Yogurt Candles Neon Signs Bookbindings
Today on "how it's made"... Yogurt... Candles... Neon signs... And book bindings. Your mother probably told you not to put anything with germs in your mouth. Well, it turns out she was wrong. Yogurt is one of the healthiest foods you can eat, yet it's chock-full of germs--  bacteria, to be precise, bacteria that are actually good for your digestive system. The first step in making fruit-flavored yogurt is to inspect the fruit. Workers discard any skin or pits that slip through and any pieces that are discolored or bruised. The fruit doesn't go into the yogurt as is. First, they turn it into jam. To give the jam just the right texture and taste, they have to weigh all the ingredients carefully before pouring them in the mixer. The first ingredient is water, followed by artificial and natural flavoring, and stabilizers to give the jam an even consistency. Certain types of fruit aren't colorful enough on their own, so the factory adds artificial coloring. Next comes two types of sugar--  fructose and sucrose. The mixer heats everything to 140 degrees fahrenheit to help dissolve the dry ingredients. The machine pumps out and refeeds the mixture so that it blends evenly. Then more coloring, followed by the fruit, followed by another hour or so of heating and mixing. Then they heat the jam to a minimum of 176 degrees fahrenheit for another hour to kill off any harmful bacteria. To prepare the yogurt, they mix different powdered milk products with milk and cream. For low-fat yogurts, they use fat-free milk and skip the cream. Once they've blended the ingredients, they heat them to 176 degrees fahrenheit or higher for just 30 seconds. That's all the time that's needed to pasteurize the mixture. While it's now bacteria-free, there's another problem. Milk and cream naturally separate because cream is lighter due to its fat content. So on to the next step, homogenization-- blending the milk and cream together. The homogenizer's pistons crush the fat globules. This enables the two liquids to merge. The mixture then goes into fermentation tanks heated to 113 degrees fahrenheit. Workers pour in a packet of live bacteria bought from a factory that breeds bacterial cultures for the dairy industry. Fermentation takes 6 to 20 hours depending on the style of yogurt. The factory manufactures the yogurt containers right on the packaging line using plastic sheets and paper labels. The machine heats the plastic and molds it into containers. A split second later, it wraps the containers in paper labels. You can view that dual operation best from underneath the machinery. Now they fill the containers with the combination of yogurt and fruit jam. To protect the yogurt from contamination, the air in this part of the machine is strictly controlled and filtered. The bacteria in the yogurt is what's known as good bacteria, the type naturally present in our intestines. They produce a compound called acetaldehyde. That's what gives yogurt its distinctive flavor. The red dots are electronic sensors that verify the fill level. The container covers are made of thin but strong aluminum. First, the sheet of covers passes upside down over a printer which stamps on the expiration date. Unopened, this yogurt will stay fresh for more than 40 days. Then the sheet of covers turns right side up to be heat sealed onto the containers. Finally, the machine automatically divides the containers according to whatever pack format the factory is producing. The invention of the candle can possibly be credited to ancient egyptians, who dipped reeds into animal fat and lit them. Today's wax candles provide a romantic atmosphere, light when there's power failure, and, when blown out, a grand finale to a rousing rendition of "happy birthday". At the heart of every candle is a wick made from woven or twisted cotton cord. To stiffen up that limp cord, they run it through a tank of liquid paraffin, a wax derived from petroleum. The cord then passes over a cooling drum whose cold surface instantly hardens the wax coating. The now rigid cord winds onto a spool, ready to be cut into wicks. There are several candle-making methods, all of which work on the simple principle that hot wax turns hard and white when it comes into contact with cold air or a cold surface. This process is called candle pressing. The hot paraffin travels from the holding tank to a set of sprinklers inside a 20-foot-high refrigerated chamber. The sprinklers shoot the wax upwards into the cold air. Like falling precipitation transforming into snowflakes, the wax droplets transform into wax flakes. They land at the base of the chamber, then travel to a hydraulic press. The press forms them into candles, using pressure but no heat, and pierces a hole through the middle for the wick. The air in this part of the plant has to be less than 77 degrees fahrenheit, or else the flakes will melt and stick together, jamming the machine. Now the candles travel to the wicking machine, which cuts and inserts a wick into each candle. Another candle-making method is the dipping process. They install 96 wicks on each frame of an automated dipping machine. One after another, the frames dip the wicks into a tank of clear paraffin. As the frames rise from the tank, gravity pulls the wax downward, creating a conically shaped coat of wax. By the time a frame has made the circuit and returned to the tank, the wax coat is hard and white. The wicks go for a second dipping, followed by another go-round. This continues until 25 dips later. The tapered candles are . 8 of an inch in diameter. To turn these white candles into colored candles, they dip them into a vat of dyed paraffin... Then immediately after into cold water to harden the color coat. To produce votive candles, the factory uses an automated molding process. They heat each molding table, flood it with paraffin, then cool the table. The wax overflow compensates for the shrinking that occurs during the 20-minute hardening phase. Once the wax hardens, they scrape off the excess and remelt it to use for the next batch. A pin inside each mold created a channel for the wick. Now another type of automated wicking machine inserts a wick and secures it in place with the metal clip at the base of the candle. They make certain specialty candles on a manually operated dipper rather than by automated machine. These altar candles are made of paraffin and 66% pure beeswax, as required by vatican law. To create their cylindrical shape, the worker has to flip the frames after every dip to equalize the wax. It takes 90 dips to build a 3-inch diameter. The candles still come out slightly tapered, so they go through a heated die to adjust their shape. No longer just a staple of religion, ritual, or romance, today's candles are a hot decorative item. Neon signs are made of glass tubes bent into letters or shapes and filled with inert gas. When the electric current hits the electrodes in the tubes, electrons flow through the gas, making its atoms glow. The type of gas and glass determine the color of the light. In a clear glass tube, argon gas gives off blue light while neon gas produces red light. To create vivid designs, they can parlay those two base colors into more than 80 additional colors by using glass tubes that are colored with fluorescent powders. For instance, blue glowing argon gas in a yellow tube creates a green light. To shape the tube, they use a glass-blowing technique. Following a pattern drawn on a fire-resistant sheet, they mark where they have to bend the tube. Then they heat each spot on a device called a ribbon burner, whose propane flame is a blazing 1,200 degrees fahrenheit. Within half a minute, the glass softens enough to be pliable. They gently bend the tube, then blow into the uncorked end to restore the tube's original diameter. With each bend, they check the shape against the pattern, every so often pressing a wooden block along the tube to equalize the width. Argon gas emits steel-blue light, but this blue-colored tube will change that to dark blue. After shaping, they cut off the excess and rub the coloring powder off the ends. Now they can attach these glass casings, which contain electrodes. They fuse an electrode to each end of the tube using a propane hand torch and a flexible latex blowing tube. They seal the glass around one electrode but leave the other one open. Then, using what's called a crossfire burner, they create a tubulation, a thin tube with a bubble that will act as a passage way into the open electrode. They fuse the tubulation to that electrode... Then carefully inject a drop of mercury into the open end of the tubulation. Argon gas needs a touch of mercury to brighten the color it emits. Neon gas doesn't. Using what's known as an end torch, they fuse the open end of the tubulation to a long glass tube leading to a pumping system. They connect the electrodes to the system, then power it up. The pump vacuums out the air, then injects the gas. The electrical current makes the atoms in the gas glow. To trap the gas inside the tube, they use the crossfire burner to remove the tubulation and seal off the open electrode, making sure the drop of mercury has descended into it first. They dip the back of the sign into black paint. This will make the lettering or design stand out. They use a brush to spread the coat evenly and remove the excess. Next, they'll light up the sign at high voltage for a half hour. This will dry the paint and, more importantly, transform the liquid mercury into vapor that spreads throughout the sign. Using transparent clips, they mount the sign onto a black plexiglas background to make it stand out even more. Finally, they connect the protruding electrode wires to a transformer. This transformer converts the standard 110-volt current from our electrical outlets into high-voltage current, into the 3,000 to 15,000 volts you need to light up a neon sign. Hardcover books have bindings made of heavy paperboards covered with cloth, leather, or plastic. Soft-cover books have flimsier paper bindings. While bookbinding on a commercial scale is all mechanized today, you can still find craftspeople who skillfully bind books by hand. Book bindings date back to second-century egypt where christian monks sewed sheets of papyrus together, then enclosed them in leather-covered boards connected by strips of hide. Monks in medieval europe stitched together handwritten parchments, binding them between wooden boards often covered in leather. Sometimes they were embellished with gold leaf and gems. The 16th century saw the arrival of cheaper printed books with simple pasteboard bindings. Today, commercial bookbinding is highly mechanized. The process starts with large sheets of paper, each containing several consecutive pages of the book. A worker positions a stack of each sheet into a machine appropriately called the guillotine. Its sharp blade drops down and chops off excess paper. After trimming, the stack moves into a machine called the folder which folds each sheet into book size with the pages in the right order. As we see here in slow motion, the machine starts by perforating the fold line. Then the sheet moves along the conveyor belt until it hits the stopper to the far right. That stop position aligns the perforation between two rollers. Watch in slow motion how those rollers pull the page down, pressing a neat fold. This process repeats itself for each fold of the sheet. The result of all that folding is what's called a signature, a unit of pages in the correct order but still attached to each other. A book is made up of several signatures. Another machine now assembles them in the right sequence, along with the cover, for binding. There are many different binding methods. This one is called wire stitching. As we see here in slow motion, the machine drives heavy-duty staples right through the spine of the signatures and cover. The staples are cut from steel wire that's so strong, you have to tear the book apart to remove them. Here's another slow-motion look at the stapling action. This is another binding method called perfect binding. First, a scanner ensures the pages are in order. Then the covers go on. With traditional bookbinding, they sew these components together. In the perfect bind process, they glue them together. To do that, the machine first feeds the assembled books, spine side down, onto trays. The trays compress the pages. Then a saw underneath cuts off the folds, detaching the pages from each other along the spine. But that cut creates a smooth edge to which glue would have difficulty adhering. So a second saw notches the spine, creating a rough, glue-friendly surface. The notched spine now runs over rollers that coat it in hot glue. Finally, two conveyor belts merge-- one with the book's pages assembled with the notched and glue-coated spine, and the other with the book's cover. The machine presses the cover onto the spine. The book now travels along the conveyor belt for another 30 seconds, during which time the glue air dries. By this stage of the process, with either binding method, most pages on the unbound sides of the book are still attached by folds. To separate the pages, the books go through a machine called a three-knife trimmer. It cuts the folds off the three sides simultaneously. The book is now finished. Fine-quality books still have some bindings. But your average book today is wire stitched or perfect bound. Those newer methods are far less costly, yet still produce books that are sturdy and durable.