Lighters Fossils Hockey Pucks High
Today on "how it's made"... Lighters... Fossils... Hockey pucks... And high-pressure cylinders. It's a case for combustion. Spin the wheel, and you have an instant flame. Flip the lid, and the flame is extinguished. A version of the lighter first appeared in the 19th century. At the time, it was more of a conversation piece than anything, a curiosity that received plenty of interest. Lighters aren't a novelty anymore, but they're still used every day. To make lighter cases, a machine uncoils brass from a spool, pulling it to a press. The press stamps the brass repeatedly to shape both the top and bottom parts of the case. A worker collects them and places them on a revolving table. Another worker slides on a hinge to link the top and bottom pieces. An electrode welds the hinge to the case. Then a mechanical arm knocks them down a chute to a worker who inspects the welding job. As the cases move on a conveyor system, they get a quick buff to prepare them for plating. The lighter cases are now plunged into a series of washing solutions and rinses, followed by a nickel solution... Then a chrome one. It's the finishing touch for the lighter cases. It's time to move on to the inner workings. A die shapes a piece of steel to make the inside cases. Mechanized arms then place a tube and plate in the case. The tube will hold the flint stone, and the plate will form the top of the inner case. Epoxy seals them in place, and the cases move through a curing oven to harden the epoxy. A worker arranges a pile of flint wheels so that the teeth are in the proper direction. Grippers load the flint wheels into an assembly jig. These cams will eventually act as a catch for the lighter lid. A gripper places the cam in the jig beside the flint wheel. The assembly jig now receives little brass eyelets between the flint wheel and the cam. The machine slides the inner case over the flint wheel, cam, and eyelet. And an automated device rivets it all together. A machine lowers a wick to the eyelet and threads it through. Blades move in from the side and snip the wick. This machine stuffs pieces of cotton into the inner case. The cotton will soak up and retain fuel when the consumer adds it later. Steel plungers tamp down the wick and cotton. Here a die punch cuts a piece of felt to size. Automated arms pick up the felt and shove it into the top of the inner case. Here grippers place a flint spring in the case just over the flint stone. Pneumatic screwdrivers drive the screw home. A rubber wheel spins the flint, and sparks fly as a light sensor checks their intensity. After the flint check, technicians install the inner unit in the case. They check the fit. They test the function. And they're off to be shipped. It takes many hours of work to make a fossil replica. Real dinosaur bones, millions of years old, are used to make life-size renditions. You'll find these fossil facsimiles on display in museums. They're very exact, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. The dinosaur looms large once again, brought back to life thanks to an evolution in casting techniques. Building these replicas is a job that can involve both high-tech know-how and hands-on skill. They start with the real thing, an ancient fossil. This is a dinosaur's upper jawbone. They laser-scan it, producing a three-dimensional image. The scanner feeds the image to a computer. Then it's time to go to print. But this isn't an ink-and-paper job. This tray is filled with plaster powder. The printer outlines the jawbone shape with a liquid hardener. The result is this plaster cast of the jawbone. There is a more traditional way to make a fossil replica. They arrange plywood around a fossil of this dinosaur foot. Then they lay sheets of clay on the wood and press it to the dinosaur bone. With a clay pick, they make a 90-degree angle at the bone to give it a clean line. Using more clay, they build a spout and a riser at one end of the bone. They etch an i.d. number into the clay. Then they paint liquid rubber onto the fossil and the abutting clay. They place fiber-glass sheets on the rubber, wetting it down with a polyester mix first. They work the fiber glass into the shape of the fossil, then paint a red gel coat onto it. It's a color code to identify the species-- a duckbilled dinosaur called a lambeosaurus. Now they have one side of a mold. When both sides of the mold are fabricated, they pair them up, and this fossil mold is complete. The rubber layer inside picks up the fossil's detail, while the outer fiber-glass one will hold the rubber rigid as they pour a polyester- and-water mix into the spout. It takes 45 minutes to harden. And now it's time for the big reveal. It's an exact replica. Next they form part of the skull. They make this part with hollow fiber glass instead of solid polyester. This will ease the load on the steel framework later. All the larger bones are cast with hollow fiber glass because of weight issues. This is a mastodon head. They mold up to 300 pieces to produce these skeletal replicas. On one side of the skeleton, they literally flesh out some details. They sculpt scales onto a clay-like fill to demonstrate how a dinosaur would look with some skin. The other side remains bare bones to give the viewer an inside look. A little glue completes the spine work. Then they mount the skull. When the front leg goes on, this 2-sided fossil is ready to go. It's a real museum piece. Early hockey pucks were made of wood. But for informal games, even objects like stones would suffice. Eventually rubber became the puck material of choice. The modern puck is three inches wide by one inch thick. Pucks are usually frozen before games to reduce their bounce on the ice. 11 different ingredients go into making these rubber hockey pucks. The recipe begins with natural rubber. Two types of oil make the rubber durable. Certain minerals act as curing agents and antiaging agents. And a form of coal dust, called carbon black, serves as a filler. Workers feed the ingredients into a preliminary mixer-- first the slabs of natural rubber, then antioxidants to lengthen the rubber's life-span, then one type of oil to help blend in the dry chemicals, then another type to refine the rubber's rigidity level, then additives such as calcium carbonate and sulfur to help cure the rubber during the molding process, and finally, the carbon black filler. After 10 to 15 minutes of this preliminary blending, the mixture goes down a chute and onto a conveyor belt, which transports it to a machine called the mill mixer. It will perform the final mix. At this point, workers add more natural rubber. Then they add another, harder rubber that will make the hockey pucks more resilient. The recipe is formulated to produce a very hard rubber, one that can stand up to the rigors of repeated blows from a hockey stick. It's critical that the ingredients blend evenly. That's why workers continually cut the rubber while it's mixing. In the company lab, technicians evaluate a sample from each batch. This device is called a rheometer. It analyzes what's called the curing curve-- how the rubber hardens and to what degree. A computer compares the curing curve to the quality model. If they match, the batch gets the go-ahead. The rubber hasn't yet gone through the curing process, so it's still malleable. An extrusion machine squeezes it through a round die. This produces logs about 40 inches long and 3 inches wide-- the exact diameter of the hockey puck. The next machine slices each log like a loaf of bread into 39 pieces. Each piece is 1.1 inches thick. These pieces are called preforms because at this stage they're not quite fully formed pucks. Workers put them into compression molds that look like giant muffin pans. Each mold cavity is the exact size of the finished hockey puck. A cover goes on. Then the molds go into a curing press, which compresses the preforms and heats them to 300 degrees fahrenheit. It takes 18 minutes for the rubber to cure. The preforms come out as hockey pucks-- rock-hard and 1/8 of an inch thinner than before. They cool for 24 hours. During the compression phase, excess rubber oozed out and stuck to the pucks, so workers run each and every puck manually through a trimming machine. There is excess rubber stuck to the molds, as well. The factory scrapes it off, grinds it up, and uses it as filler in subsequent batches. The mold embedded a dimple pattern on the puck's edge. This texture creates friction between the puck and hockey stick. The more friction, the better stickhandling and the greater control the players have. High-pressure cylinders are metal containers designed for storing gases and for dispensing them at high pressure. Think fire extinguishers and oxygen tanks. The contents are often flammable, so the challenge is how to make these often lifesaving cylinders safe yet still easy enough to use. These cylinders are made out of chromoly, a steel alloy containing chromium and molybdenum. They start with disks that have already been heat-treated at 1,300 degrees fahrenheit for 36 hours. Now they go into the first of five hot chemical baths that will help the metal flex. After a quick drying period, each disk moves over a die. This process is known as deep drawing because a series of machines will gradually draw out the disk to the shape of a cylinder. A mandrel press begins stretching the metal, applying up to 800 tons of force-- the weight of two fully loaded jumbo jets. Shaping the cylinder from just one piece of metal means it will be seamless, and that's a key safety feature. After the disk comes through, steel jaws clamp down on the mandrel, and the cylinder slips off. Now another press stretches it even more. This machine applies 250 tons of force to continue forming the walls of the cylinder. That liquid is a coolant to prevent overheating. The cylinder goes through as many as three presses, each one stretching it another 60%. This press forms the closed bottom end into a concave shape. That reinforces the base, helping the cylinder withstand up to a thousand times more pressure than a can of cooking spray. A band saw now slices up to 4 inches off the other end, which will become the top of the cylinder. Next, a torch heats that end to 1,800 degrees fahrenheit for 90 seconds. In a process called hot spinning, a worker then places the cylinder in a device that spins it at 1,000 rpm. As a torch maintains the temperature, the machine shapes the edge of the searing-hot metal into a curve. In this way, the machine gradually closes off the top end and shapes two rounded areas called the shoulder and neck. Making these areas curved is the best way to contain pressurized gases. Curves spread out the stress on the metal. A sharp corner would focus the stress in one spot. The only exit for gases will be through a valve at the top. Workers then place 18 cylinders in a furnace heated to more than 1,600 degrees fahrenheit. After 90 minutes, a machine then dunks them in a chemical bath to cool for six minutes. The cylinders are then reheated to 1,200 degrees fahrenheit for 90 minutes, then left to cool for two hours. These transitions between hot and cold-- a process called tempering-- strengthen the metal and make it somewhat flexible. A cutting tool carves open the neck and cuts threads inside it. This provides the best seal when the valve screws into the neck. Workers clean the cylinder's surface using a process called shotblasting. A machine shoots these tiny steel pellets at the cylinders at very high speed. They test the cylinder by filling it with water. Then they seal it off and immerse it in water. The machine then adds more water to the cylinder and gauges how well it withstands the extra pressure. They rinse the inside with hot water, then dry and clean it by blowing in some purified air. Next, a hydraulic press indents the shoulder of the cylinder with legally required markings, such as the manufacturing date and the serial number. A machine then stretches a steel collar over the neck. Another device, called a valver, tightly screws on the valve, creating a leakproof seal. After a trip to the paint shop, these high-pressure cylinders are ready to be filled and keep it all under control.