[HN Gopher] The Mattel Spinwelder was the coolest Christmas gift...
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The Mattel Spinwelder was the coolest Christmas gift of the 1970s
Author : herendin
Score : 156 points
Date : 2022-07-26 11:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (bestride.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bestride.com)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I never had the Spinwelder but remember seeing it in the back of
| the Sears catalog. One of my favorite toys as a 70's kid, the
| Vertibird toy helicopter:
|
| http://www.timepassagesnostalgia.com/&searchkeywords=vertibi...
|
| Like any good helicopter toy I was unable to fly it when I first
| woke up on Christmas and shoved the batteries in. You actually
| had to control the lift (not a collective but speed control on
| the rotor) and the pitch. Too much pitch and you lose lift so had
| to compensate with extra lift.
|
| By the New Years I was flying like a pro, swinging around and
| pulling back on the pitch to reverse thrust and stop over a
| dime....
|
| My favorite "make stuff toys" of the 70's were my Erector set and
| Lego set of course.
|
| But then I also had this trippy Buckminster-Fuller-meets-Light-
| Bright building toy called an Astrolite:
|
| https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/01/16/vintage-toy-fun-astroli...
| bitwize wrote:
| I had a Verti-Bird as well. I was 4. My dad basically hogged
| the thing. I barely got to play with it, then it went into
| storage never to return.
| effingwewt wrote:
| So many memories I'm crying right now omg erector sets and
| vertibirds!
|
| I remembered the JC Penny's and Toys R Us catalogs but forgot
| about the sears toys sections!
| cesaref wrote:
| I had a Vertibird - thanks for reminding me about it!
|
| There's something about toys like that at a formative period in
| your development that means that small details seem to stick in
| your memory. I can even now remember the feel or the rotating
| spring that took the horizontal rotation of the shaft through
| 90 degrees to meet to the propeller blades, and which wobbled
| to a blur when the machine was running.
|
| I seem to remember it didn't hurt much when you got hit by it,
| and you could trip over it repeatedly without breaking it, so
| it was very well designed for a typical 8 year old.
|
| I didn't have the erector set, but plenty of lego. The technics
| stuff had come out and I built all sorts of stuff with it. I
| remember getting this http://technicopedia.com/853.html which
| was released in 1977 for christmas.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > My favorite "make stuff toys" of the 70's were my Erector set
| and Lego set
|
| The Legos I had in the 70s did not have any mini figures (did
| they exist in the US at that time? None of my friends had any
| either) and there parts were only a few standard sizes as I
| recall (no small ones like today). I don't even remember "kits"
| so much as "here's a bunch of Legos, go build something" like
| another version of blocks of Lincoln Logs.
|
| Did you actually have kits with build instructions that came
| with the kit?
| egypturnash wrote:
| Wikipedia says the modern "minifigure" appeared in 1978, with
| a simpler, more abstract precursor without movable limbs
| showing up in 1975.
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| Matches my experience - first kit I got with minifigs was
| the #575 coast guard station which various sites say was
| released in 1978.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| I believe I saw small Legos kits as a kid in the 70s, but I
| certainly didn't have any of that. As you say, we had just a
| bucket of legos bricks.
|
| What I really liked to do with them is to make all kinds of
| all-terrain trucks with lots of wheels and stuff. This was
| all just from imagination, and they I came up with fresh
| designs every time.
|
| I really don't understand what people do these days, with
| kits that are supposed to be assembled just so. I mean, I get
| that people like to build scale models, but why not just do
| _that_? With lego, it 's not going to look like the real
| thing anyway, so why not use it for your own expression?
| JackFr wrote:
| Girders and Panels
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girder_and_Panel_building_sets
| LanceH wrote:
| Just got that for my youngest a couple years ago, there is
| a modern version, not changed much. It's still fun.
| jpmattia wrote:
| > _My favorite "make stuff toys" of the 70's were my Erector
| set and Lego set of course._
|
| I can't resist telling this story: As a little kid, I could not
| figure out why my erector set was so superior to all of my
| friends' kits. I finally asked my parents about it: My
| grandfather worked for AC Gilbert as a tool and die maker, and
| he made a lot of the original tooling for the erector set. (We
| had the original big red metal box filled with pieces (from the
| 30s?), and another cardboard box with the overflow.)
|
| We also had a killer American Flyer train set (also an AC
| Gilbert product), and the Lead Castor kit: Molten lead for
| kids! Hard to imagine in the current age.
| https://picclick.com/Vintage-Ac-Gilbert-Kaster-Kit-Furnace-T...
|
| Fortunately, we did not have the Gilbert Atomic Energy Kit. I
| probably lost enough brain cells on the lead.
| defen wrote:
| > Fortunately, we did not have the Gilbert Atomic Energy Kit.
|
| I assumed this was a joke but I googled it in the off-chance
| that it wasn't, and I'm glad I did. https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_La...
| floucky wrote:
| Looks a bit dangerous haha: https://youtu.be/yIs8JLvz3Lk?t=181
| LanceH wrote:
| The toy I got the most out of was a giant set of tinker toys. The
| were solid enough to be the structure for blanket forts. They
| were hollow, so we would use them in our sandbox as pipes between
| the water features.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| I had one of these! Have not thought about it much since then,
| before today.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Since we're talking about cool toys from back in the day, let me
| ask if anybody can help me with something. I had a cool toy back
| in the late 70's, early 80's, and I'd occasionally like to
| mention it or refer to it (or maybe even indulge nostalgia and
| try to find one on ebay to buy) but I can't remember what it was
| called.
|
| Does anybody remember something like this: a wheeled toy that I
| vaguely recall had stylings something like a tank or an APC or
| something - or maybe one of those weird vehicles from Damnation
| Alley[1] - but with a bunch of buttons on top with numbers and
| directional arrows. You could "program" the thing to roam around
| on its own by pushing a sequence of directional arrows and
| numbers. It was something like "Go forward 5 units, turn left, go
| 4 units", etc. I don't even know now what distance units it used,
| or if the speed was programmable. Once you programmed it there
| was a "Go" button that would send it off on its little adventure
| crawling around the living room (and promptly getting stuck under
| the TV stand or something, but that's neither here nor there).
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film)
| klyrs wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak ?
|
| edit: oh boy, relevant patents are expired, there's a hacker
| community and everything. This looks like a delightful rabbit
| hole.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Hah! Yes, that's it. Thank you!
|
| _oh boy, relevant patents are expired, there 's a hacker
| community and everything._
|
| It would be fun to build a modern version of this, with an
| Arduino or Rpi or something providing the "brains", and with
| some input sensors (ultrasonic distance sensor, camera, etc).
| But instead of just having the input buttons on top, you
| could also program it over the network (or USB) using a real
| programming language.
|
| I guess that wouldn't be much different though, than some of
| the other low-end experimental robotics platforms that are
| out there?
| madengr wrote:
| pxndxx wrote:
| Yeah, it sounds a lot like Lego Mindstorms.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I always wanted a Mindstorms set, but somehow have never
| gotten around to acquiring one. One of these days...
| Wistar wrote:
| Today there are the Programming Journey Robots from
| Terrapin. My spouse uses the simplest, the Bee-Bot, in her
| kindergarten classroom. She wrote a grant to get about 15
| of them. They use Terrapin's Logo and are much loved by her
| students.
|
| https://www.terrapinlogo.com/products/robots.html
| [deleted]
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| J Bull Electrical in England used to sell "Big Trak
| Gearboxes", the little plastic gearboxes with two motors, for
| a few pounds for *years*. For all I know they still do. Their
| website is as full of bizarre stuff as their magazine ads
| used to be - from random bags of components to Sinclair C5
| motors to the aforementioned gearboxes to Chinese Army air
| rifles which were so powerful you needed a firearms cert for
| them even back in the comparatively lax 1980s!
|
| I'm glad to see they're still on the go. Their adverts in
| Wireless World and Television were a great source of wonder
| for my geeky friends and I when I was at school some 30-odd
| years ago, and finding they're still as batshit as ever has
| cheered me up no end.
|
| Now I wonder if Display Electronics ever shifted those 9"
| bare chassis Microvitec colour monitors from National Air
| Traffic Control, or indeed their deactivated heat-seeking
| missiles?
| mindcrime wrote:
| Is this the same place?
|
| https://www.bullybeef.co.uk/
|
| If so, they remind me a bit of outfits like American
| Science & Surplus, or Electronics Goldmine. Real eclectic
| collection of bizarre and weird stuff. :-)
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| That's the one. Mad, isn't it? They used to take out
| full-page ads with their surplus electronics and air
| rifles and bike tyres and ghods alone know what else.
| mgsouth wrote:
| The Contents sidebar has a category for "CARNIVEROUS".
|
| Edit: Also "NUCLEAR", "PUB GAMES", "RADIOSONDE", and of
| course "FART BOMBS".
|
| Curse you GP, for another rabbit hole.
|
| Edit edit: Oh and "TRUTH".
|
| Edit3: One more and I'll stop: "water resistant alarm
| chrono digital watches with built in refillable gas
| lighter!"
| Cerium wrote:
| Was it Big Trak? [1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak
| mindcrime wrote:
| Yep. Thanks!
| 6581 wrote:
| > Does anybody remember something like this
|
| This? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak
| mindcrime wrote:
| Nailed it, thanks!
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Big Trak? That's the big one I recall.
|
| I think there was a knock-off one that was vaguely similar.
| mindcrime wrote:
| That's the one. Man, I loved that thing back in the day. :-)
| incanus77 wrote:
| I got one of these a few months back at a vintage store for
| $15. The owner couldn't pay me to take it off his hands -- he
| reduced the price from $20 as soon as I expressed interest.
|
| It works wonderfully! Once I rounded up a ton of D-cell
| batteries...
|
| It has the pull-behind trailer, which is a genius design. The
| hitch pin is also a TRS plug which transfers the signal from
| the tank to dump the trailer. It also allows the tank to do a
| complete 360 while towing, since the hitch reaches out and
| over, then down, to the center of the tank.
|
| The whole thing is just a brilliant piece of engineering and
| represents, as far as I can tell, the first fairly affordable
| "AI" home toy.
|
| Pic of it on my shelf: https://imgur.com/a/5JLoXoJ
| bitexploder wrote:
| For grown ups, get yourself a 110V MIG welder and just start
| sticking metal together. It is a surprisingly fun and accessible
| hobby with tremendous practical applications.
| causi wrote:
| It can be a huge pain if you don't have a source of known alloy
| pieces, though. When you don't know what material you have
| finding the middle ground between something that's barely held
| together and blowing holes in it can be surprisingly difficult
| as an amateur.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _if you don 't have a source of known alloy pieces_
|
| If you happen to have a high-school or community college
| nearby with a welding program, it would probably be
| productive to ask one of the instructors there where they
| source their practice material. When I was in high-school I
| think most of ours came from Horton Iron & Metal[1], the
| local scrap metal recycling firm. Probably many areas have
| something similar?
|
| [1]: https://www.hortoniron.com/
| johnwalkr wrote:
| Any big box hardware store has a handful of steel sheet and
| L-sections, and a store called "Metal Supermarkets" is pretty
| common throughout North America which will stock anything a
| hobbyist welder could dream of, order whatever they don't
| have, cut to length, etc. There's cheaper, better sources but
| they are not always accessible to a walk-in shopper with a
| hand sketch.
| mcguire wrote:
| For practice, most welding suppliers/metal shops have a bin
| full of mild steel scraps and cut-offs that they may even
| let you have for free. (The one I went to even gave me a
| box for them.)
| mikewarot wrote:
| Don't weld anything with chromium in/on it, it'll kill you!
| [deleted]
| bitexploder wrote:
| Well... yeah, do your research, it has non-trivial dangers to
| it. :) Definitely start with mild steel and or aluminum.
| Stainless steel is something you would graduate to with
| correct PPE (fume extractors, adequate respirators, etc.)
| mikewarot wrote:
| It's much safer for everyone if you lead with metaphorical
| truth, let them find the details later. Humans are horrible
| at estimating danger. It's much better to be precautious.
|
| All guns are loaded --- metaphorically true (I.E. you live
| longer if you act like it's always true)
| tgflynn wrote:
| I grew up during the 70's and was an avid reader of the toy
| section of the Sear's catalog (until they stopped sending them
| for free) but somehow I never heard of this kind of toy.
| david927 wrote:
| Same here. I find it a little funny that I'm 54 now and when I
| was watching the video of the ad I was thinking, "That's so
| COOL!!"
| euroderf wrote:
| Yes, the Sears Wish Book. A veritable gold mine of toy desire.
| For years I meticulously crafted lists of wants for my parents
| to process (or not).
| hansword wrote:
| > would spin the rivet to about 11,000,343 RPM
|
| I just checked with the datasheet of a current commercial spin
| welder.[0] The rpm's given on the datasheet are 500 to 2500. I
| think the author might have slightly exaggerated the capabilities
| of their 1970s toy for effect.
|
| [0] https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-
| welder.pd...
| kurthr wrote:
| Maybe those are European decimal commas? I mean... it's a
| ludicrous number with artificial specificity so I just
| interpreted it as a kazillion.
|
| I doubt the motor was capable of 1000rpm and it certainly
| wouldn't be necessary.
| eCa wrote:
| If they were decimal commas there would only be one of them,
| same as with decimal dots.
|
| In other words, I agree with your kazillion interpretation...
| userbinator wrote:
| Based on the size and shape of the tool I'm guessing it's a
| brushed DC motor, which in that size can easily achieve
| several kRPM --- unloaded, that is. When it's actually being
| used to do the work of melting the plastic, probably below
| 1kRPM.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Things were more relaxed back then.
|
| This is really well worth seeing, pharao's serpent
| <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQdK7gaZS0k>. Some of it even
| looks like CGI but it's not.
|
| Pharao's serpent when lit gives of vapours of metallic
| (elemental) mercury. In some youtube vids you can even see some
| of it condensing on the glass of the enclosure.
|
| You could buy this stuff over the counter at joke shops back then
| and I did. The instructions said "windows and doors should be
| opened wide". People complain about health and safety regs now,
| but...
|
| Edit: seriously, if you've never seen this before, watch the vid
| zdragnar wrote:
| I'm a bit disappointed in myself for how long I spent watching
| that video thinking "this looks a lot like a NileRed video"
| before realizing that yes, it is in fact NileRed
| smm11 wrote:
| Had one. It's a toss-up whether I burned myself more with that,
| or with the woodburner kit.
| drcongo wrote:
| Kinda wish I could load the page to see what this is, but
| apparently there's enough dodgy trackers on there that the page
| completely fails if you have them blocked.
| rmetzler wrote:
| Here is a YouTube Link to the commercial which was embedded in
| the post. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PnWpcwnR2YA
| drcongo wrote:
| Thank you! Now I want one.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yes you do. For a toy, it had many practical applications.
| And it's fun to use.
| whartung wrote:
| Yea, we had all the fun toys back then.
|
| Creepy Crawlers, where you poured Goop(tm) in to metal molds, and
| cooked them into bugs and lizards and skulls and what not.
|
| The Mattel Vacuform, which you could use to make plastic models.
| You heated up styrene sheets and folded them over molds. I think
| we had some army missile truck mold set. I think this toy was a
| bit advanced for us. Molding was easy, assembly -- not so much.
|
| We also had the Hot Wheels Factory, which was an injection mold
| system to make rubber cars. It was nice because you could carve
| up the cars you made and feed them back in the machine and melt
| them back down.
|
| Then there were the Erector Sets, Toggles, Legos, Tinker Toys,
| Lincoln Logs. We also had a zillion feet of Hot Wheels track. It
| didn't hurt living in El Segundo, with the Mattel factory store
| very nearby in Hawthorne.
|
| My brother and I managed to make through our 5-10 years while
| maintaining all of our fingers, toes, limbs, and avoiding skin
| grafts. I think we did little damage to the floor (we always
| played on the floor, never on a table). We may have scorched a
| carpet here to there.
|
| Yup, good times indeed!
|
| All that said, kids changes, toys change. I remember buying some
| castle toy set for some friends young boys (4-6) for Christmas.
| It was a step up of from "Fisher Price" detail. Had horses and
| soldiers, and big castle.
|
| I honestly have never seen anyone so excited to receive something
| (well, maybe my wife when I gave her that ring thing). They were
| just bouncing up and down. This was a hot ticket toy and I
| bumbled into. As a kid, I might have enjoyed something like that.
| We had our GI Joes and Major Matt Mason stuff. But, I don't think
| these kids were missing out much on not having toys that had open
| heating elements.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| The best toy was those plastic rockets that you would fill with
| water, then attach a pump and pump them with air to absurdly
| high pressures before launching. The idea was to launch them
| vertically and they would land nearby, but if you launched them
| at a 45 degree angle they'd go over 100 yards. Absolutely
| insane.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Still availible on amazon. I bought one last xmass. They also
| make adult-class versions with metal fittings to connect air
| compressors.
| incanus77 wrote:
| One time, I did not heed the advice to not over-pump one of
| these. I was kneeling in the grass, pumping it up. I remember
| seeing it, then in the next moment, the rocket disappeared in
| an instant and everything went quiet. I realized it exploded,
| probably with a very loud noise, and it took me a few hours
| for sound to come back and the ringing to subside. Luckily I
| didn't lose an eye (though I did wear glasses, which probably
| helped).
| philote wrote:
| Hah, for some reason I stood over one of these once and got
| a rocket in the eye. Fortunately I only got a few
| scratches... on my eyeball. I'm guessing it went off
| prematurely and wasn't near full pressure.
| euroderf wrote:
| Creepy Crawlers were the plastic-ey one. But then there were
| Incredible Edibles. Same idea but you could chow them down.
| Ghastly fluorescent flavors. Made of who the heck knows what.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Was talking about this with my friend's grandmother just last
| night.
|
| Easy bake ovens even, so much fun!
|
| Then one kids does something stupid and of course the parents
| blame and sue the companies and now here we are.
|
| Caution small parts, don't put in mouth, hot, et al.
|
| One idiot ruins it for the rest, as always =(
|
| Im so glad to find these videos so I can show my kids what fun
| we used to have w/o cell phones =)
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Hundreds of kids got their hands lodged in Easy Bake Ovens,
| many got serious burns, and one child had part of a finger
| amputated. Hasbro still sells Easy Bake Ovens; they've just
| been redesigned so that your five year old doesn't have to be
| removed from it with a bone saw.
|
| https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2007/new-easy-bake-oven-
| recall-...
|
| https://easybake.hasbro.com/en-us/product/easy-bake-
| ultimate...
| effingwewt wrote:
| And kids 100 years ago lived handling guns from a young age
| and lived dangerously.
|
| It gets worse the further back in time you go.
|
| Aside from the stupid product that hurts people like 'The
| Cornballer', it's still stupid people doing and allowing
| stupid things that stops us all from having good things.
| All of society has to cater to the few stupid people every
| time.
|
| Those were parent's fault for not teaching or supervising
| children.
|
| We grew up with easy bake ovens, we knew the dangers. We
| also had the creepy crawler molds and ovens. We knew better
| than to eat playdoh, we knew not to ingest 'slime'. Yet
| still stupid people did it. Wasn't the product's fault.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| And how many adolescents and adults avoided later kitchen
| accidents because of childhood Easy Bake Oven accidents?
|
| (Said as someone who stuck a paperclip in an electric
| socket as a child)
| objectivetruth wrote:
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I don't know, how many?
|
| Notably, US electric sockets have been redesigned so that
| children can't stick paperclips into them anymore.
| They've been required since 2008:
| https://www.esfi.org/what-is-a-tamper-resistant-
| receptacle/
|
| But maybe they should've been left as-is so adolescents
| and adults wouldn't lick bare 220v wires.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _I don 't know, how many?_
|
| More than 2,280 per year? At a cost of 12 child
| fatalities. [0]
|
| And I'm aware of expanding electrical code requirements,
| every time I have to deal with a tamper-resistant outlet
| or AFCI over-exuberance with an unhappy motor. Or spill-
| proof gas can nozzles.
|
| My point being -- there's a optimal balance between
| efficiency and safety, and it's not "zero accidents,
| ever."
|
| And you quip, but getting a 120v pop as a kid certainly
| made me respect thoroughness in ensuring circuits and
| components are depowered before work and being extremely
| careful working on live wires.
|
| Absent my "accident" I would not have had that caution,
| and the consequences working on subsequent higher-amp
| systems would have been more serious.
|
| [0] https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-
| and-risks/...
| trhway wrote:
| In USSR we didn't have much of all that, so we melted lead out
| of batteries and sea cables found at the dump and poured it
| into various hand shaped clay/sand molds thus making us toy
| cars, soldiers, etc. We didn't have guns, even airsoft weren't
| available, so we had to do it ourselves, and the first
| primitive fire handgun i made in the first grade. A bit later i
| made my first airsoft and crossbow. The explosives, handmade as
| well as various unexploded WWII munitions, was a fun period i
| went through in the 5th and 6th grade. That was the end of the
| toys period for me as other interests came in.
| robocat wrote:
| Melting lead in a can over a open coke fire: bliss!
|
| We did learn you shouldn't pour lead into an old bullet
| casing/cartridge: some residual gunpowder or primer blew
| molten lead everywhere. The splatters lasted on the roof
| until the house was sold much later. Christchurch, New
| Zealand, so not rural or nothing.
| skavi wrote:
| Was lead really so fun? It seems everyone was playing with it
| before it started being regulated.
| trhway wrote:
| Lead is a kind of sweetspot - easily available, it is a
| metal at room temperature and has low melting temperature.
| Probably tin (less available) and aluminum (higher
| temperature) would be the close contenders.
| robocat wrote:
| Zinc? 420deg Celsius. (Tin 232deg)
|
| Japanese Repairman #9 (from a wonderful series) shows a
| man restoring one of his own vegetable (Daikon?) graters:
| he resurfaces the copper with a molten metal, any idea
| which? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mzOeKoYW6EQ
| trhway wrote:
| That is ancient classic - it is naturally for bronze
| (copper + tin) to be resurfaced with tin.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yup, I did the same - except instead of pouring them into
| molds, I'd pour them into a cup of water, making "jewelry" as
| the lead solidified into droplet shapes.
|
| Never got into home-made explosives, as I'd moved to Texas by
| the time I was ten; we did try to make napalm and hydrogen,
| but never too successfully.
| philsnow wrote:
| > I remember buying some castle toy set for some friends young
| boys (4-6) for Christmas. It was a step up of from "Fisher
| Price" detail. Had horses and soldiers, and big castle.
|
| Was it Schleich, by any chance?
| jansan wrote:
| 11,000,343 RPM is a lot!
| olyjohn wrote:
| I was gonna ask... is that for real? How does it spin up to 11
| MILLION RPM? That seems crazy.
| mlyle wrote:
| It's a joke. The sig figs at the end is a clue, along with
| complete physical implausibility.
|
| ((1 mm)^2) * 1 gram * (((183 339 * 2 * pi) / second)^2) = 1
| 326.99551 joules
|
| It would have 1300J of rotational energy if there was only 1
| gram of spinning mass at 1 mm distance.
| chowells wrote:
| Not just the sigfigs, the juxtaposition of the word "about"
| with the excessive sigfigs. Combining a word indicating
| imprecision with excessive sigfigs is a very common
| American idiom to convey exaggeration. (Probably other
| places too, but I don't have firsthand experience with
| them.)
| jansan wrote:
| Richt, that needs further investiagation, Almost seems to be
| made up by the author.
| hansword wrote:
| Normal rpm's for a spin welder are <3000.
|
| Datasheet:
| https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-
| welder.pd...
| failrate wrote:
| Neat, I have seen people doing something similar with a rotary
| tool and a straight length of 3D printing stock.
| ddingus wrote:
| I got one of these as a kid and used the crap out of it!
|
| I was that kid who wanted toys that did actual stuff. This toy
| was one of those. Kept it for years to fix that odd plastic
| problem. When I ran out of the little rods, I remember trying
| every polymer I could find, until I found some little sticks that
| worked in a similar way.
| blueflow wrote:
| You can buy actual welding equipment and a angle grinder on eBay.
| There are YouTube videos to learn the basics.
|
| The caveat is that you need a lot of protection to not harm/kill
| yourself:
|
| - Eye-Protection so the welder doesn't burn out your eyes
|
| - Long clothes so you don't get irradiated/sunburn from the
| welder
|
| - Welding gloves so sparks don't burn into your skin
|
| - Protective Glasses in case the disc of the angle grinder
| explodes
|
| - Ear protection because the angle grinder is loud enough to
| permanently damage your ears
|
| Aside from that, its an awesome toy and allows you to fix quite
| some things. And other people automatically assume you are doing
| _serious_ work, even when you are just fucking around.
|
| Its not suitable for kids in case you were looking for that.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| And ventilation (I was told this contributed to Steve Mc
| Queen's early death).
|
| I had an angle grinder disc shatter on me and one piece took a
| huge gouge out of a wooden toolbox I had built. I am afraid of
| angle grinders now.
| auxym wrote:
| Yeah, a full faceshield is definitely advisable when using
| grinders. Powerful tools not to be taken lightly.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Another one of the most deceptively dangerous tools is the
| humble router.
|
| Basically anything that spins at a high RPM is one loose
| t-shirt away from strangling you and embedding itself into
| your fleshy bits.
| mwigdahl wrote:
| Absolutely! I snapped a router bit off by being a bit too
| aggressive in the engineering shop at university. I'm still
| thankful it didn't injure any of the several other people
| in the room; it could have been very damaging coming off at
| a different angle.
| euroderf wrote:
| A buddy has a wood shop and one time after a router spun
| down, one of the bits had gone missing. Undoubtedly lodged
| in a wood roofing element somewhere, but at least it did
| not go thru anyone.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Also the humble rotary (Dremel style) tool. I was doing
| some work with mine yesterday and - in a moment of
| complacency - actually had the tool bit make contact with
| the surface I was working on for a second or two before I
| realized "shit, I'm not wearing safety glasses." I shut it
| down and grabbed my safety glasses pronto. I'm not exactly
| a "safety nazi" on this stuff, but some things just make
| too much sense to _not_ do. And even a rotary tool can send
| shards slamming into your eyes or something that could cost
| you your vision. :-(
| muwtyhg wrote:
| It's always worth 15 seconds of time to find and put on
| the safety glasses for a lifetime of having both working
| eyes. I'd ruminate over "if I had just found my safety
| glasses" for the rest of my life if something flew off
| what I was working on and destroyed one of my eyes.
|
| Same with ear protection. It's not worth being deaf (or
| even partially deaf) to get a job done 15 seconds faster.
| otikik wrote:
| I am not an expert, but I seem to remember welders have higher
| power requirements than other tools and home appliances, with a
| specialized socket (the voltages and plug shapes seem to vary
| from region to region - these ones tend to have 3 pins instead
| of the "usual" two). You might already have such an outlet if
| you have used other heavy duty tools in your garage, but most
| people don't.
| blueflow wrote:
| Im german, so the 3 pin socket is already the default. You
| can't do many things without protective earthing.
| otikik wrote:
| Yeah, yeah. And so do the British. That is why I used
| quotes. Socket shapes and characteristics change with
| geography. You might still need a socket that looks
| different than the "usual wall sockets that you find at
| home" for powering a welder.
| giardini wrote:
| Learn to braze first and you may never need to make the
| investment of time/money/(right hand) learning to weld.
|
| Brazing is more flexible, requires less expensive, less complex
| gear and considerably less training.
| mindcrime wrote:
| What heat source do you use for your brazing? The only
| brazing I've ever done was with an oxy-acetylene torch, which
| isn't the most convenient thing in the world to work with.
| Mostly the part about needing an industrial welding supply
| place or something to rent bottles from.
|
| MIG welding with a self-feeding wire welder can also be a
| little bit easier in the sense of not requiring combined
| dexterity between both hands simultaneously, which is
| something that doesn't come naturally to everybody. That
| said, if one can learn to solder, they can probably learn to
| braze.
| mallomarmeasle wrote:
| Brings back pleasant memories. I certainly loved the one I had as
| a child. I can still smell the _almost_ burning plastic that the
| device created in operation.
| chiph wrote:
| Friction stir welding is still a thing.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUyLHQxRHKo
| WJW wrote:
| Famously used by SpaceX to weld (some parts of) their rockets
| together without having heat affecting the strength of the
| material.
| elil17 wrote:
| Not really a "SpaceX" thing - it's been used on the Space
| Shuttle and many spacecraft since then. Also boats, cars,
| planes, etc. Heck, iMacs have used it since 2012.
| WJW wrote:
| You are entirely right of course, I didn't mean that it was
| a SpaceX-exclusive process or anything. It's just where I
| heard about it first and I would bet it is the most high-
| profile application currently in use. :)
| akavel wrote:
| Another one that I found more informative:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euO-LIkew8o
| herendin wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://toytales.ca/spinwelder-from-mattel-1974/
|
| https://3dprint.com/16023/friction-filling-3d-prints/amp/
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Still a pretty common technique if you need to weld together a
| couple 3D printed PLA pieces, since there isn't really a great
| glue for that purpose.
| causi wrote:
| Trying to spinweld two prints together seems like a huge pain
| when you could just get a $35 3D-pen and load your filament
| into it.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Epoxy
| EamonnMR wrote:
| CA won't glue PLA?
| somebodynew wrote:
| Cyanoacrylate works on PLA, but PLA is notably not amenable
| to solvent welding or smoothing with household supplies
| compared to the ease with which ABS/ASA (acetone) or PVB
| (isopropyl alcohol) pieces can be fused together.
|
| It is marginally possible to fuse pieces of PLA together
| using ethyl acetate (sold to consumers as "acetone-free nail
| polish remover" or "MEK substitute"), but this is not nearly
| as accessible, effective, or reliable compared to other
| plastics.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| I get nostalgic for some of the toys I had during the late 70s
| and 80s too, but really, I am super jealous, if that's the right
| word, of my kids for the toys available to them. Toys today are
| superior in nearly every way to toys from my childhood.
|
| I would have KILLED for some of the robotics and electronics kits
| that are widespread today.
| criddell wrote:
| On the other hand, chemistry sets of the 1970's were pretty
| great.
| euroderf wrote:
| I had an A.C. Gilbert set. It had a lump of sulfur that I lit
| with a match, and then leaned over and took a big snork.
| OUCH! I learned respect for unknown chemical phenomena.
| ansible wrote:
| I also had one of these. I think I completed one of the designs
| included in the kit, but it broke apart relatively quickly. As
| alluded to in the article, it was relatively easy to make a
| surface weld that didn't penetrate far into those little black
| plastic I-beams from the kit. From what I recall, the "welding
| rods" in the kit were the same ABS plastic that the I-beams were.
| I've got to wonder if a slightly harder plastic (or with a higher
| melting point) for the rods themselves would have worked better.
|
| Years later, I built another dragster from the Lego Technic 853
| Car Chassis and the steering from the 854 Go-Kart.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| I don't really remember this, although I'm about the same age as
| the author. I do remember Riviton, which was similar but had
| reusable rubber rivets that you stretched lengthwise with the
| "riveting" tool, then released, whereupon the rivet would return
| to its original width, holding the bond in place until removed
| with the same tool.
|
| Unfortunately the rivets turned out to be a choking hazard (two
| children died) and it was recalled (though I kept my set):
|
| https://toytales.ca/riviton-from-parker-brothers-1977/
| aj7 wrote:
| My No. 6-1/2 Gilbert Erector set. Got it for Hanukkah about 62
| years ago. The smallest set that still had the full electric
| engine, a plug-in motor with a gearbox fully assembled to it.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| There were some very weird toys in the 70s. I recall an actual
| injection molder (not the "Thingmaker", that was just heating
| thermoplastic) that could be used to make small soldiers that
| smelled vaguely of dog excrement. It had a hopper that you filled
| with pellets of some kind of polymer, and a plunger that injected
| melted polymer into a mold. I coveted this one. I haven't been
| able to find anything on this one, due to information camouflage:
| all I can google up is references to injection molded toys, and
| companies that do injection molding. The toy I'm remembering had
| you doing the injection molding yourself.
|
| There was also the Mattel Strange Change:
| https://flashbak.com/youll-burn-your-fingers-remembering-mat...
|
| Just like the "Thingmaker", everyone burned themselves on this
| one.
| buescher wrote:
| My search led right to this discussion:
| https://ask.metafilter.com/114668/vintage-injection-molding-...
|
| The Kenner Electric Mold Master sounds like what you remember.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I think that's what I remember based on the illustration of
| the kid working the injector. I vaguely recall that the
| soldiers could be made with a wire skeleton, making them
| posable. Smelled moderately bad.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| Toys with similar functionality to the Strange Change exist
| today, only they're made from polymers that expand upon
| absorbing water. Some are packaged in literal capsules - the
| pharmaceutical kind.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/05p85hp
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Close, but the Strange Change machine had a vise. You'd
| reheat the monster until it was rubbery, then cram it into
| the vise and squeeze it back into a square lozenge. Let it
| cool, and it stayed a square. They only lasted maybe 5 cycles
| before they didn't keep the square shape.
| teekert wrote:
| Looks cool, but I can't help thinking about how the
| plasticizers in stuff like that helped reduce male fertility to
| the 50% we see today compared to the 70's (yes, I know, we sit
| around all day too, and there are many more causes, just saying
| perhaps there is a reason this is not distributed like this
| anymore).
| bze12 wrote:
| I'd love to know what that injection molding toy was if you
| ever figure it out. There's still a Crayola crayon maker toy
| which forms molds from heated crayon wax. Not as intense as
| actual injection molding though
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Crayola-03-9000-Crayon-Maker/dp/B0029...
| shitloadofbooks wrote:
| The 90s had something similar (but made to 90s safety standards
| so a little more boring).
|
| It was centipedes and the like made out of a rubbery material
| that you melted into moulds.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| > information camouflage
|
| Ooh, a term for a relatable problem, apparently coined
| yesterday by this blog post,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32241020
|
| "when piece of information A has a name similar to another,
| very different, much more popular piece B. This makes searching
| for A difficult because you always get results for B instead."
|
| (Wow, _Yandex_ was what found the HN submission, not Bing or
| Google, in whose results it was ironically camouflaged by other
| consecutive uses of the two words)
| itintheory wrote:
| I've used this premise along with a small piece of 3d printer
| filament in a rotary tool to weld plastic parts together. It
| works!
| elif wrote:
| I was a 90's kid and got whatever the 90's version of this was
| called. It had a long "welding stick" that I'd wear down past nub
| to get the max out of.
|
| To this day, the melting plastic smell gives me nostalgia
| vibes... Probably not the healthiest in hindsight.
| randomifcpfan wrote:
| That is a cool toy. The 70s had some great toys. But IMO the
| coolest 70s Christmas gifts were video game consoles and early
| home computers.
| walterbell wrote:
| Modern version, via Dremel or similar rotary tool,
| https://makezine.com/2015/04/30/turn-dremel-tool-plastic-wel... &
| https://makezine.com/projects/skill-builder-finishing-and-po...
| [deleted]
| bluedino wrote:
| Modern version:
|
| https://youtu.be/-aEuAK8bsQg
| postalrat wrote:
| Nah, that's been around since the 60s.
| b3morales wrote:
| Another interesting demo on Hackaday:
| https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/make-your-own-plastic-fricti...
| Ensorceled wrote:
| My brother won some kind of contest from Mattel in the 70's and
| got a GIANT 8' stocking full of Mattel products. It contained the
| Spinwelder, which was incredible.
|
| It also included the Vertibird helicopter (mentioned in another
| thread), Big Jim Ski Jump and also the Big Jim sky commander play
| set, SSP smash up derby, a couple of barbie things that went to
| my sister and a bunch of other stuff I forget.
|
| It was the most awesome Christmas imaginable for an 8 year old
| and a 10 year old.
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