I when I deeply deeply respect and the reason this project has taken so long for me to like think about it and get back to it is I really wanted to do it right I wanted to do it like as to the best of my ever loving abilities cut myself again I it's going to be time to go home soon but I wanted to show you this before I left which was here is one of my cup plungers it's threaded on the inside how am I going to make sure that it has a nice profile I'm going to thread it onto this actually hold on I'm bleeding yeah uh maybe I've maybe I've had it for the day maybe we're done for the day but I want to uh great so here I Chuck it onto here and then I take it onto the sander and slowly uh shape it I don't know where my brain's at my I'm cutting myself in ribbons and I keep on shooting stuff that I'm not shooting so I am going to leave now because clearly my head is not in the game however I've achieved something of a stable state [Music] [Music] for [Music] foreign [Music] so what part of me wants to do with this [Music] thank you [Music] is think about it I I have some ideas but this works way less good than I was hoping it would so now what do I do I think I'll take this one home this is the last refined one and I'm just gonna think about it I mean should I just be drawing going for this and just be doing that so that it sits in there I had this whole grand plan for its but like what I could do is I could make a um I can make a little pedestal for it that's only that wide but a little right up here to hold it so it doesn't bang against the side I mean mostly this is going to sit [Music] I'm talking myself out of this complexity mostly because this doesn't really work I mean I guess I could make this work if I glued if I JB welded some Pips to the lobes of this boy's surface and that those would get captured inside here but these don't hold it's just too slippery and even with a here's what I'm worried about if I put a little bit of neoprene rubber in there and it's under pressure that is just it's an it's asking for this thing to move over the years right this is a museum piece this is a museum Mount I needed to like not be volatile and not be under tension it needs to just hold it and the problem is this thing has no I mean I I I I I I I can get it to come back out and again but no I can't actually I can't get it to come back out again so I have to either hold it like this or hold it like this and it's ah all right we're just gonna we're just gonna take these home tonight and we're gonna look at them and maybe I have an idea for some for some rich light um hey I know it's weird right like I opened this video saying I funny I spend months and months thinking about how to do this right um [Music] and I was wrong uh so I've spent the night thinking about it I brought the uh I brought the boys surface home and I looked at it and I had this other whole feeling about it frankly which was that this this is I love this solution the solution makes me very happy and I'm super pleased with the execution of it and to be fair like I'm gonna use this on something else because I think it's I think it's a pretty reasonable way to stabilize something not this but something you could get this to live in this with glue which is not a great solution and what's the problem with glue well the problem with glue is that I'd also want to be able to pull this out and I was thinking about this last night and I was thinking this is an object meant to be held uh so one of the other things that I've been toying with is actually just making a base for this cloche so that this sits like this and that you can pull the cloche off and you can hand it to someone and they can grock it and love it and they can put it back in the clothes so I'm gonna do a total reset here I have a new material for this I have a new material for this which is really exciting to me say you want to make a base of a bell jar what are you going to make that base out of like well if you bought it at the store it would just be like black it would be like painted black so frequently it would be wood that was painted black which is fine but like I'm going to lay the whole base out of wood and then I'm gonna seal it and it's going to take several coats to get to look monolithic like a single thing there are other engineering resins I've used in the past like Wren shape which is um like the like the base of something this is it's an expensive solution but it's also like it's not gonna last that's my feeling right this soft material is not like what you want as a lasting uh as a lasting base material and so I found rich life I found um I met an artist who introduced me to the concept of Rich light I reached out to richlight I bought a 4x8 sheet of two and a half inch thick Richland is that exactly what it is two and a quarter two and a quarter inch thick sheet of Rich light this is a resin infused paper it's much harder you can still carve it but it's easily two or three times as hard as Wren shape it's monolithic in the same way everywhere you finish it will give you the same finish um and was developed for it was developed as an engineering resin but it's structural like I would never make a strut for something or like a kind of a hinge for something out of this stuff it just has not it has not the tensile strength but this stuff does and so having just purchased a big chunk of Rich light I'm gonna turn a cloche base out of that stuff here and I think I think if I get this right okay I'm going to give it a little bit of a um I'm going to give it a little bit of a light because I think this object also yeah so I think I'm going to put a light in the base of this that you can turn on and be like what the hell is that thing and you pull off the Kush if I if I I really love the idea of making a custom brass handle that's glued to this closure but I'm not going to worry about that just yet because that's a yeah that's a thing that's a thing but I wanted to lift it like the like the phone thing in Batman you know that cake decorating cover that used to be on Batman's Commissioner Gordon Sloan I could be getting all sorts of details mixed up suffice to say it's not like I spent a a year like doing drawings about how this was supposed to go I just I really wanted to spend a long time pondering and thinking about how how this should be displayed and the flavor with which it's displayed and what that when I'm finally ready to go it doesn't mean that I finally thought of the right design it means that I I guess I just finally feel like I've thought about it enough to execute something and if that doesn't work well I can execute something else and that's exactly what happened this is some refined brass work from me uh better than my usual than my it is an improvement over my usual output and I learned a lot doing this hi I'm getting up my heat cause it's so freaking cold oh my god um so the first thing I'm gonna do is cut two pieces of [Music] foreign so I'm going to cut out a couple pieces big enough to make circles then we're going to go through the process of and rounding them [Music] I'm being stupid not leaving enough room between things [Music] I am not planning correctly let's say it that way [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] watches [Music] [Music] using my table saw I have turned this into the the closest approximation to a circle I can with my big blades this stuff is uh it can be tough to cut through the table saw Blade's doing great my bandsaw blade ish iffy so uh what I'm going to do now is I'm going to use my giant is this a three inch good God no it's a four inch my four inch forstner bit I am going to put this onto my drill press actually I think I'm going to do it on the mill I'm going to put this on the mill and I'm going to bore a hole down to about half an inch from the top here and that will provide me a platform inside this to grab it with the jaws of my lathe and and round it add the slot for the cloche add the topography for this thing and uh hopefully finish this out I am making one for me and one for Cliff here but the secret sauce is gives me two chances to get it right like whichever one is better goes to Cliff that's usually how it works when I'm making something for somebody else that I want to so I make two and then get the better one and then I get the other one so that's going to be zero [Music] oh well then look at you big mess oh that is so pretty okay thank you [Music] laughs one more pass by the way I'm running this at um because I know feeds and speeds what do you run a four inch forstner bit at I'm running it at about 1300 RPM and that seems to be pretty good I'm doing it in three passes so I don't overheat this and there we go wow we that's messy incredible [Music] [Music] all right these are ready for the lathe let's go so I've worked out the parameters here so this will saw cut in 200 thousandths then I'm going to come in down 200 000. all right I'm gonna do a test for that I think that should be right here's how it will look Bingo that's nice nice positive fit a little bit of slop just what I wanted testing out both yep they both fit great [Music] that was the easy cut now I'm going to do more cutting on these oh I wanted to show you the tool I used to cut this groove because it's neat so when you want to cut a Groove like this you can shape a tool to cut that Groove you can also try and use a cut off tool but the problem with a cut off tool is that it's straight and when it's cutting a curve well it's going to run into that curve hence this cutoff tool which actually has a curve built into it yeah I picked this up as part of a purchase of a bunch of machine equipment from someone it was like in a lot that I bought and I didn't even see it in the auction but fantastic so remove this okay so we're currently at a good spot I was thinking about how I wanted to hold this up uh and it is definitely in this orientation to see the trilateral Symmetry uh and then I was thinking what if I had just little posts so I just chose the two inch diameter circle and I put up some posts and those worked great and then actually I was a little loose so I went with a 1.9 inch diameter and these are little carbon fiber tubes I have tons of so I liked the 1.9 inch diameter so much I went and I drilled it out of my my base he always you practice on yours and then you execute on the clients um so we're gonna just uh we're gonna pop this in here this should be a nice uh pressure fit oh let me give you a better shot [Music] [Music] foreign that was a little tighter than I thought wait a second this is okay so this one's mine yes better better Bellissimo okay but I can't quite do the same hole pattern [Music] for oh actually that's oh so I have them too high is that the problem I think I do oh yeah look at that I can totally lower this great that's great [Music] see I like that that way this isn't rattling around you can move it around I think I could even lower these just a little bit more [Music] see here [Music] great yes I dig it looking good fabulous I feel like no no actually that is the right distance the whole thing yeah excellent all right so uh now I'm ready to drill the holes in the hero base um because I found that the uh that the hero uh boys surface is a little just a little tight just a little tight there I'm gonna go with 1.95 instead of two inch uh diameter for the spacing on that um so we're gonna put this on the mill um when you want to drill holes of an even spacing around a diameter you can do that in a couple of ways you can go get a rotary table and you can bolt it to your table and you can indicate it in and then you can spin the number of degrees I have three holes I'm drilling which would make them 120 degrees offset and uh rotary tables are most often sold with indexes for the common divisions which is great because you don't even you yeah however the dro the digital readout of this Mill is way better for hole patterns than an indexing but than a a rotary table way better way more precise just fantastic so what I've got set up here oh right so uh clear clear clear excellent so now I'm going to get this set up on a rough zero that is that is within ten thousand any direction of the center more than enough accuracy for me so now I have this zeroed out so now what I do is I go to the dro and I say that and that are my zero points the X and Y so then I go to function Bolt I enter the bolt hole center is 0 and 0 which I just recalibrated there we go bolt diameter 1.9 I'm going to do 1.95 enter number of holes is 3 enter bolt hole angle that's the starting hole angle zero is fine and now we go so I say go and it tells me first get this top one to zero there we go get that top one to zero this last two that's two ten thousandths of an inch five microns I can accommodate but figurines like that so we get this to zero and we drill our first hole now we go back here and we say next hole and it says so all you do with the whole pattern is you keep on you keep on bringing these things to zero we go and then this one yeah there we go oh what I went too far I thought that was an eight it amazes me I can turn a dial and see how close they have two ten thousands plenty plenty now we drilled the second hole okay I'll give you a better view I forgot to hit record for the second hold I drilled the second hole without telling you I'm so sorry all right so now we've drilled the second hole we go to the third hole and only have to remove this dimension ah good oh lovely oh here I'll give you a better close-up now diameter lovely lovely yeah I can get rid of those that's no problem now I'm going to cut three pieces of the of the carbon fiber rod first piece I cut to a measurement second piece I cut to the first piece [Applause] third piece I cut to the second uh actually third piece I cut the first piece what [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] are very happy very happy nice and good nice excellent and that extra 50 thou or 25 thou is really nice now it's no longer yeah that's great it's not moving so check this sitting and testing everything well that's Lovely isn't it yeah it is I think I can lower these down a little bit yeah [Music] and that's sitting nicely on its ass oh look at that look at that very cool okay so lighting lighting yeah hold on my sincere apologies about that I was nearly opening up my drawer of lighting and I have some 12 volt Auto lamps here which might be just perfect these are working nicely for me so what I'm going to do is uh they've got this little step in them I'm going to machine that step into the center of these and uh then I'm going to wire it from the underside yeah excellent Okay so now that's my center and I'm gonna like this we're going to zero out our quill yes [Music] this and then we're going to do the stalk of this thing which is [Music] I didn't leave enough room there so that's fine I was complaining before because I didn't have the correct sockets for these bulbs but I found them I only have two but that's enough I'm going to mount to this one and this will go to the switch but I'll worry about the switch later right now I'm just going to get the light bulb mounted and I'm going to use a cup I'm going to mount the light bulb like this I'm going to use a little standoff here mount it there with the screw and that screw will go through here and into the body to hold this um so I need like uh right there's a couple things okay guys you can go through light um I got them in there's one there's another the glue is setting but now since I want to sink a 440 in there to hold the uh the lighting housing the light bulb housing I'm going to put a 440 threaded insert in here [Music] and then we knock out there's always a little twisty pin in there and then I can put all this stuff back note to self order more 440 healing calls so the really nice thing about heli coils is they provide a really positive mechanical grab um I don't like threading in soft material and the thread thread repair threads like the coil threads really allow you some flexibility in that regard I'm gonna put this one here I feel like we can light this up is that really true yeah okay so uh right I think that's negative that's possible let's just double check nope all right because it seems to be reversed yep there we go good enough for a test and we'll twisty these together I see the light is working oh come on okay [Music] and I feel like yeah I want to cut a tea [Music] now I think that's nice see I think that is not to uh not too bright not too bright I have uh I've made a nice little slice of look at that it's nice and flush mount that's just a piece of Teflon that I sliced on the lathe popped in there three quarter inch Teflon three quarter inch bit three quarter inch hole and then this guy goes on there and then voila look at that okay so now uh right there's one more the funny thing is is there's like I'm mostly done with the mechanical aspect of both of these but there's still like a day of work um among the things that that day includes are uh figuring out how the switch attaches in here it's going to be a push button not a momentary it's going to be a latching push button like that I want to put some feet on here three of them and then I want to turn this which I think is actually going to be like a like a little ball uh because I think that looks great and this is lovely it sits on its base it moves around I'm happy with how it's going I'm happy with how it's going I'm gonna I think that's a reasonable spot to stop today okay I'll see you guys later couple weeks have passed it's probably a lot longer than that and I was about to start to work out the power into it and so I'm going to do this by installing a switch here towards the bottom to installing some strain relief for a wire out of the back three doing some Machining inside here both for the switch and for the spacing so to allow some more room in there I can't remember what number I'm on but I also may end up putting a bottom on this I might not who knows we'll see but I've got some annular Cutters that are the right sizes I'm going to and I'm not afraid to use them and so most of this is going to happen on the mill [Music] that's not too far [Music] [Music] good foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] excellent good oh yeah that is really pretty I am very happy about that and that's a momentary I'm sorry that's not a momentary that's actually a on off [Music] I love me and my wire lugs I really do so negative comes in here and goes to there that's one positive comes through here positive goes to the switch which then goes to the hot lead so that is positive and if I plug it all in it should all light up okay let's see if it lights up hey it does I love it excellent there it is well that's not very bright what happened oh because I didn't plug it in it was going off residual to be honest but let's do it so now we plug it in there we go so now we put that on there we put that on data and ladies and gentlemen there you have a lovely close display I don't think I'm gonna put a brass ring on the top I just I've I I it's still a few weeks before I deliver this to Cliff and I haven't been able to I've drawn a bunch of different things to grab up here and none of them have really captured me so I may still add it if I do I'll film it if I don't I won't so the next shot is either the next sequence is either me doing that or not and then the next sequence will just me me delivering this to Cliff with Lucas all right I'm kind of curious how this turns out [Music] Preamble let's do the impossibility of this outstand he's kept it secret from me whoa now I put the plate on this and I put it to specifically just as a home object because I figured are you aware of what this is I am I am is that it sits about here in the library so you can see it lit you can see it's pieces but um yeah it's um I have version 0.1 of this is that mine I I never give them anything that's it here's this thing it's but it's a Fool's earring never attempted that's what I love this never attempted well done well done I think you've sort of uh over constructed that that is my wants standing well it's in the glass the mountain the math well you inspired this man wow yeah you told you told Lucas it was impossible [Laughter] that's my favorite part well done the coolness of it is the mathematician boys the German mathematician who lives up someone had said that you cannot immerse the projective plane in three space he thought about it and came up with the boy's surface the projective well okay what's the projective plan if you have a 40 a piece of paper in the First Dimension [Applause] perfectly valid bringing the third dimension nothing changes yeah I can in fact bring it into the second Dimensions still nothing yeah if I have some bubble or Jelly Bean in the fourth dimension I can have it to bring in the third dimension to reduce its dimensionality means um I can there's two types of compromises one is embedding the other is an immersion to immerse something in the four dimension from the fourth dimension into three space you make compromises like there may be a fold okay it may self-intersect so you may have something where a piece of paper comes through it comes through itself well like a Bishop's cat you know where it sort of has yeah funny Oddball figure eight if you do a cross-section throw s so all of these things are the standard rap group oh um uh there are compromises when you bring it from a higher Dimension to a lower level I take a picture of this character and the photograph printed on you know you take Duncan and dectaw you're developing printed and you get something that has squashed his entire face into two dimensions I can tell the outline of it perfectly well and there's an implication that there's a back of the head but we never see it right there's an implication that the eyes are in front of the ears but we can't prove it that photograph is an immersion not an embedding we've lost some things specifically um any folds in his skin have disappeared in embedding it into a photograph or if you pop the stack go back to the projected plane the projective plane is a Mobius Loop this way and a Mobius Loop this way you can't make it no matter how hard you try it's not a makeable thing right boys said but we can immerse it in and that's what you've created you've made an immersion not an in bed and embedding would actually look correct that uh and then the fine bottles a little heartbeat the um there's only one ring of a self-intersection when you immerse the projective plane this thing here into three space you're going to get a whole slew of self-intersections all of which are perpendicular to each other so you're outlining here that you've got the the Target Universe has three orthogonal uh planes X Y and Z and notice the self-intersection here the self-intersection here in the self-intersection these are they're orthogonal ends and the mutually exclusive except that's a place called the triple point which is right there missing also from this model inside [Laughter] um see how this intersects here the glass would continue to self-intersect I'm sorry um I can put my finger in here which allows you to exhaust the hot air when you did the web done properly done properly there would be a little D shaped window um though that would in turn have sealed this so you'd be unable to make the glasswork would be impossible because it's just hard I can do sealed the shields I can imagine but how do you do the seal with the so there's two methodologies if you uh yeah if you balance out the energies of uh how much energy is in the glass so that's how much it's moving how much gases and stuff from the environment that was inside of it and how hot those are you can if you give a little slack it adds more energy into those gases and if the glass is moving it'll push out and if you have too much a little bit pull some of that energy into you shrinks those gases down are you serious wow [Music] wait wait wait yeah oh you're saying it it's hard to tell when the glasses are moving yeah uh but so clearly so what I want to do is balance it so that it's a yeah if you want to try and balancing it you just got to use the uh the flex of the glass oh you've made it to be crazy oh my God that's so beautiful just delicious the the [Music] wave made this world along here a triple point a lot it's like Albert and boys would be so proud of you I mean I think this is probably one of the entire growth this doesn't exist anywhere else you're I I can't say you're pregnant

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,747,476

Keywords: tested, impossible objects, impossible object, impossible shapes, mathematics, boys surface, klein bottle, cliff stoll, glass, glassblowing, glassblower, adam savage, cliff stoll cuckoos egg, adam savage tested, lucas clarke glass, lucas clarke, adam savage glass, adam savage dropping things, adam savage math, adam savage cliff stoll, adam savage one day build, one day builds tested

Id: rMPrlvlUIMc

Length: 58min 46sec (3526 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2023