As someone who works in a plastic parts plant... In the industrial section... as the resident sonic welding expert, I can tell you that you don't really want 40kHz for most applications. 20kHz is the general frequency we go for. Also, 160uM deflection at the tip, for most applications. Finally the real welders usually have three parts: A transducer, followed by a booster (which has a mass on each end, with a shock mounted ring at the central node,) and finally the horn on bottom side of that. Pressure is usually 25-75 PSI, erring to the low side, with a weld time of ~0.3-1 second. Feel free to message for more info!
The truth of the matter is that regardless of the success of the welding process the success of this video making 13,048 people laugh is priceless : ) Thanks Tony.
To be able to weld, you need transverse vibrations. I recently stumbled on the schematic of the welder to weld tabs on battery cells, and it was designed at such: a vertical rod was pressed down on the tab to be weld on the battery, and the ultrasonic actuator was attached via its horn perpendicular to the rod, it's other end attached to the frame of the machine. The result: the tip of the rod was vibrating horizontally, with a 2x amplification due to its positioning mid-rod, and the vertical pressure was not going through the transducer but straight through the rod. (Also a small stepped down insert screwed at the end of your horn would allow you to have a correct way to hold the nuts/inserts square during insertion, you would need to have one for every size of insert to weld, though)
Yes, I was also thinking you need "in plane" vibrations for the welding to work because you need to have friction between the two surfaces. Also why don't you just put a small bolt in the "insert", this way you have flat surface to push on and also no plastic can move up in the center.
Ultrasonic welding is a form of friction welding. The 2 parts have to slide against each other to generate the welding heat. The ultrasonic exciter is teed into the horn as stated above. The nuts going into plastic was more like an ultrasonic jackhammer.
Ok, I wasn't crazy. This is exactly what I remembered of ultrasonic welding. I think that Tony deserves another go at this with the proper design. I think this is my favorite video series on this channel to date, and that is saying a whole hell of a lot!
Tony, where I work our daily job (for 14 years so far) is untrasonic welding transmission vent caps for GM cars. When welding, you need to tune your horn for each specific part and part material. You also need quite a high energy, and a high compression pressure. You need a much higher powered transducer. While super cool and probably very useful, those nuts did not weld to the plastic. They basically got jackhammered into place.
Hi. I am a mechancal engineer, and if you could I would really apreciate if you tell me with which kind of ultrasonic welding machine are you using. I need some information where to buy industrial machines but havent had much information about this topic so far.
I used to work for Dart Sensors in UK, they use ultrasonic welding to seal their gas sensors, they are plastic with a small press like setup, similar to what Tony did with the drill press.. the plastic is held by a very snug fitting aluminium dye, the whole welding process is about 2 seconds, im not sure of the frequency the machine used....
Washers for retaining the ultrasonic radiator - are made of spring steel. In Russia, it is a steel grade 65S2VA, you have a steel grade 60SiCR7, or something similar. The Chinese use high-carbon secondary heat, its strength is sufficient for the life of the product. Spring steel is needed for a reason, sound waves have minimal damping in this steel grade. You need a stable oscillatory system, without loss of heat. The easiest way to see how industrial cutters are arranged is simply metal - its shape can be repeated even from the picture. And this form is different from what you have. Pay attention to the device driver emitter. He does not have a fixed frequency !!! It simply reacts to the load, and gives the maximum current with a phase delay of 45 degrees. Resonance frequency is obtained automatically! You do not need to interfere with his work, he is almost perfect. And yet, take care of your hands. Bones are destroyed under the influence of ultrasound, very imperceptibly !!!
Far be it for me to give you advice, but I was sitting here watching, saying, "Hold the nut with a wrench." over and over. You must not have heard me...
You know for a fact that every electronic thing in the world is operated by magic smoke... whenever the smoke comes out of them, they are done for! (love your channel!)
Yes, for those who didn't know, voltage measurement devices are sensitive to high voltages. Especially with 1x probes. This is one of many reasons I always use 10x probes. My other best advice is to make a scope saver with a pair of zener diodes in inverse series to make a voltage limiter. It will not save you every time, but it can prevent disaster and maybe even be used to make an isolation switch for your scope.
Here is a guess. You know that piezo effect that makes BBQ lighters spark when the crystal is struck with a hammer? A piezo crystal can produce thousands of volts when struck. Perhaps this piezo element was getting squeeze when it was rattling between the horn and anvil, Producing a stray voltage .
On the close up of the smaller nuts you definitely see some fluid movment of the plastic. I guess it shows a super efficient transfer of energy from the vibration of the nut to a thin layer of the plastic. Brilliant process.
Ultrasonic welding?? That's the mark of the beast!! I grew up in a time when, if something went wrong with the "appliance" [kitchen, music, automotive, related, etc..] we could simply grab a Philips screwdriver, take the [steel, bake-a-lite or plastic] cover off and replace or fix the broken part. Enter ultrasonic welding and the age of, [because you can't open it up]"throw it away and buy a new one". I recently replaced the "door lock actuator" in my wife's Honda Accord. The part cost $40 bucks and took about 2 hours [my first attempt to do this one]. I was able to open the "broken" actuator and inspect it. All it needed was a new micro switch... at a cost of 55 cents. The Honda dealer quoted my wife $120. 120 bucks for what is actually a 55 cent fix that cost me 40 bucks. Ultrasonic welding is fun and interesting... if you work for the devil LOL
You are missing somethings in here, its simple thing, its people need to earn the salary and just because it could be fixed with 55cent part it does not mean that labor to replace the part is worth 25cents, and when you consider that dealer has to hire people to fix cars and provide some sort of warranty on their work it would be just waste of mechanics time and your money to replace this 55cent part instead of whole assembly. It is really sad when people like you who just don see any worth in other people work, and start downplaying and making others look bad just because they ask money for the job. Man you probably would start screaming if they fixed the car with 55cents part and took 150usd from you for the job.
Alvydas, .... c'mon, it's not meant as my MBA thesis. It's a tongue-in-cheek view from the perspective of someone born in 1957, seeing, living the changes in manufacturing. Of course, there are labor charges, shipping charges [of the parts delivered], business fees associated with operating a 'brick & mortar' business, especially the size of an auto dealership. Perhaps YOU missed MY point. It's all in fun. Hence the moniker "mark of the beast"
@Alvydas Urbonas Oh come on now, if we took that to its logical extreme then it's best just to have the wife get a new car, there's no labor involved, she just drives it out of the dealership! But wait, they need to actually make that new car! And then you have to scrap the old one, and so on... Obviously, the same goes for the new door lock assembly, no labor or costs have actually been saved, just transformed into a mindless production of new parts. Now, not to say that that way has actually no advantages (e.g. waterproofing, ease of replacement so you can hire worse mechanics, etc) but there was a limit that we have clearly passed here. We really could do better than to make trash straight out of the factory.
Unfortunately that's the way things are made these days. Little or no thought is put into repairs, just get the manufacturing costs down to a minimum. part of that is making components that a trained monkey can assemble into a car. The position of components is dictated by ease of manufacturing. If you can get production time of a car down by just a few minutes, over time it ends up in the long term a multi billion saving. when they come to repairs, the Main dealers, (or main stealer, you choose) don't want to pay real mechanics. That costs too much. They employ "technicians". They have a computer that plugs into the car and that tells them the problem, then they look on another computer which gives them step by step instructions, including pictures, on how to replace the part. It gives them a list of part numbers and even tool numbers they need to complete the job. and here's a bigger kick in the teeth, When parts are manufactured, they have to be made to a certain tolerance. You would think this is for quality, but no, its because the machines used in assembly cant fettle about getting a part into place. What happens to parts that don't match the tolerance levels? they get packaged up for spares for dealers. So when you pay a premium for original spares, they are not as good as the original parts on the car. A lot of the time you can get paten parts that are made to a higher standard than the original manufacturers parts. Main dealers charge a premium for repairs so they cover the cost of warrantee repairs... The thing with most modern car engines is that they are a lot simpler to fix than you would think. most of the time what fails is a sensor. plug in a code reader and it will tell you what the problem is, most of the time its the actual sensor that's at fault. Replace it and your good to go. most sensors just plug in and are held in by one or two nuts , or more commonly a torx nut, so you have to buy a new set spanners !! In reality, a car engine is a lot less complex than they were 30 years ago. no complicated carburettors, just a simple throttle body assembly, no contact breakers, distributors, coils.... just a computer that adjusts everything on the fly depending on sensors. you can buy a ODBII code reader from ebay/amozon for just a couple of quid that connects to your phone via Bluetooth and will tell you everything that's going on with your engine. Its all you need to diagnose most engine faults these days....
Tommy Rad bakelite, I have such lovely memories, but yeah, the world has changed, corporate law insists upon max profit and redundancy means making money. They would have done it decades ago if they had thought of it and been able to erode labour laws quicker.
Its been 20 years ago but the last clear plastic "clam shell" packaging machine i installed was not sonic welded. It was plain old heat. Great video Tony. Your sense of humor always brings a smile and always leaves behind some residual education.
Huh, that actually makes some sense. If the "feedhorn" is resonating, and you're not putting the energy into a workpiece... it's going straight back into the piezo transducer, and those work in both directions. The mechanical force would squish it, and generate a pretty high voltage, until it was enough to cook your scope. Probably not super great for your power supply either, come to think of it. Unless IT's a HV supply... piezos can be driven with hundreds of volts. That would also cook the scope. EDIT: Rewatched the video, and that's an awful lot of transformer right beside the piezo outputs. Sorry Tony, but I think you just hooked it up to a high voltage line.
John Doe more that the horn takes time to start resonating. The supply will switch back on while the horn is still lagging, and theyll be pushing against each other. That'll create double or more voltage on the scope
There's a whole pile of things going on. If the supply is trying to drive at 40kHz, and the mass is resonating at 45kHz, you're going to get a bunch of weird beat frequency effects. If the supply were perfect, hooking up the scope shouldn't have hurt it (assuming this is a low-voltage supply) because it would just sink the current. If the resonator is overpowering the drive circuitry, I'm not even sure what THAT is going to do. I'd have to stick a scope on it to figure it out.
No idea about this size of transducer, but I smaller transducers for distance measurements and stuff like that are usually driven by a fairly "soft" (="wide" resonance band) oscillator which is pulled by the transducer to whatever frequency it resonates at. Those drivers are a bit like CCFL drivers. Maybe the same is going on here.
“Ok, awesome, that didn’t work....”. Again, I love showing your vids to my two young kids. This is how stuff gets done!! Figuring out what doesn’t work will lead you in the right direction. Thanks!! Good stuff.
Really loved this. A different side of Our Dear Old Tony. Usually leave feeling entertained and impressed. Leaving this one feeling entertained and just a little bit better about myself.
If your goal is welding wouldn't you want the oscillations to be lateral between the work pieces? Like side to side instead of up and down? I wouldn't expect the up and down oscillations to generate much friction at the material interface...
Rob/Alex: I think ultrasonic welding of plastics is done up/down. it's magic. if it were side to side, once you put down one "weld dot" how would you do the one next to it? or the 100th one down the line? to seal up an entire package I mean.
I thought for these kind of applications, the ultrasonic tool head is designed to produce a complete weld in a single application. That said, the stroke of the tool head (amplitude) is also so small that the material could quite likely tolerate some deflection/distortion. If you have time & the setup, it may be worth testing. Perhaps even applying the tool from an angle using a chisel shaped tool (like a soldering iron tip) would have improved results.
@@ThisOldTony that looked similar to an actual ultrasonic welder...i think where you went wrong was on the kHz and horn tho...coming from a guy who's been around plastic welders for a few months...but nice job anyways
The video was informative and funny as hell. my favorite bits are when you poured out WD40 for your fallen scope lmao and when you sank the nut crooked and you said "thats how they do it overseas" frickin genius
Sam Yeates similar situation. The one's I thought would enjoy it do, but the none seem to "get it" the way I hoped. Tot is my favorite channel. When a new vid comes out I look forward to it all day until I can dedicate the proper attention to it. Its the only chanel i don't watch at 1.25 X speed. (that should say something, want to savor it). Everyone else..."that's nice"....bah
"That's how they do it overseas." This made me LOL. That and when the fender washer shot out. Every time my subscriptions list shows something new from This Old Tony, I get all happy like a kid on Christmas morning.
Tony, I have been into 3d printing for the last five years and let me tell you I love what you did here because it requires no flame, or heat, to set that screws. We call those nut traps and we don't want the nuts to not come out we just want them to not spin around and I am fascinated at just how well they went in. There is promise in this.
On the 3D printed parts i designed in my last job, I used holes a little bigger than the across flat dimension of the nut to hold nuts to allow me to have threaded holes in plastic parts. On laser sintered 3D printed parts I was able to press the nuts in by hand. It works well as long as the bolt pulls the nut to the bottom of the hole rather than pulling it out of the hole. A couple of parts I designed using this method even made it to the European Space Agency on one project I worked on. A second option is to design the part with a slot where the nut can be inserted sideways into the hole. The bolt then locks the nut in place when the parts are assembled.
Precisely, but plastic shrinks (on 20k USD plus machines they have very controlled environments as opposed to the consumer level so shrinkage isn't nearly the issue as with the hobby machines) so trying to get the nut trap precisely right is a PITA so people resort to using soldering irons and lighters, etc... to melt the nut into the now slightly too small six sided hole but this method there is no heat (well, there is but at a very localized level) and that makes this technique very viable.
Look at the ribbed structures around the edge of the plastic. He just needs a tool and matched die so that some portion of the geometry is parallel to the trust of the ultrasonic forces.
Old Tony Just a thought maybe try to just start a blot of the appropriate size and try if it didn't weld the threads of the bolt great. Also would give u a way to test the grip strength of the connection , and bond if any. By the way I love your videos your honesty and humor are top rate keep them coming.
I wonder if it would work like resistance welding? Try making a similar horn with a larger tip, but round over the edges to get rid of the sharp edges that act like cutters. Bring it to about the same contact patch as the original. then bring pressure down on the workpiece, then turn on the power for a short time. turn off the power, wait a short time to solidify then release pressure. Might work. I really enjoy all of your videos and cant wait for the next to show up
I think the answer is you are treating the tip of the horn like an anti-node, but at work its actually a node, Re-simulate for that. My favorite channel btw...
Tony, I made an ultrasonic welder a long time ago. The orientation of your transducer is the problem. It is firing vertically up and down, almost like a mini jackhammer. For an ultrasonic weld, it has to vibrate horizontally. The two plastic pieces rub together really fast at the contact point and fuse. Also the reason your ultrasonic knife results were less than stellar. Angle of the dangle is the key.
Daniel Console Genius! We've got some time before valentine's day to beta taste. Did you know that the first magic wand was steam powered? I'm not making this up.
So if you ever desire to go back to your project, here is some info that will help. The friction that melts the plastic is not between the metal surface and the plastic. The friction is inside the plastic itself. The horn actually compresses the surface. Think of taking a piece of wire and bending it back and forth really fast. The location of the bend heats up. The same with the surface of the plastic, you are bending the surface of the plastic. Now in your first trial, the problem is likely two fold. When welding blister packs, typically they use a knurled surface horn. The reason for this is the sharp points on the knurl flex the surface of the plastic, creating heat. This initiates the melt. Once the plastic turns to liquid, it is very east to move/flex, so the friction inside the plastic is easy to continue to create heat. The difficult part is getting that first initial melt, which is what the knurl is for. In your case, your light pressure initiated the melt, but then you needed to push harder to melt the rest of the way. Much better would be to knurl the tip of your horn. Secondly, your horn does not have enough gain by itself. You could either add a booster or cut away the taper of the horn to a catinoidal shape. The gain of the horn is the ratio of mass at the top of the horn to the mass at the bottom of the horn. For driving inserts, you don't need a ton of gain. This is why for the most part you were able to bury the nuts into the plastic. You could just make your tip larger around, as you don't need all that gain. The nuts pull out because there isn't any ridge to keep them in the plastic. Find a taller nut and turn it on a lathe. Cut some rings around the edge. Lastly your horn tuning needs to be a little closer to 40KHz. The system becomes inefficient the farther you get away from the design frequency. I didn't see how you put the transducer together, but I suspect there are some issues there as well. It should rubber mounted at a nodal point in the vibration.
Welding a point contact to a flat works. >| The v melts like "filler". The retention of nuts,bore a recess for the nut. Then use the ultrasound horn to melt a disc from the base material around the nut to mold a retention disc over the nut.
On most scopes like in the video, the BNC connector is earth grounded. This means the negative probe lead is earth grounded when plugged in. Unless the negative lead of the transducer was earth grounded, the current from that lead was shorted to ground. Likely the cause of the smoke. I've seen ground leads on probes melt due to this issue. Options: 1. Use a differential probe. 2. Lift the earth ground on the scope power cord with a ground lift adapter (considered unsafe, potential shock hazard but can work if the device being measured doesn't have high voltages above or below ground). 3. Only connecting the tip of the probe may capture the frequency of the waveform. Amplitude and shape cannot be trusted however. 4. Battery powered scope.
At work we use ultrasonic welding machines to weld the filling tube of refrigerators shut. They use about 500 Joules worth of energy in about 0,3s so about 1,5kw
At least the hinges on the Tardis door should be smooth and quiet when the gang heads back to muddle with more Antikyra-something-something..eh whatever.
So, have been looking into doing this myself after watching this... What I've found out: First: typically US welders are lower frequency... around 15KHz. Second: you need much much higher power for welding, think 2000 Watts. Third, the drill press idea is pretty brilliant, but what you actually want is the press to be pressing a contact point that is perpendicular to the transducer which would be attached to it, so the direction of the waves are kind of parallel to the plastic pieces rather than perpendicular to it, as with ultrasonic welding, you're actually vibrating the molecules together.
I used to work with an ultrasonic welder at work and when we first got it there was a small class. Long story short. If you weld plastic to plastic you use one type of motion but if you weld metal to plastic i think, you use another motion. I can't remember witch motion goes with which, but one was an up and down motion and the other was a side to side motion. Great videos, keep up the good work! :)
im by no means qualified, but isnt the point of welding to heat up and smelt the plastic together with friction from the vibration, isnt it counter productive to be doing it on top a big metal heatsink?
Considering all of that what you say, would lead to a non entertaining video ;-) I like to see the principles of an demolition hammer realized with an ultrasonic horn made out of aluminium.
So sorry about your scope. If I had seen any comment saying to scope it I would have warned you. Voltage gets high on those. This video has some nice info on tunning ultrasonic transducers, I found it useful. czcams.com/video/-E7zlQEk5MA/video.html
Love your vids! You may be able to see the mechanical portion of the resonance on your (poor lonely 2nd channel) scope by connecting the scope, no power on the unit, and lightly tapping the end of the horn. The piezo will generate a voltage as the assembly oscillates.
I think the motion of the ultrasonic welding head has to be parallel with the two pieces you're trying to weld to cause them to slide against each other and create friction. So you put pressure downwards on the welder head and the weld head slides left and right ultrasonically. Instead of you've got the energy directed up and down so it's not causing any friction and not doing any welding. That would also explain why it sunk those nuts so well.
Look up an "energy director" for ultrasonic plastic welding. The way I understand it, concentrating all the energy into a very reduced area increases the energy transfer/friction generated at the joint and promotes melting at the joint.
FYI, blister packaging is not assembled using ultrasonic welding. They use heated roller crimps to close it up in most cases, and some companies just use a heated die-press.
That material looks like PETE. The plant I work at does RF sealing (20Mhz) with similar blisters. We used to do PVC, but prop 65 and all. We also do some Ultrasonuc welding, but with 20 Khz. Great video!
Your scope is ground-referenced! Eg. the shield of the BNC is connected directly to earth ground. You can't just put the scope probe onto anything like it's a multimeter. That's probably what fried it because the black wire of the piezo driver is probably not earth ground (and thus current will flow if connected to the BNC shield). You should either have used a differential probe, or used both channels (probe tip of channel 1 on the red wire, probe tip of channel 2 on the black wire, DON't connect the shield of the scope to anything) and then used the scopes math function (subtract channel 1 - 2) to get the signal. Or to say it differently: The probe tip is high impedance (so no current will flow), but the shield is connected directly to ground. So if you want to measure between 2 arbitrary points on a circuit, you have to use 2 probes (or a differential probe). Otherwise, all measurements with a scope have to be ground-referenced (eg. a certain voltage with respect to earth ground). But if black wire is not earth ground, you can't do it like that. There's good videos online of 'how not to blow up your scope'.
I have been looking into a soldering iron tool for an inserts. The tools have a center for keeping the insert straight as it is pushed in and melting the plastic (3D printed stuff using PLA).
As some already mentioned, the vibration is in the wrong direction. Yesterday morning i did weld some inserts. The generator can deliver 3000 watt, but only average 1300 watt was used. Amplitude was about 22 μm. The converter worked without problem, but with an other sonotrode a problem (re)appeared causing (on the end of the day) the generator to die.
Make a bit where you have a pilot that fits inside the nut with a shoulder that pushes down on the nut evenly. Similar to a stepped drill bit. The downside with that would be damaging the threads or pilot depending on which material is softer. But a pilot would also eliminate the issue of plastic coming up in the middle.
Chuckle chuckle, the devil makes work for ideal hands , the amount times I've wasted a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning at work with an idea , and all I've achieved is nothing , but I have enjoyed the journey.:)
Honestly, you made a decent countersinking tool. You could thread the insert onto the horn and drive it that way. Also just rough up the sides of your bolts for a bit more grip, and give the surrounding plastic a chance to liquify by running it a little longer. Very cool!
Hello Mike, Just watching ur Ultrasonic chapter. I have some experience with some of that stuff. I mentioned before that I worked for Bullen Ultrasonics Eaton oh. A major player in "Ultra. Chine-nin". I helped with building those machines from scratch. Our transducers were 1000 watt & as I remember 2400 watt machines. Obviously more powerful than the 60 watt set up you had. I think one prob with your experiment is : You'll prob have to braze the tool to the tool holder. We used a couple diff. materials for filler wire. The best was Silver Solder. The stroke of the tool holder is most likely breaking loose the adhesive. The strokes that we worked with were .0009/.0012 length on 1000 kw And about .002 lg. On a 2400 kw transducer. A very big transducer & Water cooled housing. We d pump a slurry of a liquid based abrasive crystals right where the tool met the material.( Vertically) Then the osolation movement of the tool would caused the very hard crystals to cut into/or machine the tool shape into the workpiece. We machined Ceramic Sub straight material usually. But many others too. (Glass was easy.) Ah . . .there's lots more to it but I just thought I'd toss you a couple things that might help ur tool makings by doing the braze work. When the tool is properly energized they can be VERY PRECISE. Holes w/n only a few tenths. Computer chip work. Semiconductors. Out performs laser processing. Ok, ok, I'll stop, I can see your ears turning blue ! I enjoy the show. Keep them comin. When I hear all ur jokes, I'll start paying attention to your your little tricks. Ha !!! (Ole machinist humor !) Thanks, Marko.
I'm late to the game but I haven't seen anyone else explain why your horn setup resonated at the horn's resonant frequency of 42 kHz rather than the circuit's previous frequency of 40 kHz. In ultrasonic drive circuits, the piezo transducer is often used as a capacitor. You push a voltage into it, it deforms and resists further current; you push voltage into it the other way, it deforms that way and resists further current in that direction. In particular, it will be used as the capacitor that controls the frequency of the oscillator. The piezo's mechanical resonant frequency correlates with its electrical capacitive behavior, causing the piezo to set the resonant frequency of the oscillating circuit. More reading would be available under crystal oscillator and quartz clock. So you're absolutely right that there's a symbiotic relationship between the electronics and the horn -- the circuit will oscillate at the resonant frequency of the transducer (as long as it's within the operating range of the circuit). And then when you change the mechanical loading of the transducer, giving it a different mass, you get a new operating frequency. As you experienced!
I hope you have watched some videos on why you never hook your oscilloscope up to a switching power supply. Well, without hooking it up through an isolation transformer.
For ultrasonic welding two plastic peices together you need an energy director, an apex for which the energy from the frequency is applied. Usually in the shape of a triangle only .010in wide at the base. Also your horn will need to be directed over the apex. So the horns are typically customized to the part geometry.
Try cutting the tip off and tap the end for a screw. Then the head of the screw can act as the press to push the nuts or inserts into the plastic while retaining the frequency response of the original.
The plastic welding tips I have use a grid pattern machined into the surface to grip the first layer and vibrate it against the second layer. It looks like all the friction in your setup is between the tool tip itself and the first layer of plastic.
You need to have an assembly with springs to let it vibrate, the only thing that should be solidly attached at the bottom is the anvil, and apply very little pressure so it can vibrate well enough to weld.
There is a program on BBC iPlayer about bubbles. So what you may scoff. If you can put micro bubbles in water and apply ultrasound the water then cleans really well! Like take lipstick off cloth. The water was arranged to go through what looked like your focusing horn connected to the ultrasound generator. Without the sound the water just flowed over the lipstick, turn on the sound and the lipstick was just washed away. It is a BBC 4 program and probably there for another 3 to 4 weeks. Not cutting or welding but kind a neat.
Hi Tony, a couple of years ago I went to a course on using Ultra sonic cutting of bone and teeth used for atraumatic tooth removal (if there is such a thing) and bone modification for dental implants . The advantage that was proposed was the US did not damage soft tissue but cut hard materials. The difference between a dental ultra sonic scaler and the cutter was that there was another phase in the transducer or another transducer at 90 degrees to each other , with one phase vibrating on the long axis of the instrument and the other in the horizontal plane. It was about 40 watts as I recall. They used the term 3D with respect to the tips vibration
The scope likely blew up because of ground short. The loop on the probes isn't negative, it's ground. If you connect it to a non-ground potential you will have a short circuit,
Time 3:08 in first time seeing any videos by this guy and hes my 15th sub. Idk if its the banter or the clever humor but "Your cool in my book and you say when you dont know. Thats cool too." I can relate.
the sonic welders I built for HP to weld printer cartridges together - the transducer was 8" in diameter and the "horn" was nearly a foot tall, and we had a huge honkin powersupply/oscillator. Amazingly, the frequency was just about the same as the natural resonance of the stand holding the contraption and when on, you could hear it 2 floors away vertically and over 200' horizontally. We had great fun driving everyone nutz while testing. Some people with lose dental work were particularly affected :D
also, ultrasonic hand engraver (not the rotating kind, the percussion type) they basically use vibration to help with the "cutting" so MAYBE that super fast movement might help it glide through the material being engraved
You could put a tray on top of it and turn it into an ultrasonic cleaner.
Priceless haha
Oops.
Don't know who "Mike" is, ? But carry-on sir.
@@markoc.2397 mike hunt
Truly a genius idea
Hey I wonder if you can make an ultrasonic cleaner????
Barry Mayson From an ultrasonic cleaner?
From ultrasonic welder lol
Skaza Electronics Which he made from an ultrasonic cleaner. See what I'm getting at?
Yes, obviously it was a joke i guess.
R/whoosh
As someone who works in a plastic parts plant... In the industrial section... as the resident sonic welding expert, I can tell you that you don't really want 40kHz for most applications. 20kHz is the general frequency we go for. Also, 160uM deflection at the tip, for most applications. Finally the real welders usually have three parts: A transducer, followed by a booster (which has a mass on each end, with a shock mounted ring at the central node,) and finally the horn on bottom side of that. Pressure is usually 25-75 PSI, erring to the low side, with a weld time of ~0.3-1 second. Feel free to message for more info!
As a last aside, our smallest welder has 900 W of output power.
So what you're saying is 60 is maybe not enough? ;)
This Old Tony Probably not. ;-)
The truth of the matter is that regardless of the success of the welding process the success of this video making 13,048 people laugh is priceless : ) Thanks Tony.
To be able to weld, you need transverse vibrations. I recently stumbled on the schematic of the welder to weld tabs on battery cells, and it was designed at such: a vertical rod was pressed down on the tab to be weld on the battery, and the ultrasonic actuator was attached via its horn perpendicular to the rod, it's other end attached to the frame of the machine. The result: the tip of the rod was vibrating horizontally, with a 2x amplification due to its positioning mid-rod, and the vertical pressure was not going through the transducer but straight through the rod.
(Also a small stepped down insert screwed at the end of your horn would allow you to have a correct way to hold the nuts/inserts square during insertion, you would need to have one for every size of insert to weld, though)
Yes, I was also thinking you need "in plane" vibrations for the welding to work because you need to have friction between the two surfaces. Also why don't you just put a small bolt in the "insert", this way you have flat surface to push on and also no plastic can move up in the center.
Ultrasonic welding is a form of friction welding. The 2 parts have to slide against each other to generate the welding heat. The ultrasonic exciter is teed into the horn as stated above. The nuts going into plastic was more like an ultrasonic jackhammer.
Ultrasonic Jackhammer is my Spice Girls cover band, tyvm
Ok, I wasn't crazy. This is exactly what I remembered of ultrasonic welding. I think that Tony deserves another go at this with the proper design. I think this is my favorite video series on this channel to date, and that is saying a whole hell of a lot!
ToT should try it!!! for the sake of the scope!!
Tony, where I work our daily job (for 14 years so far) is untrasonic welding transmission vent caps for GM cars. When welding, you need to tune your horn for each specific part and part material. You also need quite a high energy, and a high compression pressure. You need a much higher powered transducer. While super cool and probably very useful, those nuts did not weld to the plastic. They basically got jackhammered into place.
Hi. I am a mechancal engineer, and if you could I would really apreciate if you tell me with which kind of ultrasonic welding machine are you using. I need some information where to buy industrial machines but havent had much information about this topic so far.
I used to work for Dart Sensors in UK, they use ultrasonic welding to seal their gas sensors, they are plastic with a small press like setup, similar to what Tony did with the drill press.. the plastic is held by a very snug fitting aluminium dye, the whole welding process is about 2 seconds, im not sure of the frequency the machine used....
"Thats how they do it overseas"
I had to clean the spit off my monitor from that line.
Caught me off guard as well...that was pretty accurate ahahaha
Had me dyin' 🤣😂
Razzel Dazzel lol
Where do you mean by over seas.. you mean American
Washers for retaining the ultrasonic radiator - are made of spring steel. In Russia, it is a steel grade 65S2VA, you have a steel grade 60SiCR7, or something similar. The Chinese use high-carbon secondary heat, its strength is sufficient for the life of the product.
Spring steel is needed for a reason, sound waves have minimal damping in this steel grade. You need a stable oscillatory system, without loss of heat. The easiest way to see how industrial cutters are arranged is simply metal - its shape can be repeated even from the picture. And this form is different from what you have.
Pay attention to the device driver emitter. He does not have a fixed frequency !!! It simply reacts to the load, and gives the maximum current with a phase delay of 45 degrees. Resonance frequency is obtained automatically! You do not need to interfere with his work, he is almost perfect.
And yet, take care of your hands. Bones are destroyed under the influence of ultrasound, very imperceptibly !!!
Хелло, комрад!
Можешь обьяснить, что ты имел в виду под "Washers for retaining the ultrasonic radiator", что это?
This man just poured a 40 of WD-40 for his homie.
par5endos562 in to a box of squeaky hinges
You know what they say ... Grease the hand that squeaks you.
I do that every day...
Ahah :D
into a box of squeaky hinges :'D
Far be it for me to give you advice, but I was sitting here watching, saying, "Hold the nut with a wrench." over and over. You must not have heard me...
Thinking exactly the same. Anyway, it was a lot of fun to watch :-)
same
That was a good idea, I was thinking of just making the horn fit into the hole in the nut, not threaded, just a bit undersized.
That's more or less what he meant by 'a pilot.' And undersized rod that helps position the work before the tool really starts doing anything
I was hoping he would hold it in place with the back of a dental mirror and maybe put on some nice eye shadow and lipstick.
You know for a fact that every electronic thing in the world is operated by magic smoke... whenever the smoke comes out of them, they are done for!
(love your channel!)
Do you know what grind my gears? Making gears for something and then not talking about it.
Malek Hajaya yes please work on that project tony its eating me alive .......
Yes, for those who didn't know, voltage measurement devices are sensitive to high voltages. Especially with 1x probes. This is one of many reasons I always use 10x probes. My other best advice is to make a scope saver with a pair of zener diodes in inverse series to make a voltage limiter. It will not save you every time, but it can prevent disaster and maybe even be used to make an isolation switch for your scope.
Let's always remember Uncle Channel 1's final words to This Old SpiderTony: "With great power comes great current squared times resistance."
Riveting. I was glued to my screen.
Condolences regarding your scope Ch1.
What type of glue? Have you tried acetone?
Edit: Just caught that you said "was glued". Glad you were able to get unstuck.
If you need glue for riveting, your doing it wrong ;P
At least you weren't riveted to your screen...
I am wondering why the scope broke... Can somebody explain? It was normal voltage and current right?
Here is a guess. You know that piezo effect that makes BBQ lighters spark when the crystal is struck with a hammer? A piezo crystal can produce thousands of volts when struck. Perhaps this piezo element was getting squeeze when it was rattling between the horn and anvil, Producing a stray voltage .
On the close up of the smaller nuts you definitely see some fluid movment of the plastic. I guess it shows a super efficient transfer of energy from the vibration of the nut to a thin layer of the plastic. Brilliant process.
Ultrasonic welding?? That's the mark of the beast!! I grew up in a time when, if something went wrong with the "appliance" [kitchen, music, automotive, related, etc..] we could simply grab a Philips screwdriver, take the [steel, bake-a-lite or plastic] cover off and replace or fix the broken part.
Enter ultrasonic welding and the age of, [because you can't open it up]"throw it away and buy a new one".
I recently replaced the "door lock actuator" in my wife's Honda Accord. The part cost $40 bucks and took about 2 hours [my first attempt to do this one]. I was able to open the "broken" actuator and inspect it. All it needed was a new micro switch... at a cost of 55 cents.
The Honda dealer quoted my wife $120. 120 bucks for what is actually a 55 cent fix that cost me 40 bucks.
Ultrasonic welding is fun and interesting... if you work for the devil LOL
You are missing somethings in here, its simple thing, its people need to earn the salary and just because it could be fixed with 55cent part it does not mean that labor to replace the part is worth 25cents, and when you consider that dealer has to hire people to fix cars and provide some sort of warranty on their work it would be just waste of mechanics time and your money to replace this 55cent part instead of whole assembly. It is really sad when people like you who just don see any worth in other people work, and start downplaying and making others look bad just because they ask money for the job. Man you probably would start screaming if they fixed the car with 55cents part and took 150usd from you for the job.
Alvydas, .... c'mon, it's not meant as my MBA thesis. It's a tongue-in-cheek view from the perspective of someone born in 1957, seeing, living the changes in manufacturing.
Of course, there are labor charges, shipping charges [of the parts delivered], business fees associated with operating a 'brick & mortar' business, especially the size of an auto dealership.
Perhaps YOU missed MY point. It's all in fun. Hence the moniker "mark of the beast"
@Alvydas Urbonas Oh come on now, if we took that to its logical extreme then it's best just to have the wife get a new car, there's no labor involved, she just drives it out of the dealership! But wait, they need to actually make that new car! And then you have to scrap the old one, and so on... Obviously, the same goes for the new door lock assembly, no labor or costs have actually been saved, just transformed into a mindless production of new parts. Now, not to say that that way has actually no advantages (e.g. waterproofing, ease of replacement so you can hire worse mechanics, etc) but there was a limit that we have clearly passed here. We really could do better than to make trash straight out of the factory.
Unfortunately that's the way things are made these days.
Little or no thought is put into repairs, just get the manufacturing costs down to a minimum. part of that is making components that a trained monkey can assemble into a car. The position of components is dictated by ease of manufacturing. If you can get production time of a car down by just a few minutes, over time it ends up in the long term a multi billion saving.
when they come to repairs, the Main dealers, (or main stealer, you choose) don't want to pay real mechanics. That costs too much. They employ "technicians". They have a computer that plugs into the car and that tells them the problem, then they look on another computer which gives them step by step instructions, including pictures, on how to replace the part. It gives them a list of part numbers and even tool numbers they need to complete the job.
and here's a bigger kick in the teeth,
When parts are manufactured, they have to be made to a certain tolerance. You would think this is for quality, but no, its because the machines used in assembly cant fettle about getting a part into place. What happens to parts that don't match the tolerance levels? they get packaged up for spares for dealers. So when you pay a premium for original spares, they are not as good as the original parts on the car. A lot of the time you can get paten parts that are made to a higher standard than the original manufacturers parts.
Main dealers charge a premium for repairs so they cover the cost of warrantee repairs...
The thing with most modern car engines is that they are a lot simpler to fix than you would think. most of the time what fails is a sensor. plug in a code reader and it will tell you what the problem is, most of the time its the actual sensor that's at fault. Replace it and your good to go. most sensors just plug in and are held in by one or two nuts , or more commonly a torx nut, so you have to buy a new set spanners !! In reality, a car engine is a lot less complex than they were 30 years ago. no complicated carburettors, just a simple throttle body assembly, no contact breakers, distributors, coils.... just a computer that adjusts everything on the fly depending on sensors.
you can buy a ODBII code reader from ebay/amozon for just a couple of quid that connects to your phone via Bluetooth and will tell you everything that's going on with your engine. Its all you need to diagnose most engine faults these days....
Tommy Rad bakelite, I have such lovely memories, but yeah, the world has changed, corporate law insists upon max profit and redundancy means making money. They would have done it decades ago if they had thought of it and been able to erode labour laws quicker.
Its been 20 years ago but the last clear plastic "clam shell" packaging machine i installed was not sonic welded. It was plain old heat.
Great video Tony. Your sense of humor always brings a smile and always leaves behind some residual education.
Huh, that actually makes some sense. If the "feedhorn" is resonating, and you're not putting the energy into a workpiece... it's going straight back into the piezo transducer, and those work in both directions. The mechanical force would squish it, and generate a pretty high voltage, until it was enough to cook your scope.
Probably not super great for your power supply either, come to think of it. Unless IT's a HV supply... piezos can be driven with hundreds of volts. That would also cook the scope.
EDIT: Rewatched the video, and that's an awful lot of transformer right beside the piezo outputs. Sorry Tony, but I think you just hooked it up to a high voltage line.
John Doe more that the horn takes time to start resonating. The supply will switch back on while the horn is still lagging, and theyll be pushing against each other. That'll create double or more voltage on the scope
There's a whole pile of things going on. If the supply is trying to drive at 40kHz, and the mass is resonating at 45kHz, you're going to get a bunch of weird beat frequency effects. If the supply were perfect, hooking up the scope shouldn't have hurt it (assuming this is a low-voltage supply) because it would just sink the current. If the resonator is overpowering the drive circuitry, I'm not even sure what THAT is going to do.
I'd have to stick a scope on it to figure it out.
years ago i bought transducer and simillar driver and it was definitely more then kV.
No idea about this size of transducer, but I smaller transducers for distance measurements and stuff like that are usually driven by a fairly "soft" (="wide" resonance band) oscillator which is pulled by the transducer to whatever frequency it resonates at. Those drivers are a bit like CCFL drivers. Maybe the same is going on here.
Holy shit, thank you. why is the most imporants points completely avoided? Really dangerous not to address this concept.
“Ok, awesome, that didn’t work....”.
Again, I love showing your vids to my two young kids. This is how stuff gets done!! Figuring out what doesn’t work will lead you in the right direction.
Thanks!! Good stuff.
So 42 was the answer huh..
I was looking for this comment
Oh M3machinist: it helps if you know the meaning of the question?
@@scottpecora37142 is the answer for everything, and don't forget to bring a towel.
Really loved this. A different side of Our Dear Old Tony. Usually leave feeling entertained and impressed. Leaving this one feeling entertained and just a little bit better about myself.
If your goal is welding wouldn't you want the oscillations to be lateral between the work pieces? Like side to side instead of up and down? I wouldn't expect the up and down oscillations to generate much friction at the material interface...
Robert Kennymore yeah but it is not friction weld
Rob/Alex: I think ultrasonic welding of plastics is done up/down. it's magic. if it were side to side, once you put down one "weld dot" how would you do the one next to it? or the 100th one down the line? to seal up an entire package I mean.
I thought for these kind of applications, the ultrasonic tool head is designed to produce a complete weld in a single application. That said, the stroke of the tool head (amplitude) is also so small that the material could quite likely tolerate some deflection/distortion. If you have time & the setup, it may be worth testing. Perhaps even applying the tool from an angle using a chisel shaped tool (like a soldering iron tip) would have improved results.
@@ThisOldTony that looked similar to an actual ultrasonic welder...i think where you went wrong was on the kHz and horn tho...coming from a guy who's been around plastic welders for a few months...but nice job anyways
@@ThisOldTony you should try spin welding tho it's a lot easier introduction and still cool
The video was informative and funny as hell. my favorite bits are when you poured out WD40 for your fallen scope lmao and when you sank the nut crooked and you said "thats how they do it overseas" frickin genius
This channel deserves way more views, i think!
Then watch it again...
Agreed!
Hmm.. yes, you are on to something... no wait, it will take forever
i have shown everyone i know a video or two and they just don't get it! wosh right over their heads i think i need a friend up grade!!!
Sam Yeates similar situation. The one's I thought would enjoy it do, but the none seem to "get it" the way I hoped. Tot is my favorite channel. When a new vid comes out I look forward to it all day until I can dedicate the proper attention to it. Its the only chanel i don't watch at 1.25 X speed. (that should say something, want to savor it).
Everyone else..."that's nice"....bah
Just got a Rinco ultrasonic welder and it is by far the best plastic welder I have owned.
"Thanks for watching"?
Thanks for making vids for us to watch.
Historically, " shimmying your way in there" has had phenomenal success... proper alignment , frequency, and pressure will win.
11:40
"That's how they do it overseas!"
Lmao (:
"That's how they do it overseas." This made me LOL. That and when the fender washer shot out. Every time my subscriptions list shows something new from This Old Tony, I get all happy like a kid on Christmas morning.
"I hope it sinks the nut instead of threading the horn"
THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!
I'll see myself out.
Tony, I have been into 3d printing for the last five years and let me tell you I love what you did here because it requires no flame, or heat, to set that screws. We call those nut traps and we don't want the nuts to not come out we just want them to not spin around and I am fascinated at just how well they went in. There is promise in this.
On the 3D printed parts i designed in my last job, I used holes a little bigger than the across flat dimension of the nut to hold nuts to allow me to have threaded holes in plastic parts. On laser sintered 3D printed parts I was able to press the nuts in by hand. It works well as long as the bolt pulls the nut to the bottom of the hole rather than pulling it out of the hole. A couple of parts I designed using this method even made it to the European Space Agency on one project I worked on. A second option is to design the part with a slot where the nut can be inserted sideways into the hole. The bolt then locks the nut in place when the parts are assembled.
Precisely, but plastic shrinks (on 20k USD plus machines they have very controlled environments as opposed to the consumer level so shrinkage isn't nearly the issue as with the hobby machines) so trying to get the nut trap precisely right is a PITA so people resort to using soldering irons and lighters, etc... to melt the nut into the now slightly too small six sided hole but this method there is no heat (well, there is but at a very localized level) and that makes this technique very viable.
Side to side motion is what you're looking for. Your system gives and up and down motion.
I came here to say this ^^^
Look at the ribbed structures around the edge of the plastic. He just needs a tool and matched die so that some portion of the geometry is parallel to the trust of the ultrasonic forces.
Old Tony Just a thought maybe try to just start a blot of the appropriate size and try if it didn't weld the threads of the bolt great. Also would give u a way to test the grip strength of the connection , and bond if any. By the way I love your videos your honesty and humor are top rate keep them coming.
Mini impact driver then? AVE will be proud of your nails.
I wonder if it would work like resistance welding? Try making a similar horn with a larger tip, but round over the edges to get rid of the sharp edges that act like cutters. Bring it to about the same contact patch as the original. then bring pressure down on the workpiece, then turn on the power for a short time. turn off the power, wait a short time to solidify then release pressure. Might work. I really enjoy all of your videos and cant wait for the next to show up
lol, "my eyes are up here"
I think the answer is you are treating the tip of the horn like an anti-node, but at work its actually a node, Re-simulate for that.
My favorite channel btw...
Try ultra sonic PVC broaching!
Tony, I made an ultrasonic welder a long time ago. The orientation of your transducer is the problem. It is firing vertically up and down, almost like a mini jackhammer. For an ultrasonic weld, it has to vibrate horizontally. The two plastic pieces rub together really fast at the contact point and fuse. Also the reason your ultrasonic knife results were less than stellar. Angle of the dangle is the key.
Maybe you could borrow AVE's Magic Wand? That thing probably has the chooch-factor to make the plastic all hot and happy.
J Schlesinger ...or put the transducer in it to make an industral-grade hoo-hah rattler
Daniel Console Genius! We've got some time before valentine's day to beta taste. Did you know that the first magic wand was steam powered? I'm not making this up.
So if you ever desire to go back to your project, here is some info that will help. The friction that melts the plastic is not between the metal surface and the plastic. The friction is inside the plastic itself. The horn actually compresses the surface. Think of taking a piece of wire and bending it back and forth really fast. The location of the bend heats up. The same with the surface of the plastic, you are bending the surface of the plastic. Now in your first trial, the problem is likely two fold. When welding blister packs, typically they use a knurled surface horn. The reason for this is the sharp points on the knurl flex the surface of the plastic, creating heat. This initiates the melt. Once the plastic turns to liquid, it is very east to move/flex, so the friction inside the plastic is easy to continue to create heat. The difficult part is getting that first initial melt, which is what the knurl is for. In your case, your light pressure initiated the melt, but then you needed to push harder to melt the rest of the way. Much better would be to knurl the tip of your horn. Secondly, your horn does not have enough gain by itself. You could either add a booster or cut away the taper of the horn to a catinoidal shape. The gain of the horn is the ratio of mass at the top of the horn to the mass at the bottom of the horn.
For driving inserts, you don't need a ton of gain. This is why for the most part you were able to bury the nuts into the plastic. You could just make your tip larger around, as you don't need all that gain. The nuts pull out because there isn't any ridge to keep them in the plastic. Find a taller nut and turn it on a lathe. Cut some rings around the edge.
Lastly your horn tuning needs to be a little closer to 40KHz. The system becomes inefficient the farther you get away from the design frequency. I didn't see how you put the transducer together, but I suspect there are some issues there as well. It should rubber mounted at a nodal point in the vibration.
Ultrasonic-something-something-AIRGUN mods? please ?
Welding a point contact to a flat works. >| The v melts like "filler".
The retention of nuts,bore a recess for the nut. Then use the ultrasound horn to melt a disc from the base material around the nut to mold a retention disc over the nut.
On most scopes like in the video, the BNC connector is earth grounded. This means the negative probe lead is earth grounded when plugged in. Unless the negative lead of the transducer was earth grounded, the current from that lead was shorted to ground. Likely the cause of the smoke. I've seen ground leads on probes melt due to this issue. Options: 1. Use a differential probe. 2. Lift the earth ground on the scope power cord with a ground lift adapter (considered unsafe, potential shock hazard but can work if the device being measured doesn't have high voltages above or below ground). 3. Only connecting the tip of the probe may capture the frequency of the waveform. Amplitude and shape cannot be trusted however. 4. Battery powered scope.
5:35 if it's plastic packaging, it's most likely PET.
I know this because I hate it.
So you won't let me PET you?
Pet me instead ₍ᐢ•ﻌ•ᐢ₎*･ﾟ｡
@@JGnLAU8OAWF6 uwu
It would be nice to be able to adjust freq. Sure that you thought of that. Pick your rabbit hole carefully. Thanks for the video Tony.
When frustrated This Old Tonys voice sounds a little like Alan Alda
From the first time I heard him I thought, Alan Alda.
At work we use ultrasonic welding machines to weld the filling tube of refrigerators shut. They use about 500 Joules worth of energy in about 0,3s so about 1,5kw
Figure out a way to hook the ultrasonics up to a screwdriver and then you've got something.
wonder how that would do at breaking free seized or rusted fasteners while twisting
At least the hinges on the Tardis door should be smooth and quiet when the gang heads back to muddle with more Antikyra-something-something..eh whatever.
So, have been looking into doing this myself after watching this... What I've found out: First: typically US welders are lower frequency... around 15KHz. Second: you need much much higher power for welding, think 2000 Watts. Third, the drill press idea is pretty brilliant, but what you actually want is the press to be pressing a contact point that is perpendicular to the transducer which would be attached to it, so the direction of the waves are kind of parallel to the plastic pieces rather than perpendicular to it, as with ultrasonic welding, you're actually vibrating the molecules together.
Just the tip never works.
I used to work with an ultrasonic welder at work and when we first got it there was a small class. Long story short. If you weld plastic to plastic you use one type of motion but if you weld metal to plastic i think, you use another motion. I can't remember witch motion goes with which, but one was an up and down motion and the other was a side to side motion. Great videos, keep up the good work! :)
HA HA
-AvE
That bit was hilarious
Wow, I've seen this video who knows how many times and I JUST got the "I pulled the foot off my couch to use as an anvil" joke.
So underrated lol
Get that flash off your camera? Sounds like you have studied some magnetism :)
Crohkor Threetoes Hahahaha! A little bit of Angry?
You are a gift to mankind. A pair of socks from grandma during xmas type of gift, but a gift none the less. Subscribed.
im by no means qualified, but isnt the point of welding to heat up and smelt the plastic together with friction from the vibration, isnt it counter productive to be doing it on top a big metal heatsink?
Julepalme
Ultrasonic welding is different
Matt G no
Considering all of that what you say, would lead to a non entertaining video ;-)
I like to see the principles of an demolition hammer realized with an ultrasonic horn made out of aluminium.
LMAO Tony Vs ultrasonic welder. Keep up the great work and funny humor, it's what keeps me coming back.
So sorry about your scope. If I had seen any comment saying to scope it I would have warned you. Voltage gets high on those.
This video has some nice info on tunning ultrasonic transducers, I found it useful.
czcams.com/video/-E7zlQEk5MA/video.html
Love your vids!
You may be able to see the mechanical portion of the resonance on your (poor lonely 2nd channel) scope by connecting the scope, no power on the unit, and lightly tapping the end of the horn. The piezo will generate a voltage as the assembly oscillates.
Pssshhh... “Talk too much”.... what are you, new?
Chuck Under Fir
I think the motion of the ultrasonic welding head has to be parallel with the two pieces you're trying to weld to cause them to slide against each other and create friction. So you put pressure downwards on the welder head and the weld head slides left and right ultrasonically. Instead of you've got the energy directed up and down so it's not causing any friction and not doing any welding. That would also explain why it sunk those nuts so well.
Can you please just machine something cool and never do this again.
Look up an "energy director" for ultrasonic plastic welding. The way I understand it, concentrating all the energy into a very reduced area increases the energy transfer/friction generated at the joint and promotes melting at the joint.
FYI, blister packaging is not assembled using ultrasonic welding. They use heated roller crimps to close it up in most cases, and some companies just use a heated die-press.
11:00 😂😂😂 Laughing my ass off over here watching you fumble with a tiny ridiculous little nut hahahaha. Very relatable.
That material looks like PETE. The plant I work at does RF sealing (20Mhz) with similar blisters. We used to do PVC, but prop 65 and all. We also do some Ultrasonuc welding, but with 20 Khz. Great video!
Your scope is ground-referenced! Eg. the shield of the BNC is connected directly to earth ground. You can't just put the scope probe onto anything like it's a multimeter. That's probably what fried it because the black wire of the piezo driver is probably not earth ground (and thus current will flow if connected to the BNC shield). You should either have used a differential probe, or used both channels (probe tip of channel 1 on the red wire, probe tip of channel 2 on the black wire, DON't connect the shield of the scope to anything) and then used the scopes math function (subtract channel 1 - 2) to get the signal.
Or to say it differently: The probe tip is high impedance (so no current will flow), but the shield is connected directly to ground. So if you want to measure between 2 arbitrary points on a circuit, you have to use 2 probes (or a differential probe). Otherwise, all measurements with a scope have to be ground-referenced (eg. a certain voltage with respect to earth ground). But if black wire is not earth ground, you can't do it like that.
There's good videos online of 'how not to blow up your scope'.
I literally watch anything you do. As an engineering student, I love your humor and editing.
thanks!
I have been looking into a soldering iron tool for an inserts. The tools have a center for keeping the insert straight as it is pushed in and melting the plastic (3D printed stuff using PLA).
He told us everything we needed to know about the video in the title...yet I still watched the whole thing!!
As some already mentioned, the vibration is in the wrong direction.
Yesterday morning i did weld some inserts. The generator can deliver 3000 watt, but only average 1300 watt was used. Amplitude was about 22 μm.
The converter worked without problem, but with an other sonotrode a problem (re)appeared causing (on the end of the day) the generator to die.
Make a bit where you have a pilot that fits inside the nut with a shoulder that pushes down on the nut evenly. Similar to a stepped drill bit. The downside with that would be damaging the threads or pilot depending on which material is softer. But a pilot would also eliminate the issue of plastic coming up in the middle.
"That's how they do it overseas." LOLOLOLOLOL Got a great laugh out of this one! Thanks!
Chuckle chuckle, the devil makes work for ideal hands , the amount times I've wasted a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning at work with an idea , and all I've achieved is nothing , but I have enjoyed the journey.:)
Honestly, you made a decent countersinking tool. You could thread the insert onto the horn and drive it that way. Also just rough up the sides of your bolts for a bit more grip, and give the surrounding plastic a chance to liquify by running it a little longer.
Very cool!
Hello Mike,
Just watching ur Ultrasonic chapter.
I have some experience with some of that stuff.
I mentioned before that I worked for Bullen Ultrasonics Eaton oh. A major player in "Ultra. Chine-nin".
I helped with building those machines from scratch.
Our transducers were 1000 watt & as I remember 2400 watt machines. Obviously more powerful than the 60 watt set up you had.
I think one prob with your experiment is :
You'll prob have to braze the tool to the tool holder.
We used a couple diff. materials for filler wire. The best was Silver Solder.
The stroke of the tool holder is most likely breaking loose the adhesive.
The strokes that we worked with were .0009/.0012 length on 1000 kw
And about .002 lg. On a 2400 kw transducer.
A very big transducer & Water cooled housing.
We d pump a slurry of a liquid based
abrasive crystals right where the tool met the material.( Vertically)
Then the osolation movement of the tool would caused the very hard crystals to cut into/or machine
the tool shape into the workpiece.
We machined Ceramic Sub straight material usually. But many others too. (Glass was easy.)
Ah . . .there's lots more to it but I just thought I'd toss you a couple things that might help ur tool makings by doing the braze work.
When the tool is properly energized they can be VERY PRECISE. Holes
w/n only a few tenths.
Computer chip work.
Semiconductors.
Out performs laser processing.
Ok, ok, I'll stop, I can see your ears turning blue !
I enjoy the show. Keep them comin.
When I hear all ur jokes, I'll start paying attention to your your little tricks. Ha !!!
(Ole machinist humor !)
Thanks,
Marko.
I have no idea what's happening in this video or what you're talking about, but I love it anyway. Please, continue.
I'm late to the game but I haven't seen anyone else explain why your horn setup resonated at the horn's resonant frequency of 42 kHz rather than the circuit's previous frequency of 40 kHz.
In ultrasonic drive circuits, the piezo transducer is often used as a capacitor. You push a voltage into it, it deforms and resists further current; you push voltage into it the other way, it deforms that way and resists further current in that direction.
In particular, it will be used as the capacitor that controls the frequency of the oscillator. The piezo's mechanical resonant frequency correlates with its electrical capacitive behavior, causing the piezo to set the resonant frequency of the oscillating circuit. More reading would be available under crystal oscillator and quartz clock.
So you're absolutely right that there's a symbiotic relationship between the electronics and the horn -- the circuit will oscillate at the resonant frequency of the transducer (as long as it's within the operating range of the circuit). And then when you change the mechanical loading of the transducer, giving it a different mass, you get a new operating frequency. As you experienced!
I hope you have watched some videos on why you never hook your oscilloscope up to a switching power supply. Well, without hooking it up through an isolation transformer.
For ultrasonic welding two plastic peices together you need an energy director, an apex for which the energy from the frequency is applied. Usually in the shape of a triangle only .010in wide at the base. Also your horn will need to be directed over the apex. So the horns are typically customized to the part geometry.
Try cutting the tip off and tap the end for a screw. Then the head of the screw can act as the press to push the nuts or inserts into the plastic while retaining the frequency response of the original.
Could have tried to hold the nut between the flats of a wrench to locate but allow the welder to push it down. Love your videos as always, lots of fun
Try a two stepped tip on the cone for nuts. The inner step to go in the center of the to act as a guide, and outer step to press on the nut.
The plastic welding tips I have use a grid pattern machined into the surface to grip the first layer and vibrate it against the second layer. It looks like all the friction in your setup is between the tool tip itself and the first layer of plastic.
You need to have an assembly with springs to let it vibrate, the only thing that should be solidly attached at the bottom is the anvil, and apply very little pressure so it can vibrate well enough to weld.
2 TOT videos in a week, this must be what heaven is like.
PS: nearly soiled myself laughing, good thing I was on the john
I don't even understand the half of what's happening in these videos but damn they're hilarious. Keep em coming
Loved the dig at mrpete's fingernail. It was subtle but perfect.
There is a program on BBC iPlayer about bubbles. So what you may scoff. If you can put micro bubbles in water and apply ultrasound the water then cleans really well! Like take lipstick off cloth. The water was arranged to go through what looked like your focusing horn connected to the ultrasound generator. Without the sound the water just flowed over the lipstick, turn on the sound and the lipstick was just washed away. It is a BBC 4 program and probably there for another 3 to 4 weeks. Not cutting or welding but kind a neat.
Hi Tony, a couple of years ago I went to a course on using Ultra sonic cutting of bone and teeth used for atraumatic tooth removal (if there is such a thing) and bone modification for dental implants . The advantage that was proposed was the US did not damage soft tissue but cut hard materials. The difference between a dental ultra sonic scaler and the cutter was that there was another phase in the transducer or another transducer at 90 degrees to each other , with one phase vibrating on the long axis of the instrument and the other in the horizontal plane. It was about 40 watts as I recall. They used the term 3D with respect to the tips vibration
interesting! also, "ultrasonic cutting" and "teeth" should never be in the same sentence.
On the positive side, you're now friends with all the neighborhood dogs. They can chew up plastic pretty good too.
Where I work we weld .5mm aluminum to .25mm copper 500w 250ms burst @ 38khz waveform similar to what youre seeing on the scope.
One of your best! "thats how they do it over seas" blew soda all over the place :)
"im no engineer but im pretty sure that hole isnt where the smoke is supposed to come out of"
lethal wit.
The scope likely blew up because of ground short. The loop on the probes isn't negative, it's ground. If you connect it to a non-ground potential you will have a short circuit,
Time 3:08 in first time seeing any videos by this guy and hes my 15th sub. Idk if its the banter or the clever humor but "Your cool in my book and you say when you dont know. Thats cool too." I can relate.
the sonic welders I built for HP to weld printer cartridges together - the transducer was 8" in diameter and the "horn" was nearly a foot tall, and we had a huge honkin powersupply/oscillator. Amazingly, the frequency was just about the same as the natural resonance of the stand holding the contraption and when on, you could hear it 2 floors away vertically and over 200' horizontally. We had great fun driving everyone nutz while testing. Some people with lose dental work were particularly affected :D
The only CZcams I binge . Repeatedly !
also, ultrasonic hand engraver (not the rotating kind, the percussion type) they basically use vibration to help with the "cutting" so MAYBE that super fast movement might help it glide through the material being engraved