How things are made
Curated by Claude · 11 videos · 5 hr 55 min
HN loves watching things being made, and these are the videos it recommends most often. The list starts with everyday objects, moves to the craft and machines behind precision and heavy metalwork, then tours car and circuit board factories, then the light source inside a chipmaking machine, and finishes inside two rocket factories. Each one leaves you a bit more amazed by ordinary manufactured things.
Play all on YouTube- 111:39
The Ingenious Design of the Aluminum Beverage Can
19.5M views • 11 years agoengineerguyBill Hammack of Engineer Guy explains the engineering behind the aluminum beverage can: why it is cylindrical, how it is manufactured, why it narrows at the top, the double seam, and how the pull tab works.A welcoming eleven-minute start: Bill Hammack explains every detail of the humble soda can, and HN links it whenever cans or good design come up.
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Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster -- from scratch
282K views • 15 years agoTEDDesigner Thomas Thwaites describes his attempt to build a toaster from scratch, from mining ore and deriving plastic from oil. It is a short TED talk on how much civilization a simple object depends on.A designer tries to make a toaster from mined ore and homemade plastic, a short lesson in how much industry a cheap object depends on.
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The Art of Making a Nixie Tube
6.3M views • 10 years agoDalibor FarnýDalibor Farny documents the hand manufacture of a nixie tube, from glassblowing to evacuation, with text notes rather than narration. He revived the lost craft of nixie tube making.A quiet, mesmerizing record of one craftsman hand-making a nixie tube from glassblowing to vacuum, the kind of detail commenters say you almost never get to see.
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Origins of Precision
3M views • 8 years agoMachine ThinkingMachine Thinking traces where mechanical precision comes from, from flat surface plates and the three-plate method up through lathes and early measuring tools. It is the first in a series on recreating the first micrometer.Where precision itself comes from: how flat surfaces, lathes and measuring tools were built up from nothing, which HN calls a half hour well spent.
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12:48America's Iron Giants - The World's Most Powerful Metalworkers
2.9M views • 8 years agoMachine ThinkingMachine Thinking tells the story of the Cold War Heavy Press Program, the giant forging presses that make parts for aircraft, missiles and turbines.From the same channel, the Cold War presses that forge aircraft and turbine parts, often cited in HN threads about gigacasting and huge machines.
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59:12The Mind-Blowing Machines that Stamp Millions of Metal Parts - Smarter Every Day 288
2.9M views • 3 years agoSmarterEveryDayDestin Sandlin tours a progressive metal stamping factory, showing machines that stamp millions of metal parts and the tooling behind them.Destin Sandlin tours a progressive stamping plant and the tooling behind it, part of his series on what US manufacturing has lost.
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40:33BMW i3 Factory Production Tour
6.6M views • 12 years agoeuropeanautosourceA 41-minute factory tour showing how the BMW i3 electric car is built from start to finish, in the style of a Megafactories documentary. It shows a highly automated production line with carbon-fiber body construction and robots doing most of the work.A full tour of a car being built almost entirely by robots, with a carbon-fiber body that one commenter said looked like technology from the future.
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26:49Inside a Huge PCB Factory
3.7M views • 8 years agoStrange PartsStrange Parts tours JLCPCB's large PCB factory in Huizhou, China, walking through the printed circuit board manufacturing process step by step. It shows the machinery, quality checks and scale behind cheap prototype boards.Strange Parts walks through every step at JLCPCB, the factory behind many hobbyists' cheap circuit boards, and HN calls it the best look inside a modern PCB fab.
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17:20The Extreme Engineering of ASML’s EUV Light Source
698K views • 4 years agoAsianometryAsianometry explains the EUV light source inside ASML's lithography machines, where lasers hit falling tin droplets twice to produce 13.5 nm light. It walks through the engineering of the droplet generator, the pre-pulse and main laser, and the plasma that results.Then the hardest part of all: lasers firing twice at falling tin droplets to make the light for modern chips, explained in seventeen astonishing minutes.
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54:16HOW ROCKETS ARE MADE (Rocket Factory Tour - United Launch Alliance) - Smarter Every Day 231
13.4M views • 6 years agoSmarterEveryDayDestin Sandlin tours United Launch Alliance's rocket factory with CEO Tory Bruno, showing friction stir welding, structural rocket skins and large milled parts.ULA's CEO walks Destin through friction stir welding and huge milled rocket skins, a rare look inside a working rocket plant.
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![Starbase Tour with Elon Musk [PART 1 // Summer 2021]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/t705r8ICkRw/hq2.jpg)
53:17Starbase Tour with Elon Musk [PART 1 // Summer 2021]
7.1M views • 5 years agoEveryday AstronautTim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut tours SpaceX's Starbase with Elon Musk as guide. They cover the high bay, grid fins, Raptor V2, the HLS lander and stage separation, and Musk explains his engineering management process.To finish, a walk around SpaceX's Starship factory, which HN quotes mainly for the engineering process Musk lays out, such as deleting requirements that should not exist.