Homemade Machine Turns Bioplastics Into Cooling Fabric

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[Nighthawkinlight]

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Thank you everyone for watching!

[jonnyalive]

NightHawkInLight's slow transformation into Mr Freeze continues.

[pcfreak]

Slow progress? Definitely not! You had a handful of crushed fibres last time and now you have a full sheet that has a structure!

[Technichian]

In 2005-2006 I worked for a factory that made the fibers you are looking for. The fibers we made were much much smaller than what you made though. Nano scale in fact. We needed to send a sample in to a lab, with an electron microscope, to check the quality. I can tell you the basic set up, which looked very much like a steampunk assembly line, but it worked very well. Very much like spinning invisible spider webs onto a paper substrate, at 12 feet per second. To much to go into in a Youtube comment, but I will email to you if you like.
However, I can tell you a bit about what can happen, when people over look safety... Hint: It wasn't me that overlooked the safety, but the head engineer of the machine. Oh, and the total number of people that worked in the factory was 4. And that includes the president of said company.
So a quick story of my shocking safety experience.
The final area of this machine, the production area, is a conveyor belt, about 10 feet long. Inside the conveyor belt, between the top and bottom, is a large vacuum. Basically a large blower, blowing outside the factory, with the intake inside the conveyor. A paper substrate, about 4 feet wide, on a roll of paper about 1, 000 feet long (possible longer. this roll of substrate is about 4 feet in diameter. you do the math) its very long.
So the material that get melted down, the plastic, is cooked as it goes on its way from hopper to spray head. The spray head is a brass beam, with a few dozen outlets for the fiber, and compressed air inside the beam, spraying the plastic spider web.
One of the things we did was watch the fabric spray, and get any lumps that form, off the finished material. Lumps from, insects, or webs that float around and get caught on the spray heads, and then fall off onto the substrate with the finished web product. Not a good thing, so we actively try to catch every one of them, as it was feeding in at 12 feet per second.
I was at the end. To keep the paper straight, as it feeds onto the conveyor, there are a series of rollers for the paper to go around before it get onto the wind up roll. These rollers are
pvc, with a metal pipe in the center. About 5 or 6 inches in diameter. About 6 of them.
Its running at full speed, and I see a very large fluff ball, land on the other end of the machine (lots of air flowing). two of the other three people watching for these, tried and failed to grab it. I missed it too. But it cam off, and got stuck on on of the rollers, easily in reach. But no way am I getting my body inside that machine. But I did have a three foot long, 2" wrench. A perfect claw for snagging this huge booger.
I got to scrape it off the roller. I get the wrench no closer to it than three feet, and over the factory noise, I hear a massive crack. My arm goes numb. And I get knocked on my ass. I thought that sound was the sound of dismemberment. My are was surely ripped off because I got too close, I though. I looked down, my arm was there, but it wouldn't move. I touched it with my other hand. Yep, its still there, but numb. And then I noticed I was sitting about 10 feet away from the machine, on the floor. With everyone looking at me. I just blinked. And doing so I could see the after image of looked like a lightning bolt. Before they could ask me anything, I said, "please tell me you all saw that". Two of them said yes. That was the biggest arc they have ever seen. At least three feet long, and bright as hell.
Later I did the math. Electricity arcs at about 1" per 25, 000 volts. So I figure that was nearly 1 million volts.
Later, I had a word with the engineer. There must be something we could do to prevent that. Maybe putting a ground line on the back side of the rollers? maybe installing a static dissipaters' like we had on our jet fighter wings trailing edge? (retired USAF). So he let me play with the machine when it was offline while testing product. I am happy to say, using Christmas garland, stretched across the back of each roller, fixed that problem. 😶‍🌫

[newtonbomb]

Dude is out here on the bleeding edge of practical DIY metamaterials and he's "just a guy in his barn making slow progress" 😂

[jebler]

I'd like to see fibers created directly on the hat. I'm hoping that they will adhere reasonably well to the frame. We can create one thick layer, which should minimize the polar bear effect.

[Jaburesu]

We are this much closer to the pillow that is always cool on both sides! Nobel prize level stuff

[mikeselectricstuff]

The thermal images would be much more useful if they had a temperature scale - lots of mentions of "much cooler" with no actual figures.

[Dysiode]

Opacity seems largely solvable with a longer fiber generation time, though it does become a question of how durable and pliable the result is. Maybe there's a way of bonding the layers together (a light solvent spray?). Another question I have regarding the insulative properties, is it that the PLA is reflecting it's own emission so it has trouble escaping? If so maybe layering fabrics with different emissive ranges could help.

This seems like the kind of thing you'd see in postdoc research at a university. Have you explored any options of working with one, or even finding a research grant for yourself? There's got to be some climate related grants this would be applicable to

[amyjo]

A beautiful thinking mind. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels. I’m a 60 year old grandmother with no science background but love this. Hoping my grand babies have inquisitive, patient minds like this. Bravo!

[sebbes]

11:50 If you aim the blowing output down, instead of sideways, the feed mechanism for the liquid can literally be a bucket connected to the tube.
Either directly attached & rotating with the shaft, or as a funnel that goes into the tube a bit, if you make the container be air-tight except for a medium hole at the bottom, it will only flow out when air can get in to replace the same volume, that should limit the flow into the tube so it doesn't overflow. (The Teflon tube is also an elegant solution)

[bobjoatmon]

I did something simple to drastically reduce my homes heat absorption. My AC would run most of the daylight hours for half the year and the attic temps commonly were 165 to 170 degrees F. I looked at taking the dark green metal roof off and puting in an air gap and insulation panels but it was too expensive. I looked at powered attic fans but that required extensive modifying the gable vents.
Then I ran across some of your videos and decided to check out painting the roof white.
I have done so and now my attic temp, even at 4 or 5 in the afternoon when the outside temperatures are in the 95 to 98 degrees, is around 103 to 110 AND now my AC runs maybe 25% of the time instead of continuously. My bill was significantly lower these last two months.
I didn't buy any $300 a gallon NASA spec paint, I bought a cheaper metal roof paint (from the big box store whose color is orange) called Metal-X and used a roller to apply it in one morning.
Now the house is comfortable in the afternoon when before the inside temp would go up even with the AC running all the time.
Amazing results and this channel gave me the clues.

[JackAllpikeMusic]

never has a youtuber got me to sit through a sponsor more willingly than by showing a cute funny bird.

[gauttammandan]

Currently Studying composites and polymer this semester, this video is like the best representation of many of the processes taught. I learned a lot seeing it practically done with hardware store items....keep doing the great work...

[cineblazer]

Every new upload in this series is like Christmas come early. My Patreon dollars feel well-spent :)

[jaymethodus]

This guy is top notch. the best science YouTuber hands down no bs no trend chasing no over hyping or dumbing stuff down, always sticking to the concepts and the science, not fan boying over anyone or anything

[xNillowsx]

What's it like ACTUALLY be a mad scientist? For real though, your ability to conceive of ideas and take meaningful, deliberate action to actually manifest your conceptions into reality is nothing short of inspirational and truly remarkable.

The word genius is overused these days but 'designing and creating a new radiative cooling polymer, as well as an industrial process and machine to form that polymer into a usable fabric IN A BARN' is absolutely December 25, 1642 level genius.

[atpkinesin]

I mentioned in the comments of the last video that I was concerned about using PLA for clothing because I don't think it can stand up to washing. I only realized after commenting that that would make hats or vests a good test bed, and was happy to see you go for a hat here. In terms of transferring heat to the emissive PLA, i think its important to remember that the body already has a way to do sub-ambient cooling with evaporative cooling ie sweat. Modern moisture wicking fabrics are really great and I first noticed how beneficial they can be when I took up biking. I have a long sleeve white shirt that keeps me significantly cooler than I would have expected because it wicks the sweat over a large surface area and biking adds airflow to help evaporation. So, it would be cool to see tests with your fabric in an against skin setting where sweat can help facilitate heat transfer. I think existing moisture wicking fabrics could give you a good benchmark of performance for your material. Anyway, great work!

[skry]

If the fabric is eventually perfected and it manages to radiate the heat and disperse it (making the hat keep cold inside as well) this would be so helpful to so many people. I work during summers in farms, and the temperatures can easily go over 43°C (which if im not wrong is around 107 or so farenheit), if a fabric out there managed to actually keep cold during the intense heat, it would immensely improve the quality of life of so many people working in the sun
this is honestly such a fascinating and amazing concept, which I think could become something really really good to a lot of people, and the fact that you have this research so open to the public is amazing!!! Mad props!!

[lukejoyce]

I sent an email saying something similar, but there's a Nonwoven Institute at NC State that might have some useful resources for making predictable fabrics out of this stuff. It has links to researchers across the country, there might be some nearby with relevant work you could maybe reach out to - I for one know that if I got an email from someone about my research I'd be down to talk to them about it for a bit.