h a l f b a k e r yBreakfast of runners-up.
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Spend a Penny to Crush a Car is a
machine
that is installed in a public place, for the
purpose of raising money for a charity.
It does this by enabling participants to
play their small part in the crushing of a
car.
The machine is like a conventional
crusher, except it is cylindrical,
with one
half of the enclosing wall made of
suitably
reinforced glass to enable to process to
be
observed. The entire arrangement
resembles a syringe with the car inside.
Depositing a coin releases the lock on a
handle, which is easily turned, even by a
child. The rotation of the handle is
transmitted through multiple gears,
causing the plunger to bear against the
car. Twenty rotations result in a one
millimetre movement, which is
observable
on a large gauge.
Over a period of time the car is
inexorably
reduced to a circular disk crushed
against
one end of the cylinder.
Once crushed, the car is then fused into
molten glass. These car
disks are then placed into recessed
circles
flush
with ground level, in a park for people to
walk on.
Useful conversion tool for [Absinthe]
http://joshmadison.com/software/convert/
This will help you work some coversions, though it doesn't have 'ksi'. [TheLightsAreOnBut, Mar 30 2007]
[link]
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A 20:1 ratio seems far too small to provide adequate force. A typical car crusher utilizes 300,000 PSI hydraulics powered by a 100 HP motor. |
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No matter how hard you press, steel, aluminum, rubber and vinyl will not "fuse into molten glass". |
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Finally, one has to consider whether the best use of several thousand pounds of scrap steel is a paving 'stone'. |
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Why just cars? Lots of things should be put into the press. |
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Why cars ? I like the idea of converting
them into a paving surface. |
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How much would you get for the car crushing? -- a typical car is what, about... 4 meters long? so... 4000 pennies, or $40... minus about 10 cm-worth of car remaining after the smooshing is complete, so $39. |
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Doesn't sound too terribly cost effective! you should raise your rates to a nickel. Then each car would net you $200 minus a fortieth for leftovers, so $195, minus the cost of the car to your charity, unless it was donated for free. |
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You could also charge a flat rate to crush the whole thing ( a "big red button" next to the crank) that is discounted to like, $150, if people want instant gratification. |
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Instead of the gearing mechinism, just provide an empty space above the cylinder. As people add coins, the cylinder gets heavier. It will take quite a few coins to complete a crush. |
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... ok - I give in. Make it an even £1
coin. |
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what's that worth in real money? :^D |
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hehehe, you'd make a pound per pound. Although you'd measure it in kilograms. But still. |
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I've always been confused as to why people want to crush cars. Is it because older cars pollute more? So let's use a fairly massive amount of energy to crush it into a much smaller chunk of steel, then melt it down, using more fossil fuels along the way, so we can keep it from putting out a little more CO2 than a new car, which has to be built to replace it, causing even more enviromental damage.
If it's just because its sitting there not being used with no plans to be used, that's ok. But if it's a mandatory program for vehicles not meeting a certain emissions requirement (I believe California has something of that nature), it's a move in the wrong direction. Recycling is good, but re-using is better. |
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But as for crushing cars in this manner, I wholeheartedly give you an un-crushed crossiant. It reminds me of the penny flattening machines at theme parks, but on a much larger scale. |
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How do you crush steel into glass? Isn't glass silicon (or more precisely, silicon dioxide) rather than iron with a bit of carbon? |
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he meant -- crush the steel, then suspend the crushed car in glass, for a paving stone. |
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bearing in mind that steel is the most recycled material on the planet this seems counter productive in many ways. |
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While interesting visually this idea seems to really be a very mean spirited rant against the automobile which is in fact one of the most successfully recycled machines ever created by mankind. |
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I like it.
Pennies for pounds. |
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//300,000 PSI//
I think you have slipped in a few too many 0's, there. 3000psi is probably nearer. |
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Oh, I dunno, maybe it's 30ksi, I know a lot of gear runs 10ksi, so it's not outside the realm of possibility. |
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most public loos don't have room for this sized machinery. |
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//suitably reinforced glass// - I don't think you can reinforce glass to anything like the strength you will require. Maybe you could have steel pistons and a glass window in the side? |
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I've tried to put words around the wonder of such a unit as "ksi", but I can't. Priceless. |
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So 300ksi is about 2000 bar?
About 10 times the pressure in a SCUBA cylinder.
<whistles through teeth, expressing engineering respect> |
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Uh, I make 300ksi as 20,000 bar... Either I've made a mistake, but I've double checked it a few times, or someone else has |
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<whistles even louder in engineering respect, and hangs head in shame from poor arithmetic >20k atm it is then - what's that in Pascals? </welierahhisfpa> |
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My trusty "convert" tool (see link) tells me that 300ksi is 206,842,700Pa. |
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An online calculator tells me that's equivalent to 200km under the sea. |
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That's a really handy conversion program, [TLAOB]. It will really come in handy on a lot of my homework. |
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[Hunter 79764]
I could be wrong but I expect its
expense. It would take much more
money to rebuild a car one at a time
(rebore cylinders, replace worn parts,
re-weld broken components, etc) than
it is to melt them down and start over
with standardized construction. It mght
even take more energy as the custom
work is a lot less efficient.
AFAIK, no one requires older or
innefecient cars to be melted down
(even in CA, people collect antique
cars). If it doesn't meet the requirments
it can't be driven on the road without
special permits, but it doesn't have to
be melted down.
Also, I suspect over the life of a car,
melting down and building a more
effecient car does save energy
compared to just driving the old one. |
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It would be cool if your nickle bought the ability to raise a big weight a certain distance, which would then be dropped all at once on the car. |
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That was my first idea... but I prefer the
notion of slow crushing, without
instantaneous gratification |
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okay that is officaly evry child's dream |
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Forget the gears. Too much inertia and energy loss. Go for simple hydraulic action. |
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