Huge Can Meltdown - Melting 420 Coors Light Beer Cans - Is It Worth Your Time Melting Aluminum Cans
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ม.ค. 2022
- Since my last can melt video almost a year ago, I melted a boat load of Coors Light aluminum beer cans. Between my friends and I, there was 420 cans to melt. It is a ton of work melting cans, but it's definitely a fun thing to do, in my opinion. It's even more work editing such a monster of a melt, so I hope you enjoy!!! Leave a comment, or send me an email to: TheGrowingStack@Gmail.com
-TheGrowingStack - บันเทิง
I wanted to revisit an old video I did about a year ago. Is it worth your time to melt down aluminum cans? I guess that depends what your time is worth and what you do with it. To add to that, some people might spend a Sunday going to the movies or other events that cost money. Me, a $16 fill up on a propane tank and a heap of cans and I have fun and am entertained just the same. So “is it worth it” is really in the eyes of the beholder, just like beauty… So I suppose it’s up to the individual on what defines worth, and how it is measured. Either way, I hope you enjoy the video that took quite a bit of time to produce, and all you awesome people have an amazing day!!!
Not only are your videos mesmerizing but they are funny too! To me, watching you recycle cans into items is therapeutic and inspiring. Thank you for this special video!
I bet it took longer to drink them than it did to melt them
🤦🏻♂️ I have about 1,600 cans I’ve saved over the past 2 years. Thankfully already crushed, but I have the small devil forge. In a 2kg crucible, you can barely fit one whole un crushed can…
What a great statement. I totally agree. When for example it takes me an hour to totally disassemble an old drilling machine I have only some hundred grams of copper, aluminum and steel, so I won’t make big money in selling the scrap metal. But it was fun to take it apart and it feels good to contribute to recycle these metals. Each small contribution counts.
Worth it? It's a hobby. Hobbies generally don't make any money. In fact, they usually end up costing a lot!
The amount of time and effort you took to set all the cans up nicely, only to mess them up by driving over for a gag, then having to pick them up so you can crush them.
So many props for the effort.
I'm currently getting the supplies together to start my own melting/casting.
Also, I'm definitely going to use the "I'm a self trained professional" line now!
This is the best, spot on comment, I have ever read. Reading it from start to finish made smile. Thank you Justin! Be sure to send me some pics or something once you going. Thank you my friend! 👍👍👍
@@TheGrowingStack hey bud i got one qustion in all my years of working metal and refining i have never heard the word dross is the same as slag or is it slag with cooled metal in it sorry for bad spelling 😅
At least it wasn’t Coke cans. That would be soda pressing……
Ha
I see what you did there.
So if I'm reading this from the toilet rn (can't tell you.. that's personal) and I have a criticism of your pun does that mean I'm shit canning you?
Yes! Lol
Badum tisss
I worked in aluminum casting for Kaiser Aluminum in the 90’s. Your crucible and molds should be painted with boron nitride. To remove moister from all your equipment everything should be torched.
420 cans all aligned in the same direction.
The insanity is strong in this one....
But in all fairness the video is well worth the wait. Superb work many thanks for making it.
Thank you sir! There were many hours spent on this one, from every aspect. You might not be too far off on the insanity part 😃👍🤘
I was gonna say, then just bit my tongue off...
I didn't even notice until I read your comment. Of course that's how you line them up!! Now, if they had been all random, I never would have watched 15 mins of satisfying eye ASMR.
Can I buy one of the skulls? I am a millionaire so I can also pay you to do a cast of my choice too?
@@TheGrowingStack i could imagine melting time of my stack of 38kg of crashed cans.... all waiting to be... most probably taken to recycling facility...
Everyone that I have seen melt cans all say it is a lot of work. I can definitely believe it. I am planning a can melt in the next month or so, how ever long it takes to save up the magic number I have come up with. It is a secret. It will take a long time to melt with lots of dross and then remelt it. It will be fun. Great video my friend. I enjoy watching all of them. Thank you for sharing. Until next week.
Thank you my friend! Shoot me a link or a pic or something when you melt em down! I’d love to see it! 👍
@@TheGrowingStack will do
I say yes worth it because something I learned this year from professor of chemistry online: Aluminum is plentiful in the earths crust but it costs a LOT of $ time and effort to extract it out from the rocks, so that's why we save $ for the Earth by recycling what's already extracted. 😊
this reminded me of my late grandmother stepping on soda cans when she was in hong kong. she stepped so many just to raise us and going to school. good bless her soul.
13:47 I could watch you stacking your stuff all day…sooo relaxing
Repent to Jesus Christ
“I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.””
Jeremiah 31:25 NIV
I
I am a little surprised you were able to manually crush all those cans in one go without tweaking your ankle/foot. My patience would of ran thin after the 100th can; I guarantee I'd be doing some rage filled American History X level curb stomps on those cans.
Only to be instantly checked by the universe when my aim slips and I roll my ankle XDDD
Sweet video
He definitely has some strong feet 😩
Just watch a TH-cam video while crushing them
Trust me it's editing lol
I feel it’d be less trouble to crush the cans shortly after drinking rather than saving it for all at once
Can crusher. Mounts on wall. Uses a lever. Crushes...
Experienced family of beer lovers
@@bmark6971 exactly! From Wisconsin here
Then he wouldn't have that aspect of the video, showing before and after, including that the tabs were removed.
then you get a little bit of beer left in the bottom of the can throw that into molten meltal and congrats you just cause and explosion that will shower you in said molten metal
@@kickinyourassblackop there is beer sitting in the can regardless if you crush it or not.
It's nice to see you dedicating yourself to being a healthy person and drinking water as much as you do.
Why is Coors Lite like Sex on the Beach?
It's f*cking near water.,,🤪
"There's so much trash in the cans."
Yeah. It was called Coors Light.
😂 I love it! You’re awesome Cathy!
@@TheGrowingStack Oh good. You took it in the spirit in which it was intended.
@@CathyInBlue Of course! It really made me laugh my a$$ off. It’s so true!! 😂
Thank you for the awesome comment and please keep them coming!!!
Coors light cans, and I'd imagine several others, have plastic liners in them. That explains all the trash that is not beer...
@@darrenobrien7667 How does it explain all the trash that *was* beer?
You and your buddies dont drink very much. 420 cans in a year? I'm glad to see you're not drowning your self. I love your videos. Thanks for all the great content.
I was gonna say the same thing! My old roommate would probably have the same amount of cans saved up after maybe a month or two. Him being an alcoholic plus his daughter's soda addiction and my ex and I's casual alcoholism produced a pretty insane amount of aluminum cans. Old roommate wasn't a recycling type of guy but when my ex n I moved in, I honestly enjoyed collecting the cans and taking them to the metal recycling plant after a while and seeing how much I could get for them. Roomie eventually got me one of those wall mounted can crushers (which i highly recommend) so I was able to bring way more cans to the plant each trip. The most I ever made was a little over $5 lol. It was like 3-4 bins completely full of crushed cans! I wish I had the equipment to melt down cans back then, they were extremely abundant.
I remember when i was 15 i hid my empty plastic 1.75 liter jugs of vodka in giant contractor trash bags in woods, filled up more than I'd like to admit. 1 friend died of OD, 1 was murdered, and 1 died of suicide. Been 14 years since had a drink. 420 cans of beer seems like a lot to me today. 1 can would be way too many (bc clearly 1000 wouldn't be enough).
Year? I am going with a bender weekend.
Coors light is basically water. I drink Coors original and barley catch a buzz
@@mikerasmussen7993 LOL, Coors is what i drink if i feel like having a couple of beers and i dont want to get drunk.
Thanks for sharing I have often wondered how much actual aluminum was in there, lots. And its good stuff. Its people like this that will rebuild the world.
Interesting video. An aspect I love about it was the absence of background music. Many TH-cam posters have a propensity to insert music beds with the videos that don't enhance the presentation; but instead, makes it distracting and annoying for the viewers.
amen
Lol brooooo, your commentary has me dying. As a “self trained professional” in can melting, I love this video.
Tip soak the cans in 3 parts bleach and 1 part dawn dish soap for about 3 hours and all the ink on the can will wash off leaves hardly any slag when you melt them down.
Sounds about right. The cans have a layer of poly something to prevent oxidation and something to print on. And I think that’s most of the crap you scooped out there.
In anyway. Good video! Thanks for sharing . 👍🏻
I love how metal goes from tink tink hard to wobble wobble melty. So cool
This video was fun. And you made me laugh about you being a self trained professional. Ahhh, so funny!
Thanks Tracy! It’s always my goal to bring joy!
If you leave your spoon in the molten metal for a little bit, the dross doesn't stick. Keep up the good work! Love your videos
Well heating it up prior is really the trick
Lol learned all about preheating the hard way the first time I tried pouring the metal into the mold
@@the_inquisitive_inquisitor Yeah, you have to preheat your molds too. Just sit them on lid of furnace few minutes. Preheating the spoon helps it not stick too. Though just buying a graphite rod is the best option. Though still want to preheat that so it doesn't crack
a good thing to remember when calculating loss with aluminum cans is that they contain a plastic sheath between the liquid and the can. there will always be "loss" but it isnt 3g of AL. basically, you dont lose that much even though the weight says you do. its a lot less than 3g.
There is certainly a plastic liner, but it is just sprayed in and is nothing more than a layer of plastic lacquer/ paint. So even though an aluminum can is thin and light, the percentage of the can that is plastic is extremely small.
That's what I was wondering. I remember seeing a video when a can is put into a liquid and all that is left is a very thin film of plastic which is very interesting!
I worked at one of anheuser-busch companies metal container plants that made nothing but cans in 1993 and so forth ,Their profit to cost ratio was around 85% at the time. Trash is: inside spray coating, the incredible ink on the exterior and. 0001 or something like that of overall impurities in the aluminum roll that was delivered once in a 16 to 18 hour period at our plant. That was with 6.2 million cans per 12 hour shift.
The people that we're supervisors of production at Anheuser-Busch were nuts , physically attacking employees because of a machine going down for 3 seconds too long.
I think I might have been a murderer if I was born 10 years earlier.
@@Maelthorn1337 me too?
This is the best video EVER!!! Thank you so very much!!!!❤️❤️
I found you first, then BigStackD. My kids and I love watching your content! Thanks for the hard work stomping all those cans! It was fun to watch 😖🦶
Thank you Katie. It was a fun one to make, but a ton of work. Especially after I spent an hour lining up the cans, just to drive over and ruin it, just to pick them all up again to crush 😩😂
Amazingly satisfying to watch. Thank you for the video!
This is so cool. Thanks for sharing! I turned on TH-cam to just have some random videos playing in the background and I couldn't help but watch the entire video.
Some of that slag looked like plastic, which aluminum cans do have a plastic lining on the inside, but it also looked surprisingly un burned. Also I don't think breathing plastic smoke is good for you, like at all.
It's probably the paint or whatever they use for the labeling on the can
... uhh... Aluminum smelting is no joke. I truly hope you're wearing a respirator. I would be extremely unhappy as your neighbor. I've watched a healthy man turn to catatonic zombie after a career at the foundry. That stack of aluminum at the end gives me chills. K. Aluminum needs a Netflix doc.
The waste is called DROSS I think, Slag is from Iron casting
That pan out at the end was killer. Great job self trained or not🤘
This video was very fun to watch! Thanks for sharing.
Great video. Back in the 90s I had Metal Shop in HS. We had a foundry and did just what you did in the video with cans. We made molds of mostly skulls for gearshift knobs. Definitely brings back memories of participating in this craft. Loved it
Pick up a “tamper” or a manual soil packer. Used to use one when I was a kid to flatten cans to make a more dense target for plinking.
It will flatten heavy soup cans quite easily.
They have either a 12x12 or a 10x10 working face, with a 48” or so perpendicular handle centered on the plate. Works like the foot method, but you could do 3-4 cans at a time.
I've always thought that a trash compactor would work pretty good
this; definitely the can crushing meta
I'm a road worker. I bag my cans, take to the shop and crush with asphalt roller. Turns 10 bags of into one. Flat as a dime.
ok thanking yu
Drill a fucking can crusher to a wall in your garage
I read "420 colors" and got excited. Now I understand what it said and I'm staying.
Excellent, excellent video GrowingStack!! Hilarious running over the cans with your car!! Skulls are badass!!
Thanks brother!! I’m glad you liked it!
That is crazy. Love your work
Thank you!
Cans are my last resort when I need a melting fix haha
That is so cool!! I love it - especially the clock!
Love those skulls. Nice work. We used to do sand casting in industrial arts years back and it was so much fun.
Imagine him having a house guest over for the first time that didn't know what he does and them seeing that display with no warning.
The cans or the beer pirate treasure?
“I had my mates save these beer cans for me” rather than “I drunk all that beer myself” 😋
I didn’t know I needed this content, but I’m glad I found it. New sub!
I love all of the different aluminum things, discs, skulls, blocks, etc.
I'm sure your return of aluminum was a lot higher than 75% seeing as there's a plastic lining and the paint in the cans that gets burnt away
th-cam.com/video/xBQEnVR7y9k/w-d-xo.html for people wondering about the plastic this shows you the aluminum disolved leaving the drink in a plastic liner
The amount of energy used to melt those cans,I'm pretty sure the return is zero.
@@Smart-Towel-RG-400 Yeah, that was pretty cool.
When I would melt cans, I found out a lot of the slag on top was reusable, and could be mitigated. I can’t remember of the top of my head, but could be a good research project!
Really cool video man ! Kinda got inspired
So entertaining. Great stuff!
This sure reminded of the stacks of cans my buddies and I would put together in our apartments during college years! We used to separate them by brand and had nicknames for all the different beers. Buttwiper, Sewers, Reindeer, Ribbit (Ranier) for the ads they came up with, Animal (scmidt) Six gun (Colt 45) Artesian and so many more, good times!
Doesn't matter if it is worth melting the aluminum... all that matters is that it is fun and entertaining.
Fun, entertaining!!! You need a life bad!!!
@@finndog2759 - evidently it entertained you... as well as the person that made the video.
Excellent video, gets the creative juices moving.👍
Love that bass clef! Great video.
It's always worth your time forging anything with any metal in my honest opinion. :)
12:53 the good thing about living in Wisconsin during the winter is that you dont need an ice block you can just put the metal in a snow bank.
Ha! Like it!
The process shown does indeed prove you helped your friends
Thumbs up for putting them on the ice block. Totally satisfying lol
Another great video.
Thank you!
A big ass billet of aluminum is worth a helluva lot more than recycling the cans themselves. Nicely done.
He had 4kg of aluminum. That's 1.8 pounds. My local scrap dealer paid me 53 cents / pound last summer. So, that's 97 cents of aluminum. On the other hand, my state requires a 10 cent deposit, so 420 * 0.1 = $42. Nonetheless, he converted 420 cans into a) an afternoon he enjoyed, b) a cool video, c) some art objects, and d) some metal for future projects. Oh, and some exercise!
@@randybartlett3042 4kg is 8.8 lbs. Nobody pays much for aluminum cans (at least in the US), but that huge billet would bring quite a bit more.
We pay a deposit, way cheaper than the fuel to melt at home unless I wanted to make stuff.
It’s soooo satisfying watching them drop out of the blocks
As soon as the car rolled in, that was it, thumbs up
I drink too much beer, generally the same kind. I took 190 ish empties to the recycling place once, and the people looked at me funny. It's kind of hard to say that it wasn't just you that drank that much when they are all the same brand. But 420 of the same thing? Cripes. haha
Hey man! Love the content. Very entertaining and informative. I just thought I would share some info from one friend to another. If you want to flatten all your cans at once, use a piece of plywood and drive over the cans! it works wonders
Thanks J B! I appreciate that! I might give that a try next time I do cans. 👍
All really awesome, well done
Not sure why this was in my recommendations but it was pretty cathartic to watch
Fun to watch the can crushing process evolve on time lapse
I got 1 of those 105.00 air powered can smashers from EBAY, they work great. As long as the air compressor keeps up.
I’ve wondered about this. Thanks for your efforts
Another great video! 🙏
One thing that would be cool to see is to take all the bars of one kind of metal and try to pour some big ingots to build the growing stack on. Kind of like big blocks from little ones to make a stand instead of the shelf they are on now.
That would be pretty cool! 👍
2nd try.
I prefer to melt the cans without crushing them first.
The top up 'pop' they make or top down 'rocket action' is some of the great 420 entertainment.
lol
I actually watched your 8,000 can melt first when I first discovered your channel the other day and I have to say you and BigstackD are two of the best channels doing this on TH-cam
This is really cool, and I'm really glad I got to see it 👍😁
Would have never thought to do that at home, with the right gear, cool outcome
You should use the aluminum or aluminum cans to make a solar heater that you can use to heat water/direct electrons/heat a hoffler tube and use the vibrations to move steel pins in and out of magnetic fields.
My dad could keep you making videos like this, by himself. At least once a month.
Awesome . That shelf is full of cool stuff. Good work man.
Thanks Rob!
420 cans is a weekend with the buddies, not a year of saving lmfao lol 😂
So here in MA USA we get $0.05/can for returns (we pay the deposit when we buy the beverage). That's $21 USD to return the 420 cans. Your after-melt weight of say 4kg even at a current ALU cost of $3.08 USD/kg gives me about $12. So just a hair over half of what I'd get returning them after all that work lol
Here in South Africa there is no deposit on cans, however it seems that taking those 420 cans in to a scrapyard would get me at least R348($22.99)
Strangely enough the price for aluminium is R 9.91 per kg in my area so that 4kg lot would be only R39.64($2.62)... Just turning in the cans and buying aluminium for casting seems to make more sense here.
21cents not dollars
21 cents
Love your channel and this is a great video. Back in the day when I started collecting cans I got tired of crushing them by foot. I tried using my S-10. Did work but not well. I did eventually pile the cans up and put part of a sheet of plywood on them, then drive on it. It did work better but was still time consuming. Trust me, it was fun though LOL!!! Enjoyed the video. Keep stacking ‘‘em up 👍
Thank you James! Yeah, I hear you, the time involved is the killer. But you’re right, it is fun driving over them! 👍
I use the same method to take the outer husk off walnuts. LOL
I personally prefer an 8-12 lb sledge once they are all lined up. Just stand it up on the ground, pick it straight up, and use the top of the hammer as the smash surface. (not the hammer ends)
@@eqhymay Like a tamper. Done that too. Grandad would give me $.50 a quart for shelled walnuts.(I think he was getting over on me)Spoiled in my old age, I just buy soft shell pecans and crack 'em like peanuts.
Hello from Russia. you have copper, brass and aluminum. it looks great! crafts with shards are especially good, but I like ingots more) good luck
Your videos are freakin' awesome. Need more, need more, need more...!
Thanks Jimmy, I appreciate that! I took a week off last week, but I’m almost done editing my next one for this week 👍👍👍
Love the vids man, i'm not sure what you do with your slag but one idea would be to create thermite mixtures to recover more of the metal out of it (useful for iron melts where you would obtain Iron Oxides). With aluminum oxide, since thermite goes the other direction it wouldn't be the case, but you could do some other things to get the metal out of the slag in big quantities. For example, this particular melt builds up a lot of Alumina (Aluminum Oxide) which can be reacted in the Hall-Heroult process to obtain a bunch more aluminum. Ideas for down the road, keep up the great work!
I've been *just* starting out in the back yard aluminum foundry hobby. My chunks of slag have a pretty cool texture and I've been considering painting them giving them to my D&D enthusiast buddy as rocky terrain for his table-top miniatures...
I was so distracted by the flimsy-looking fabric shoes. I would have expected something more protective. Aside from that, I enjoyed watching the process. Thank you!
Same here. Just one drop of molten aluminum would go straight through those!
Yeh he did say self trained professional. Basically meant self proclaimed professional.
@@michealtorres8598 trained professional wears steel toed boots and does aluminum casting different from this.
@@Mountainrock70 sorry not everyone does everything the OSHA approved way 🤡
@@ItzCharlemagne even with OSHA removed from the equation.
These are my new favorite videos
I wish I was your friend Angela.😍 awesome video!
One thing I remember from that method of crushing cans is that you get a sore foot after a while. Swapping foot helps, but like everyone else, you do have a preferred foot, (like a preferred hand), and you soon revert back.
Or use a heavy object like a 10lb weight
@@NathanaelD 10-12lb sledge hammer... comes with EZ Lift handle already attached. lift straight up.. drop...
I took 100 lbs of smashed cans to the recycling center. I got $60 !! LOL yep that car squished the more for sure lol Actually melting cans will have a lots of slag. Its better to take all the cans to a recycling center. However...you cannot make beautiful shiny shiny cubes with unmelted cans. I say melt the suckers !!! I LOVE the skulls !! Great video, loved it !!
Thank you Lisa!!!!!
Yeah when my wife saw how many cans it took to get a pound of aluminum, she said I couldn't use the cans to make parts. If I took aluminum ingots to a recycling center, they would look at me like I was crazy. I use wheels, old worn out power tools, exterior light fixtures, and car parts for my parts.
"Self trained professional". Totally dig it lol
420 cans of Rocky Mountain High.. Hell yeah brother!
Did you not flux? Or just not in the video? Flux will greatly improve your yield, helping to separate the slag cleanly
As a guy who had to crush tons of cans as a kid, my feet hurt watching you crush all those cans! Lol it’s crazy how bruised your feet can get through shoes.
That was cool to watch thanks for sharing
Awesome video!
"I'm a self trained professional..." = Yeah, the moisture from the cans exploded on me one time.
self trained professional working with molten aluminum in fabric sneakers
I dont' know why... but watching people melt random metal items into solid ingots is so satisfying...
Another cool video. Was neat to see you using a pair of Channellock pliers, they are made in my hometown. My grandpa used to make them. Anyways looking forward to more. Thanks
Those look conspicuously like my oil filter wrenches in the garage…
Coor's the banquet beer no matter the type...too these cans we applaud your service 👏🏻
Are there any fluxes that could help get some of the aluminum out of all that dross?
I think I remember someone using stump remover
You could smash it with a hammer and agitate it until the stuff separates.
I like how your metal cache is growing as time goes by.
Nice work friend thank you.
No idea why this is in my recommended, but I like it