Mini Arc Furnace (Arc Reactor Technology IRL)

I just pulled the carbon rods out of a
six volt lantern battery and used them
to complete a makeshift arc reactor
furnace which apparently is powerful
enough to completely liquify steel in
under two minutes in this project let’s
harness the power of electrified plasma
to melt high-temperature metals and take
backyard experiments to a whole new
level let’s start this project with the
AC arc welder we made in a previous
project
it runs unmodified parts from a
microwave oven and you can see how I
built it in another project video now if
we power up the reactor and try touching
the two carbon rods together they spark
up a blinding arc of electricity that
gets impressively hot impressively fast
the heat of the arc pulls the plasma
upward but if we tilt the electrodes
down a bit we can change the direction
of the beam and splash it down into the
reactor core let’s test the power of the
arc furnace on this little aluminum
muffin we made in a previous project you
can see it’s the perfect size for
nestling down into the two inch chamber
with a lid in place it’s time to insert
the carbon electrodes and when they
touch you can see they start sparking
then stabilize into a steady and
continuous electrical arc now after only
45 seconds you can see the rods are
white-hot and could start a fire so
let’s push them through the insulating
holes in the lid then carefully remove
it from the furnace you can see the
aluminum is melted and glowing bright
orange but surprisingly enough the
outside is still cool enough that I can
pick it up barehanded now just for fun I
poured the aluminum into a mold I
quickly hacked out with a screwdriver
and ended up with a crude casting of my
king of random logo that’s kind of cool
now you might have noticed this furnace
is made from an insulating fire brick
and I chose this material because
refractory bricks like these withstand
extremely high temperatures they’re
lightweight and extremely soft so it
only takes a few minutes to carve out a
furnace and the best part is one six
dollar brick can make two of them you’ll
see how to make these in another project
video now to see if this thing will
handle higher temperature metals let’s
clap an old copper pipe to my bench vise
and use a hacksaw to cut it into smaller
pieces the melting point of copper is
about 60% higher than aluminium so I’m
really curious to see what happens when
we nuke this with plasma now I designed
the furnace with a little viewing port
so we can have a look down inside to see
what’s happening when it’s in operation
here you can see the arc is holding
steady and pointed downward
the chamber thousands of degrees within
seconds and if you look closely here you
can see bits of copper liquefying and
collapsing under the arc alright it’s
been just a little over a minute so
let’s see what’s happened on the inside
amazingly it’s so hot it’s nearly too
bright to look at but as it starts to
cool a bit you can see clearly that the
copper is melted completely
now I designed the furnace of the
viewing port well double as a makeshift
pour spout as well this keeps everything
self-contained and makes it easy to pour
glowing pools of liquid copper now I’m
using fire brick to cast my ingots
because it’s the only material I have
that’ll handle temperatures this high
alright our copper ingots are poured and
at this point they kind of look like
radioactive egg yolks that’s really cool
a couple minutes later you can see
they’ve blackened over but they’re still
incredibly hot and watch what happens if
we touch them with a piece of paper the
copper turns bright and shiny again
wherever the paper touches it but
quickly goes black again when the paper
moves and the air can get back to
oxidize it I’m super excited this
furnace will take down copper the
question now is what will it do to steel
I used a hacksaw to cut a quarter inch
off the end of a steel pipe and after
only 20 seconds in the furnace you can
see the Steel’s gone incandescent and
could easily be hammer forged into a
custom ring of power let’s go one step
further I chopped his steel grounding
rod into 2-inch pieces and threw them in
the reactor and fired it up over 3,000
degrees Fahrenheit which in this case is
hot enough to make a shower of sparks
fly out of the viewport this is why it’s
important to have fire and safety
equipment nearby and backup plans in
case something goes wrong now check this
out the power of the plasma is so
incredible that it just reduced this
grounding rod into a flowing fountain of
liquid steel that’s so bright it looks
like sparking Liquid Light how crazy is
that now to finish up let’s see what
would happen if we threw in these three
small rocks I found in the backyard I
torch the rocks for three minutes and
the electrodes got so hot I could barely
hold onto them but it’s worth it for
what you’re about to see that’s right
you can’t see anything because it’s so
hot right now it’s like looking directly
into the Sun if we give it a couple of
minutes to cool then look down at the
bottom you suddenly realize you’re
looking at liquefied rock not exactly
sure but I think we just cooked up a
batch of lava well now you know how to
use an improvised arc welder and a 6
volt Lantern battery to power
experimental arc furnace with electric
fire so hot it’ll melt any metal you can
get your hands on or Forge one ring to
rule them all by the way I tried melting
a whole load of copper tubing then
casting it in a mold made from plaster
which apparently releases very flammable
gases because it spewed molten metal all
around the workshop even so I ended up
with an awesome looking copper ingot to
add to my metal casting collection well
that’s it for now if you liked this
project perhaps you’ll like some others
check them out at the king of random
calm hey guys I learned a lot while
making this project and these
experiments have been really gratifying
for me because this is the kind of stuff
that makes me feel alive this kind of
power opens a whole new world of wonder
and creation and if this were scaled and
modified there really aren’t any limits
to what could be done let me know in the
comments how these experiments made you
feel I’d love to hear your thoughts and
get your feedback I’m also really
excited to have 3 million of you now
following my random projects and
experiments I’m always working on
something new and putting out new videos
every 5 days so if you haven’t already
please subscribe now to show your
support and feel free to check out some
of my other projects and videos until
you’re released the next one talk to you
then bye