Ice Cream Treats Wooden Golf Clubs Aircraft Wings Car Battery Recycling
Today on "how it's made," ice-cream treats... Wooden golf clubs... Aircraft wings... And car-battery recycling. Before refrigeration, ice cream was a handmade luxury. Ingredients went into a mixing bowl inside a tub filled with ice and saltwater. The salt helped the ice absorb heat, cooling the mixture to below freezing. In the 1920s, commercial freezers made mass production possible, and the ice cream industry was born. To make ice-cream treats, you first have to make the ice cream. It all begins with fresh cream. The factory stores it in refrigerated silos set just a few degrees above freezing. The silos feed a high-speed mixer that blends the cream with other ingredients. The main dry ingredients are powdered skim milk and plant-based stabilizers and emulsifiers. Stabilizers prevent the ice cream from crystallizing, and emulsifiers allow the mix to bond with air during the whipping process. The other ingredients are sugar and corn syrup. After about three minutes of mixing, a pumping system moves the mixture into pasteurization tanks and heats it to 162 degrees for half an hour, killing any bacteria and activating the stabilizers. Then the factory homogenizes the mixture, a process that breaks up the fat globules, giving the ice cream a smooth texture. The mixture is cooled, and concentrated vanilla flavoring is added. Then the concoction is chilled and whipped for about 15 seconds. Whipping blends the mix with air, transforming it from a liquid to a soft solid. Without air, the finished product would come out looking like frozen milk rather than ice cream. The ice-cream sandwich wafers are made of chocolate-cake ingredients. A filling machine feeds two lines of wafers toward an injection pipe. Just as two wafers come together, the machine injects a third of a cup of vanilla ice cream in between. The pipe's head fits the ice cream into a rectangular slab that fits perfectly between the wafers. All this happens at a rate of 140 ice-cream sandwiches per minute. As the sandwiches move on to packaging, the filling is still ice cold from the freezing phase, so there is no threat of a meltdown. The packaging system raises each sandwich into a wrapper, then folds and tucks the ends. The next machine counts the sandwiches and inserts them into boxes. Once sealed, the boxes go directly into a storage freezer at minus 22 degrees. On another line, ice-cream cone production is under way. A feeder drops prewrapped sugar cones into holders on a conveyor belt. Sprayers coat the insides with a chocolaty layer, which adds flavor and creates a barrier between the cones and ice cream, so the cone remains crispy until you eat it. Next, nozzles squirt in the ice-cream filling. One production line, two flavors. One row of cones gets vanilla ice cream, the other row chocolate. Now for a tasty surprise in the cone's core, an injection of liquid caramel. This factory also makes ice-cream cones with chocolate and strawberry sauce inside. Next, a chocolate-flavored liquid topping. Then the crunchy finishing touch, a layer of chocolaty coated puffed rice. Finally, the cones move under a lid dispenser that applies a wax-coated paper lid to each one. A heating element instantly melts the wax, sealing the lids to the cone's paper sleeve. From here, the ice-cream cones go into boxes, then straight into the freezer, ready to take a licking. Up next, the forgotten art of wooden golf clubs. High-tech metal clubs rule today's golf courses. But don't count wooden clubs out of the game yet. Wooden golf clubs are all about tradition. Golfers have played with them for centuries. And some players still prefer the look and feel of these finely crafted clubs. Go with the grain, and your golf game could be on the upswing. Each club head starts with a log of persimmon wood, which is a type of ebony. It's sliced into quarters, and the lower quality center section is discarded. Each quarter is cut down into a workable shape and size. Then it's locked into this duplicating machine. A more sculpted piece of wood, called a "master model," is placed overhead. A wheel traces the contours of the master model and guides a blade below so that it carves the rough chunk of wood into a duplicate of the master model. The first master model is swapped out for a more refined version, and, again, the blade below copies the shape. The duplicate stub is cut off, and it gets a light sanding. Next, using a spinning cutter, a generous slot is carved into the face of the club head. Heavy-duty glue is spread in the slot, and then it's plugged with an insert made of rigid plastic. This reinforcement will protect the club head from the force of the golf ball. The overlap is trimmed off, and the head is sanded until the plastic insert blends seamlessly with the wood. Next, a router is used to carve an hourglass shape into the bottom of the golf-club head. This slot will hold the sole plate, which will add weight and protect the bottom of club. The club head can't be more than three grams off the target weight. After factoring the weight of the sole plate that's still to be installed, this club head gets a lead pellet to make it a little heavier. An extra hole is drilled in case more lead needs to be added later. Then the lead pellet is press-fit to the club head. Adhesive is slathered into the slot. Then the stainless-steel sole plate is installed. Again, sanding smoothes away any bumps or grooves. A drill bores a hole in the neck of the golf-club head, and a glue-coated metal sleeve slides into that hole. Then the neck is tapered with a sanding belt. A jeweler saw is used to score the face of the golf-club head. These lines are critical, because they help give the ball spin. The club head gets a dip in water-based stain that soaks into the wood but doesn't penetrate the metal sole plate. Then, things get messy, as a pasty substance is rubbed all over the golf-club head, plugging the open pores of the persimmon wood. It's a crucial step that will insure a mirror finish down the line. The head is numbered to identify it as a fairway club. And then the sole plate gets a good scrubbing with steel wool to get rid of any fingerprints. Five coats of polyurethane are sprayed on. Next, the glue-covered end of the shaft is pushed into the sleeve and the club head. The club's weight is fine-tuned with the addition of some pulverized lead into the extra hole drilled earlier. For a player to hit balls accurately, each club in the set has to feel as if it's the same weight. So, there's one more weigh-in before this wooden golf club is up to par. Finally, it's time to hit the links with a club that lives up to tradition. Coming up, crafting the wings that give us flight. Aircraft wings provide the lift that takes us to the skies. They're designed to be very strong and very light. Producing them requires a strategic balance of old-school production methods and high-tech computer-assisted design. The wing's frame is made up of three main components, the rear spar, the main spar, and the ribs. The ribs are crafted from aircraft-grade aluminum. It's corrosion resistant and has great strength, allowing it to resist extreme wind pressure. A computer-guided stamping machine punches small holes for rivets and control cables. It also stamps larger holes to reduce overall weight. Workers break attachments called microjoints and extract the ribs. Each rib now goes onto a metal-and-rubber forming die. A hydraulic press applies 150 tons of pressure, stamping the rib to the die shape. Using a grinder, workers smooth out the sharp edges left behind by the stamping process. Then they peel off the plastic film that protected the ribs from scratches. The factory uses the same process to construct the main spar. The spars run the entire length of the wing. It takes even more pressure this time-- 222 tons-- to bend the spars into shape. That's because this aluminum is three times thicker than that used for the ribs. To ensure they've aligned the ribs perfectly for riveting, workers push spring clamps into the spar. These hold the ribs in position. They hand drill holes for larger rivets and smooth out the sharp edges with a deburring drill. Then, using a pneumatic riveting gun and bucking bar, they rivet the ribs to the main spar. A tiny bucking bar is required for some of the tighter spaces. The completed airframe now goes onto a positioning rack, where it will get an aluminum covering they call the wing skin. Workers use spring clamps to position the top skin onto the airframe. They use the same procedure for the leading-edge wing nose. Once everything's clamped together, workers permanently rivet the assembly. Meanwhile, welders fuse the wing's fuel tank using an argon gas torch, which contains fewer contaminants than the typical acetylene torch. They fit the tank into the wing chamber, then secure it by bolting steel belts on to the spars. Now they position the tank's covering plate and screw it onto the wing. These holes are for fuel lines and control cables, which run the entire length of the wing. Finally, the wingtip is fitted and bolted on to the wing. It's made of a lightweight fiberglass-and-plastic composite. The completed wing is now ready to be bolted on to the aircraft body. This wing weighs in at a mere 175 pounds. But it's certainly no lightweight when it comes to strength. It can withstand nearly 5,500 pounds of wind pressure. When we return, turning trash into treasury at a car-battery recycling plant. Car batteries may die, but that doesn't mean it's the end of the road for their components. These lead-acid batteries are routinely recycled. This keeps toxic materials out of landfills and gives those old car batteries a lot more mileage. This battery may be toast, but it's not trash, because dead car batteries are jump-starting a major recycling industry. Pallets of old batteries are tipped on to a conveyor belt. It takes them up into an enclosed machine that has over 30 rotating hammers. They smash the old batteries to bits, and then a screen filters out the lead-acid paste. The broken bits of lead and plastic tumble into a vat of water. The lead and other metals sink, while the lighter plastic pieces float to the surface-- a convenient way to sort and separate the battery components. Once the plastic pieces have been cleaned, a machine blows them into the back of a truck. They'll be taken to a plastic-recycling plant and turned into pellets that will eventually be used in the production of new car batteries. A worm screw now moves the lead and other metals to another part of the plant for further processing. Remember that lead-acid paste screened out of the smashed-up batteries earlier? The acid has been neutralized and turned into water. This press squeezes the water out so all that remains is a lead paste. It's removed and added to the pile of lead and other metals. The water from the deacidification process contains some metallic residues, so it's treated with chemicals that cause the contaminants to precipitate, then settle into a sludge on the bottom of the tanks. Workers sample the water to make sure the particles are settling properly. They pump out the sludge, then filter the water, which now meets regulatory standards and can be poured down the drain. The sludge goes into that big pile of lead and other metals. A few shovels full of refined coal are added to the pile as a processing aid. Then the battery solids head up a conveyor into a revolving drier. The metals spend 20 minutes in here to remove any excess moisture. Then it's into a furnace for 10 hours. The lead melts into a liquid, and the other metals float to the surface, allowing them to be skimmed off. The molten lead goes into a steel kettle, where it's mixed with caustic soda. This cause some remaining contaminants to float to the surface for easy removal. The liquid lead is now fairly pure, so it's time to pour. The lead is pumped into bar-shaped molds, and any lingering impurities are skimmed off. Below, a constant spray of ice-cold water chills the molds, and the lead hardens into bars in just four minutes. The conveyor winds downward, and the bars are tapped free of their molds. There's enough lead in one of these bars to make three car batteries. They'll be remelted and molded into battery components. And the final product is as good as new... Proving that recycling can give old car batteries new life while keeping dangerous substances out of our landfills.