CO2 Cartridges Pretzels Scissor Lifts Skating Rinks
Today on "how it's made"... Co2 cartridges... Pretzels... Scissor lifts... And skating rinks. Sports like paintball are a pressure release in more ways than one. Paintball guns contain pressurized co2 cartridges, and when the gas is released, the force propels the ammunition towards its target. The cartridges are used also for things like inflating bike tires and life preservers, as they target new uses for these pressure-filled devices. A co2 cartridge packs a lot of punch into a little package. This one can propel dozens of shots. To make one, they unroll some steel and straighten it out. Then, a punch press descends with 110 tons of force, cutting the steel into disks. Simultaneously, a machine moves up from below to shape the disks into cups. The cups move down a vibrating lane. They're delivered to a series of cylindrical punches, each one with a smaller diameter than the last. Each successive punch lengthens and narrows the cups as nozzles flush them with lubricant. The process is called redrawing, and at the end of it, the cups look more like test tubes. In just a few minutes, that piece of steel has undergone several transformations. To continue shaping the tubes, they heat the ends by dropping them through an induction coil. Intense magnetic fields excite the molecules in the metal, causing it to heat up sharply. This machine is called a necker. As it revolves, it delivers the tubes to a series of dies that pinch their ends. With each pinch, the ends get progressively smaller. This creates necks in the tubes. As the diameter of the neck narrows, the tube takes the shape of a bottle. Now each cartridge goes on a lathe. A cutting tool plunge-cuts the neck to shorten it. Then it carves out a lip, the same kind of lip that's on any beverage bottle. The cartridges now head through a washing station, where soap and water get rid of the oily lubricant. A trip under some gas burners dries them off, and they head to the filling station. Here there's a tankful of carbon dioxide. The filling head pumps liquid co2 into the cartridges and then caps them. Inside these cartridges, the gaseous form of co2 is under great pressure. Releasing even just a little through a gun will be enough to propel things like bbs, pellets, and paintballs. They do spot checks to make sure the cartridges are tightly sealed. Now it's on to the next station, where they'll be made to look shiny and new. The cartridges are inside this revolving drum, which delivers an electrical charge, attracting zinc from the tank to plate the cartridges. The smooth zinc plating doesn't just look good. It's a better surface to print information on. At this rotary silk-screening station, the brand name and cautionary information are printed onto the sides of the cartridges. A quick bake under an ultraviolet light cures the ink. And the co2 cartridges are now ready to demonstrate the power of compression. How and when the first pretzel came to be depends on whom you ask. One story tells of a monk baking rewards for children who were pious. Today's bakeries still fold the dough to resemble arms crossed in prayer, but they do it much faster, granting tasty wishes to a lot more snackers. Although hard pretzels are more common, this company makes the more traditional soft-baked ones. To make enough dough for 4,870 pretzels, a workers first blends shortening, sugar, and salt in a huge mixer. The machine automatically adds yeast... Corn syrup... 1,630 gallons of cold water.. And 760 pounds of flour. The cold water helps make the dough elastic so workers can shape it before it hardens. A worker then opens the mixer and slows the blades to help the dough fall out. He splits the batch on a table, then creates chunks that go into a tank called a hopper. It feeds an auger that challenges the dough chunks through little guillotines. The blades chop the chunks into 2 1/2 ounce balls to make small pretzels or 5 ounce balls for large pretzels. Two conveyer belts squeeze them into 15 1/2 inch long segments called noodles. Another machine now grabs the ends of each noodle and twists the ends over each other to create the pretzel's three signature holes. To keep this knot from unraveling, the plate then gently flips the pretzel dough onto another plate below. That plate carefully flips the doughy creations onto a 118-foot long conveyer belt. The raw pretzels now travel on the conveyer for 14 minutes, the time it takes for the dough to rise. Next, they move through showers of liquid sodium hydroxide, heated to 180 degrees fahrenheit. That seals in the moisture so the pretzel will be chewy when you eat it. They go into an oven that's about the length of a city bus. As they enter, flames sear and harden the outside. This prevents the bottoms from sticking to the mesh conveyer belt during baking. After about 3 1/2 minutes at 560 degrees fahrenheit, the pretzels are piping hot and golden brown. They drop onto a long conveyer, where they gradually cool on their way to the next step--  a trip through a freezer that's longer than seven olympic-size swimming pools. After 30 minutes at minus-28 degrees celsius, the pretzels are rock solid and ready for packaging, but first, a camera scans them so that a computer can track each pretzel and guide a robotic arm to pick it up. This arm is one of five operating at separate points on the line. The robots process one pretzel per second and clean up after each other until the belt is picked clean. The pretzels then fall through a sliding gate, landing on a conveyer that whisks them off to the next step. There, a machine drops a packet of coarse salt into each bin of six pretzels. A mechanical arm nudges the pretzels over to make room for it. The salt packet lets you season your pretzel the traditional way before warming it up at home. The machine blows open plastic bags with compressed air. Mechanical arms push the pretzels and salt packet inside. A robot arm then places each bag into a cardboard box. The printing on this package displays the company logo, the nutritional content, the production date, and the heating instructions. So, next time you're looking for a salty snack, don't tie yourself up in knots. Just have a pretzel instead. A scissor lift is a mobile work platform that rises. The elevating mechanism consists of arms that connect in the middle like scissors, hence the name. Scissor lifts are common sight on construction sites, in big warehouses, and at buildings where workers need a safe way to reach heights to carry out repairs or maintenance. The number of arms in the scissor mechanism varies according to the height of each particular model. The factory constructs the scissor arms from steel tubes. The first step is to cut them to the right length for the model in production. A worker uses an air gun to blow off tiny shards of metal the cutting leaves behind. The arms go into a press that punches a hole for a hollow steel cylinder called a boss. The boss is the housing for a pin that will connect one arm to the other, yet still allow them to pivot like a pair of scissors. Workers now use a magnetic crane to move the arm to the welding area. They insert the boss into the hole, then tack it in place. This piece will go on the end of each scissor arm, but first, they weld on another boss. Now fully assembled, this piece is called the male scissor end. They tack it to one end of the scissor arm and tack a female scissor end to the arm's other end. Robots now weld the two endpieces simultaneously, then the boss in the middle. Now workers stack the scissor arms, putting a pin in each middle boss. They also install the hydraulic lift cylinder that will raise and lower the scissor stack. This manifold activates the lift cylinder by increasing and decreasing hydraulic pressure. Workers fasten the connected scissor ends to each other by driving a pin through the boss. They secure it with a locking mechanism called a cotter pin. Meanwhile, other workers assemble the base of the scissor lift. At this stage, it's upside down. At the rear, workers bolt in a hydraulic wheel motor. Hydraulic pressure turns the motor, enabling the operator to move the scissor lift forward or backward. They slide a wheel onto the hub and bolt it securely. This is the wheel hub onto which the front wheel bolts. It attaches with a pin locked by a cotter pin. They install the hydraulic steering cylinder. This steel tie rod links the front wheels to each other so that they turn together. Now workers hook up the hydraulic hoses. They pump a bit of grease in to lubricate the cylinder. Next, they assemble and install the hydraulic tray. It contains the electrical panel that controls all machine functions, as well as the hydraulic tank and pump. The pump forces hydraulic fluid to the wheel motor, steering cylinder, and lift cylinder. The hydraulic tray swings closed under the base for protection. On the other side, they install the battery tray. It houses the four six-volt batteries that power the scissor lift, along with the battery charger. The scissor stack, meanwhile, is in the paint booth getting a coat of primer, then a coat of urethane paint. This finish prevents the steel from rusting. After curing the paint in an oven, they install the scissor stack onto the base. Now they connect the two hoses that run between the lift cylinder and the hydraulic pump. Through one hose, fluid goes to the cylinder to raise the scissor. Through the other, fluid withdraws to lower the scissor. They run cables from the electrical panel up through the scissor stack. After installing a platform made of painted steel, they connect the cables to a control box on the platform rail. These controls enable a worker to operate the scissor lift from the platform. After a test drive, it's time to apply the decals, up to 75 of them depending on the model. Some are decorative, but most specify safety information, such as the scissor lift's load capacity. For the nhl, a regulation skating rink is 200 feet long by 85 feet wide. The rink is basic construction, but making the ice is an art. You have to get the thickness just right. If the ice is too thick, it will tax the refrigeration system and soften on top, but if the ice is too thin, skate blades will cut right through it. The rink floor is a concrete slab. Covering it with ice begins in the arena's refrigeration room. There, a powerful compressor pumps refrigeration fluid, usually methanol or saline, through pipes running underneath the rink's floor. The concrete chills to between minus-15.8 and 18 degrees fahrenheit, the temperature range required for water to freeze on concrete. This company made its own ice-making machine by retrofitting an ice resurfacer. Its onboard water tank feeds 20 sprayers that mist a 13-foot span. The water freezes within seconds. To make a quality ice surface, you have to build up the ice in layers, each about . 07 inch thick. Driving in the standard outside-inside oval pattern, each layer takes just eight minutes. With two layers down, they paint the ice white. You'd think it would be simpler to just paint directly on the concrete, but the paint would chip off when they remove the ice at the end of the season. They would have to scrape and clean the slab before repainting it--  a messy, expensive job. So, instead, the ice maker mixes water and powdered paint in the onboard tank and sprays three layers onto the ice. This paint doesn't dry. Just like the water the machine sprayed before, it freezes into white ice. This metal dioxide-based paint is specially formulated for skating rinks, designed to cling to a base coat of ice. And unlike concrete paint, it's nontoxic and biodegradable, so that at the end of the season, the arena can melt the ice and let the water drain without contaminating the environment. Now a crew comes in to paint the hockey markings. Workers lay down string to mark the borders of the red line, the blue lines, and the goal lines. They elevate intersecting lines so that the paintbrush can pass. To paint the face-off circles, workers use an anchor, cable, and what's called a paint stick. It takes just 20 minutes or so to paint them. The paint is in a portable tank. It flows down the paint-stick tube to a rectangular pad on the end. Now the goal crease at each net. First, they trace a template, then fill in with a shade of blue you see in swimming pools. They use the same technique to paint the eight red face-off spots. Back to the blue line. First, they spray water to freeze the strings in place. Then, using a brush on the same type of paint stick they use for the circles, they fill in the foot-wide space between the strings. Now for the home team's logo at center ice. After dabbing a mop in blue chalk, they run it over a computer-generated paper stencil of the logo. This transfers the design outline to the ice. They spray water on the chalk lines to freeze them in place, then paint the logo. Finally, with a garden hose, they spray water over all the markings to seal the paint. Then they slowly flood the ice with the larger hose for about a day and a half. This adds the final 1.1 inches of ice. The now-skateable ice surface is about 1.6 inches thick, containing over 13,000 gallons of water, about 300 bathtubs full.