8 ms·

The Mattel Spinwelder was the coolest Christmas gift of the 1970s

170 points by herendin 4y ago

mallomarmeasle 4y ago
Brings back pleasant memories. I certainly loved the one I had as a child. I can still smell the _almost_ burning plastic that the device created in operation.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Still a pretty common technique if you need to weld together a couple 3D printed PLA pieces, since there isn't really a great glue for that purpose.
- causi 4y ago
  Trying to spinweld two prints together seems like a huge pain when you could just get a $35 3D-pen and load your filament into it.
- TheDudeMan 4y ago
  Epoxy
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  CA won't glue PLA?
  - somebodynew 4y ago
    Cyanoacrylate works on PLA, but PLA is notably not amenable to solvent welding or smoothing with household supplies compared to the ease with which ABS/ASA (acetone) or PVB (isopropyl alcohol) pieces can be fused together. It is marginally possible to fuse pieces of PLA together using ethyl acetate (sold to consumers as "acetone-free nail polish remover" or "MEK substitute"), but this is not nearly as accessible, effective, or reliable compared to other plastics.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I've always had pretty mixed luck with cyanoacrylate. It kinda works, but it's never very strong on PLA. Doesn't hold up nearly as well as a welded connection.
jansan 4y ago
11,000,343 RPM is a lot!
- olyjohn 4y ago
  I was gonna ask... is that for real? How does it spin up to 11 MILLION RPM? That seems crazy.
  - jansan 4y ago
    Richt, that needs further investiagation, Almost seems to be made up by the author.
    - hansword 4y ago
      Normal rpm's for a spin welder are <3000. Datasheet: https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-welder.pdf https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-welder.pd...
  - mlyle 4y ago
    It's a joke. The sig figs at the end is a clue, along with complete physical implausibility. ((1 mm)^2) * 1 gram * (((183 339 * 2 * pi) / second)^2) = 1 326.99551 joules It would have 1300J of rotational energy if there was only 1 gram of spinning mass at 1 mm distance.
    - chowells 4y ago
      Not just the sigfigs, the juxtaposition of the word "about" with the excessive sigfigs. Combining a word indicating imprecision with excessive sigfigs is a very common American idiom to convey exaggeration. (Probably other places too, but I don't have firsthand experience with them.)
herendin 4y ago
See also: https://toytales.ca/spinwelder-from-mattel-1974/ https://toytales.ca/spinwelder-from-mattel-1974/ https://3dprint.com/16023/friction-filling-3d-prints/amp/ https://3dprint.com/16023/friction-filling-3d-prints/amp/
ddingus 4y ago
I got one of these as a kid and used the crap out of it! I was that kid who wanted toys that did actual stuff. This toy was one of those. Kept it for years to fix that odd plastic problem. When I ran out of the little rods, I remember trying every polymer I could find, until I found some little sticks that worked in a similar way.
chiph 4y ago
Friction stir welding is still a thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUyLHQxRHKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUyLHQxRHKo
- WJW 4y ago
  Famously used by SpaceX to weld (some parts of) their rockets together without having heat affecting the strength of the material.
  - elil17 4y ago
    Not really a "SpaceX" thing - it's been used on the Space Shuttle and many spacecraft since then. Also boats, cars, planes, etc. Heck, iMacs have used it since 2012.
    - WJW 4y ago
      You are entirely right of course, I didn't mean that it was a SpaceX-exclusive process or anything. It's just where I heard about it first and I would bet it is the most high-profile application currently in use. :)
- akavel 4y ago
  Another one that I found more informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euO-LIkew8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euO-LIkew8o
elif 4y ago
I was a 90's kid and got whatever the 90's version of this was called. It had a long "welding stick" that I'd wear down past nub to get the max out of. To this day, the melting plastic smell gives me nostalgia vibes... Probably not the healthiest in hindsight.
drcongo 4y ago
Kinda wish I could load the page to see what this is, but apparently there's enough dodgy trackers on there that the page completely fails if you have them blocked.
- rmetzler 4y ago
  Here is a YouTube Link to the commercial which was embedded in the post. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PnWpcwnR2YA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PnWpcwnR2YA
  - drcongo 4y ago
    Thank you! Now I want one.
    - ddingus 4y ago
      Yes you do. For a toy, it had many practical applications. And it's fun to use.
failrate 4y ago
Neat, I have seen people doing something similar with a rotary tool and a straight length of 3D printing stock.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
I never had the Spinwelder but remember seeing it in the back of the Sears catalog. One of my favorite toys as a 70's kid, the Vertibird toy helicopter: http://www.timepassagesnostalgia.com/&searchkeywords=vertibird&sis=-1&rdir=1 http://www.timepassagesnostalgia.com/&searchkeywords=vertibi... Like any good helicopter toy I was unable to fly it when I first woke up on Christmas and shoved the batteries in. You actually had to control the lift (not a collective but speed control on the rotor) and the pitch. Too much pitch and you lose lift so had to compensate with extra lift. By the New Years I was flying like a pro, swinging around and pulling back on the pitch to reverse thrust and stop over a dime.... My favorite "make stuff toys" of the 70's were my Erector set and Lego set of course. But then I also had this trippy Buckminster-Fuller-meets-Light-Bright building toy called an Astrolite: https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/01/16/vintage-toy-fun-astrolite-by-hasbro-1969-toys-adafruit-hasbro-adafruit/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/01/16/vintage-toy-fun-astroli...
- bitwize 4y ago
  I had a Verti-Bird as well. I was 4. My dad basically hogged the thing. I barely got to play with it, then it went into storage never to return.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  > My favorite "make stuff toys" of the 70's were my Erector set and Lego set The Legos I had in the 70s did not have any mini figures (did they exist in the US at that time? None of my friends had any either) and there parts were only a few standard sizes as I recall (no small ones like today). I don’t even remember “kits” so much as “here’s a bunch of Legos, go build something” like another version of blocks of Lincoln Logs. Did you actually have kits with build instructions that came with the kit?
  - JackFr 4y ago
    Girders and Panels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girder_and_Panel_building_sets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girder_and_Panel_building_sets
blueflow 4y ago
You can buy actual welding equipment and a angle grinder on eBay. There are YouTube videos to learn the basics. The caveat is that you need a lot of protection to not harm/kill yourself: - Eye-Protection so the welder doesn't burn out your eyes - Long clothes so you don't get irradiated/sunburn from the welder - Welding gloves so sparks don't burn into your skin - Protective Glasses in case the disc of the angle grinder explodes - Ear protection because the angle grinder is loud enough to permanently damage your ears Aside from that, its an awesome toy and allows you to fix quite some things. And other people automatically assume you are doing serious work, even when you are just fucking around. Its not suitable for kids in case you were looking for that.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  And ventilation (I was told this contributed to Steve Mc Queen's early death). I had an angle grinder disc shatter on me and one piece took a huge gouge out of a wooden toolbox I had built. I am afraid of angle grinders now.
  - auxym 4y ago
    Yeah, a full faceshield is definitely advisable when using grinders. Powerful tools not to be taken lightly.
  - deltarholamda 4y ago
    Another one of the most deceptively dangerous tools is the humble router. Basically anything that spins at a high RPM is one loose t-shirt away from strangling you and embedding itself into your fleshy bits.
    - mindcrime 4y ago
      Also the humble rotary (Dremel style) tool. I was doing some work with mine yesterday and - in a moment of complacency - actually had the tool bit make contact with the surface I was working on for a second or two before I realized "shit, I'm not wearing safety glasses." I shut it down and grabbed my safety glasses pronto. I'm not exactly a "safety nazi" on this stuff, but some things just make too much sense to not do. And even a rotary tool can send shards slamming into your eyes or something that could cost you your vision. :-(
walterbell 4y ago
Modern version, via Dremel or similar rotary tool, https://makezine.com/2015/04/30/turn-dremel-tool-plastic-welder/ https://makezine.com/2015/04/30/turn-dremel-tool-plastic-wel... & https://makezine.com/projects/skill-builder-finishing-and-post-processing-your-3d-printed-objects/ https://makezine.com/projects/skill-builder-finishing-and-po...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- b3morales 4y ago
  Another interesting demo on Hackaday: https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/make-your-own-plastic-friction-welder/ https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/make-your-own-plastic-fricti...
- bluedino 4y ago
  Modern version: https://youtu.be/-aEuAK8bsQg https://youtu.be/-aEuAK8bsQg
  - postalrat 4y ago
    Nah, that's been around since the 60s.
tgflynn 4y ago
I grew up during the 70's and was an avid reader of the toy section of the Sear's catalog (until they stopped sending them for free) but somehow I never heard of this kind of toy.
- david927 4y ago
  Same here. I find it a little funny that I’m 54 now and when I was watching the video of the ad I was thinking, “That’s so COOL!!”
- euroderf 4y ago
  Yes, the Sears Wish Book. A veritable gold mine of toy desire. For years I meticulously crafted lists of wants for my parents to process (or not).
bediger4000 4y ago
There were some very weird toys in the 70s. I recall an actual injection molder (not the "Thingmaker", that was just heating thermoplastic) that could be used to make small soldiers that smelled vaguely of dog excrement. It had a hopper that you filled with pellets of some kind of polymer, and a plunger that injected melted polymer into a mold. I coveted this one. I haven't been able to find anything on this one, due to information camouflage: all I can google up is references to injection molded toys, and companies that do injection molding. The toy I'm remembering had you doing the injection molding yourself. There was also the Mattel Strange Change: https://flashbak.com/youll-burn-your-fingers-remembering-mattels-strange-change-toy-1967-30791/ https://flashbak.com/youll-burn-your-fingers-remembering-mat... Just like the "Thingmaker", everyone burned themselves on this one.
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  Toys with similar functionality to the Strange Change exist today, only they're made from polymers that expand upon absorbing water. Some are packaged in literal capsules - the pharmaceutical kind. https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/05p85hp https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/05p85hp
  - bediger4000 4y ago
    Close, but the Strange Change machine had a vise. You'd reheat the monster until it was rubbery, then cram it into the vise and squeeze it back into a square lozenge. Let it cool, and it stayed a square. They only lasted maybe 5 cycles before they didn't keep the square shape.
- shitloadofbooks 4y ago
  The 90s had something similar (but made to 90s safety standards so a little more boring). It was centipedes and the like made out of a rubbery material that you melted into moulds.
- teekert 4y ago
  Looks cool, but I can't help thinking about how the plasticizers in stuff like that helped reduce male fertility to the 50% we see today compared to the 70's (yes, I know, we sit around all day too, and there are many more causes, just saying perhaps there is a reason this is not distributed like this anymore).
aj7 4y ago
My No. 6-1/2 Gilbert Erector set. Got it for Hanukkah about 62 years ago. The smallest set that still had the full electric engine, a plug-in motor with a gearbox fully assembled to it.
bitexploder 4y ago
For grown ups, get yourself a 110V MIG welder and just start sticking metal together. It is a surprisingly fun and accessible hobby with tremendous practical applications.
- causi 4y ago
  It can be a huge pain if you don't have a source of known alloy pieces, though. When you don't know what material you have finding the middle ground between something that's barely held together and blowing holes in it can be surprisingly difficult as an amateur.
  - johnwalkr 4y ago
    Any big box hardware store has a handful of steel sheet and L-sections, and a store called "Metal Supermarkets" is pretty common throughout North America which will stock anything a hobbyist welder could dream of, order whatever they don't have, cut to length, etc. There's cheaper, better sources but they are not always accessible to a walk-in shopper with a hand sketch.
    - mcguire 4y ago
      For practice, most welding suppliers/metal shops have a bin full of mild steel scraps and cut-offs that they may even let you have for free. (The one I went to even gave me a box for them.)
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    if you don't have a source of known alloy pieces If you happen to have a high-school or community college nearby with a welding program, it would probably be productive to ask one of the instructors there where they source their practice material. When I was in high-school I think most of ours came from Horton Iron & Metal[1], the local scrap metal recycling firm. Probably many areas have something similar? [1]: https://www.hortoniron.com/ https://www.hortoniron.com/
- mikewarot 4y ago
mindcrime 4y ago
Since we're talking about cool toys from back in the day, let me ask if anybody can help me with something. I had a cool toy back in the late 70's, early 80's, and I'd occasionally like to mention it or refer to it (or maybe even indulge nostalgia and try to find one on ebay to buy) but I can't remember what it was called. Does anybody remember something like this: a wheeled toy that I vaguely recall had stylings something like a tank or an APC or something - or maybe one of those weird vehicles from Damnation Alley[1] - but with a bunch of buttons on top with numbers and directional arrows. You could "program" the thing to roam around on its own by pushing a sequence of directional arrows and numbers. It was something like "Go forward 5 units, turn left, go 4 units", etc. I don't even know now what distance units it used, or if the speed was programmable. Once you programmed it there was a "Go" button that would send it off on its little adventure crawling around the living room (and promptly getting stuck under the TV stand or something, but that's neither here nor there). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film)
- klyrs 4y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak ? edit: oh boy, relevant patents are expired, there's a hacker community and everything. This looks like a delightful rabbit hole.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    Hah! Yes, that's it. Thank you! oh boy, relevant patents are expired, there's a hacker community and everything. It would be fun to build a modern version of this, with an Arduino or Rpi or something providing the "brains", and with some input sensors (ultrasonic distance sensor, camera, etc). But instead of just having the input buttons on top, you could also program it over the network (or USB) using a real programming language. I guess that wouldn't be much different though, than some of the other low-end experimental robotics platforms that are out there?
    - pxndxx 4y ago
      Yeah, it sounds a lot like Lego Mindstorms.
randomifcpfan 4y ago
That is a cool toy. The 70s had some great toys. But IMO the coolest 70s Christmas gifts were video game consoles and early home computers.
LanceH 4y ago
The toy I got the most out of was a giant set of tinker toys. The were solid enough to be the structure for blanket forts. They were hollow, so we would use them in our sandbox as pipes between the water features.
smm11 4y ago
Had one. It's a toss-up whether I burned myself more with that, or with the woodburner kit.
Ensorceled 4y ago
My brother won some kind of contest from Mattel in the 70's and got a GIANT 8' stocking full of Mattel products. It contained the Spinwelder, which was incredible. It also included the Vertibird helicopter (mentioned in another thread), Big Jim Ski Jump and also the Big Jim sky commander play set, SSP smash up derby, a couple of barbie things that went to my sister and a bunch of other stuff I forget. It was the most awesome Christmas imaginable for an 8 year old and a 10 year old.
hansword 4y ago
> would spin the rivet to about 11,000,343 RPM I just checked with the datasheet of a current commercial spin welder.[0] The rpm's given on the datasheet are 500 to 2500. I think the author might have slightly exaggerated the capabilities of their 1970s toy for effect. [0] https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-welder.pdf https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-welder.pd...
- kurthr 4y ago
  Maybe those are European decimal commas? I mean... it's a ludicrous number with artificial specificity so I just interpreted it as a kazillion. I doubt the motor was capable of 1000rpm and it certainly wouldn't be necessary.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    Based on the size and shape of the tool I'm guessing it's a brushed DC motor, which in that size can easily achieve several kRPM --- unloaded, that is. When it's actually being used to do the work of melting the plastic, probably below 1kRPM.
  - eCa 4y ago
    If they were decimal commas there would only be one of them, same as with decimal dots. In other words, I agree with your kazillion interpretation…
tanseydavid 4y ago
I had one of these! Have not thought about it much since then, before today.
ansible 4y ago
I also had one of these. I think I completed one of the designs included in the kit, but it broke apart relatively quickly. As alluded to in the article, it was relatively easy to make a surface weld that didn't penetrate far into those little black plastic I-beams from the kit. From what I recall, the "welding rods" in the kit were the same ABS plastic that the I-beams were. I've got to wonder if a slightly harder plastic (or with a higher melting point) for the rods themselves would have worked better. Years later, I built another dragster from the Lego Technic 853 Car Chassis and the steering from the 854 Go-Kart.
itintheory 4y ago
I've used this premise along with a small piece of 3d printer filament in a rotary tool to weld plastic parts together. It works!
whartung 4y ago
Yea, we had all the fun toys back then. Creepy Crawlers, where you poured Goop(tm) in to metal molds, and cooked them into bugs and lizards and skulls and what not. The Mattel Vacuform, which you could use to make plastic models. You heated up styrene sheets and folded them over molds. I think we had some army missile truck mold set. I think this toy was a bit advanced for us. Molding was easy, assembly -- not so much. We also had the Hot Wheels Factory, which was an injection mold system to make rubber cars. It was nice because you could carve up the cars you made and feed them back in the machine and melt them back down. Then there were the Erector Sets, Toggles, Legos, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs. We also had a zillion feet of Hot Wheels track. It didn't hurt living in El Segundo, with the Mattel factory store very nearby in Hawthorne. My brother and I managed to make through our 5-10 years while maintaining all of our fingers, toes, limbs, and avoiding skin grafts. I think we did little damage to the floor (we always played on the floor, never on a table). We may have scorched a carpet here to there. Yup, good times indeed! All that said, kids changes, toys change. I remember buying some castle toy set for some friends young boys (4-6) for Christmas. It was a step up of from "Fisher Price" detail. Had horses and soldiers, and big castle. I honestly have never seen anyone so excited to receive something (well, maybe my wife when I gave her that ring thing). They were just bouncing up and down. This was a hot ticket toy and I bumbled into. As a kid, I might have enjoyed something like that. We had our GI Joes and Major Matt Mason stuff. But, I don't think these kids were missing out much on not having toys that had open heating elements.
- effingwewt 4y ago
  Was talking about this with my friend's grandmother just last night. Easy bake ovens even, so much fun! Then one kids does something stupid and of course the parents blame and sue the companies and now here we are. Caution small parts, don't put in mouth, hot, et al. One idiot ruins it for the rest, as always =( Im so glad to find these videos so I can show my kids what fun we used to have w/o cell phones =)
  - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
    Hundreds of kids got their hands lodged in Easy Bake Ovens, many got serious burns, and one child had part of a finger amputated. Hasbro still sells Easy Bake Ovens; they've just been redesigned so that your five year old doesn't have to be removed from it with a bone saw. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2007/new-easy-bake-oven-recall-following-partial-finger-amputation-consumers-urged-to-return https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2007/new-easy-bake-oven-recall-... https://easybake.hasbro.com/en-us/product/easy-bake-ultimate-oven-toy-baking-star-edition:5C560223-E21B-4CD6-8D24-020542A6E467 https://easybake.hasbro.com/en-us/product/easy-bake-ultimate...
sillyquiet 4y ago
I get nostalgic for some of the toys I had during the late 70s and 80s too, but really, I am super jealous, if that's the right word, of my kids for the toys available to them. Toys today are superior in nearly every way to toys from my childhood. I would have KILLED for some of the robotics and electronics kits that are widespread today.
- criddell 4y ago
  On the other hand, chemistry sets of the 1970's were pretty great.
  - euroderf 4y ago
    I had an A.C. Gilbert set. It had a lump of sulfur that I lit with a match, and then leaned over and took a big snork. OUCH! I learned respect for unknown chemical phenomena.
  - zafka 4y ago
    Yes indeed! The skilcraft chemistry set, The world book encyclopedia, the cool aunt who would by me Saltpeter and sulfur from the drug store. It was fun making my own black powder at age 12!
UncleSlacky 4y ago
I don't really remember this, although I'm about the same age as the author. I do remember Riviton, which was similar but had reusable rubber rivets that you stretched lengthwise with the "riveting" tool, then released, whereupon the rivet would return to its original width, holding the bond in place until removed with the same tool. Unfortunately the rivets turned out to be a choking hazard (two children died) and it was recalled (though I kept my set): https://toytales.ca/riviton-from-parker-brothers-1977/ https://toytales.ca/riviton-from-parker-brothers-1977/
zasdffaa 4y ago
Things were more relaxed back then. This is really well worth seeing, pharao's serpent <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQdK7gaZS0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQdK7gaZS0k>. Some of it even looks like CGI but it's not. Pharao's serpent when lit gives of vapours of metallic (elemental) mercury. In some youtube vids you can even see some of it condensing on the glass of the enclosure. You could buy this stuff over the counter at joke shops back then and I did. The instructions said "windows and doors should be opened wide". People complain about health and safety regs now, but... Edit: seriously, if you've never seen this before, watch the vid
- zdragnar 4y ago
  I'm a bit disappointed in myself for how long I spent watching that video thinking "this looks a lot like a NileRed video" before realizing that yes, it is in fact NileRed
kurupt213 4y ago
why doesn't an even better version of that exist now?

170 points by herendin 4y ago

Brings back pleasant memories. I certainly loved the one I had as a child. I can still smell the _almost_ burning plastic that the device created in operation.

rootusrootus 4y ago

Still a pretty common technique if you need to weld together a couple 3D printed PLA pieces, since there isn't really a great glue for that purpose.

causi 4y ago
Trying to spinweld two prints together seems like a huge pain when you could just get a $35 3D-pen and load your filament into it.
TheDudeMan 4y ago
Epoxy
EamonnMR 4y ago
CA won't glue PLA?
- somebodynew 4y ago
  Cyanoacrylate works on PLA, but PLA is notably not amenable to solvent welding or smoothing with household supplies compared to the ease with which ABS/ASA (acetone) or PVB (isopropyl alcohol) pieces can be fused together. It is marginally possible to fuse pieces of PLA together using ethyl acetate (sold to consumers as "acetone-free nail polish remover" or "MEK substitute"), but this is not nearly as accessible, effective, or reliable compared to other plastics.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I've always had pretty mixed luck with cyanoacrylate. It kinda works, but it's never very strong on PLA. Doesn't hold up nearly as well as a welded connection.

jansan 4y ago

11,000,343 RPM is a lot!

olyjohn 4y ago
I was gonna ask... is that for real? How does it spin up to 11 MILLION RPM? That seems crazy.
- jansan 4y ago
  Richt, that needs further investiagation, Almost seems to be made up by the author.
  - hansword 4y ago
    Normal rpm's for a spin welder are <3000. Datasheet: https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-welder.pdf https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-welder.pd...
- mlyle 4y ago
  It's a joke. The sig figs at the end is a clue, along with complete physical implausibility. ((1 mm)^2) * 1 gram * (((183 339 * 2 * pi) / second)^2) = 1 326.99551 joules It would have 1300J of rotational energy if there was only 1 gram of spinning mass at 1 mm distance.
  - chowells 4y ago
    Not just the sigfigs, the juxtaposition of the word "about" with the excessive sigfigs. Combining a word indicating imprecision with excessive sigfigs is a very common American idiom to convey exaggeration. (Probably other places too, but I don't have firsthand experience with them.)

herendin 4y ago

See also: https://toytales.ca/spinwelder-from-mattel-1974/ https://toytales.ca/spinwelder-from-mattel-1974/ https://3dprint.com/16023/friction-filling-3d-prints/amp/ https://3dprint.com/16023/friction-filling-3d-prints/amp/

ddingus 4y ago

I got one of these as a kid and used the crap out of it! I was that kid who wanted toys that did actual stuff. This toy was one of those. Kept it for years to fix that odd plastic problem. When I ran out of the little rods, I remember trying every polymer I could find, until I found some little sticks that worked in a similar way.

chiph 4y ago

Friction stir welding is still a thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUyLHQxRHKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUyLHQxRHKo

WJW 4y ago
Famously used by SpaceX to weld (some parts of) their rockets together without having heat affecting the strength of the material.
- elil17 4y ago
  Not really a "SpaceX" thing - it's been used on the Space Shuttle and many spacecraft since then. Also boats, cars, planes, etc. Heck, iMacs have used it since 2012.
  - WJW 4y ago
    You are entirely right of course, I didn't mean that it was a SpaceX-exclusive process or anything. It's just where I heard about it first and I would bet it is the most high-profile application currently in use. :)
akavel 4y ago
Another one that I found more informative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euO-LIkew8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euO-LIkew8o

elif 4y ago

I was a 90's kid and got whatever the 90's version of this was called. It had a long "welding stick" that I'd wear down past nub to get the max out of. To this day, the melting plastic smell gives me nostalgia vibes... Probably not the healthiest in hindsight.

drcongo 4y ago

Kinda wish I could load the page to see what this is, but apparently there's enough dodgy trackers on there that the page completely fails if you have them blocked.

rmetzler 4y ago
Here is a YouTube Link to the commercial which was embedded in the post. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PnWpcwnR2YA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PnWpcwnR2YA
- drcongo 4y ago
  Thank you! Now I want one.
  - ddingus 4y ago
    Yes you do. For a toy, it had many practical applications. And it's fun to use.

failrate 4y ago

Neat, I have seen people doing something similar with a rotary tool and a straight length of 3D printing stock.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

I never had the Spinwelder but remember seeing it in the back of the Sears catalog. One of my favorite toys as a 70's kid, the Vertibird toy helicopter: http://www.timepassagesnostalgia.com/&searchkeywords=vertibird&sis=-1&rdir=1 http://www.timepassagesnostalgia.com/&searchkeywords=vertibi... Like any good helicopter toy I was unable to fly it when I first woke up on Christmas and shoved the batteries in. You actually had to control the lift (not a collective but speed control on the rotor) and the pitch. Too much pitch and you lose lift so had to compensate with extra lift. By the New Years I was flying like a pro, swinging around and pulling back on the pitch to reverse thrust and stop over a dime.... My favorite "make stuff toys" of the 70's were my Erector set and Lego set of course. But then I also had this trippy Buckminster-Fuller-meets-Light-Bright building toy called an Astrolite: https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/01/16/vintage-toy-fun-astrolite-by-hasbro-1969-toys-adafruit-hasbro-adafruit/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/01/16/vintage-toy-fun-astroli...

bitwize 4y ago
I had a Verti-Bird as well. I was 4. My dad basically hogged the thing. I barely got to play with it, then it went into storage never to return.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
> My favorite "make stuff toys" of the 70's were my Erector set and Lego set The Legos I had in the 70s did not have any mini figures (did they exist in the US at that time? None of my friends had any either) and there parts were only a few standard sizes as I recall (no small ones like today). I don’t even remember “kits” so much as “here’s a bunch of Legos, go build something” like another version of blocks of Lincoln Logs. Did you actually have kits with build instructions that came with the kit?
- JackFr 4y ago
  Girders and Panels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girder_and_Panel_building_sets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girder_and_Panel_building_sets

blueflow 4y ago

You can buy actual welding equipment and a angle grinder on eBay. There are YouTube videos to learn the basics. The caveat is that you need a lot of protection to not harm/kill yourself: - Eye-Protection so the welder doesn't burn out your eyes - Long clothes so you don't get irradiated/sunburn from the welder - Welding gloves so sparks don't burn into your skin - Protective Glasses in case the disc of the angle grinder explodes - Ear protection because the angle grinder is loud enough to permanently damage your ears Aside from that, its an awesome toy and allows you to fix quite some things. And other people automatically assume you are doing serious work, even when you are just fucking around. Its not suitable for kids in case you were looking for that.

JKCalhoun 4y ago
And ventilation (I was told this contributed to Steve Mc Queen's early death). I had an angle grinder disc shatter on me and one piece took a huge gouge out of a wooden toolbox I had built. I am afraid of angle grinders now.
- auxym 4y ago
  Yeah, a full faceshield is definitely advisable when using grinders. Powerful tools not to be taken lightly.
- deltarholamda 4y ago
  Another one of the most deceptively dangerous tools is the humble router. Basically anything that spins at a high RPM is one loose t-shirt away from strangling you and embedding itself into your fleshy bits.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    Also the humble rotary (Dremel style) tool. I was doing some work with mine yesterday and - in a moment of complacency - actually had the tool bit make contact with the surface I was working on for a second or two before I realized "shit, I'm not wearing safety glasses." I shut it down and grabbed my safety glasses pronto. I'm not exactly a "safety nazi" on this stuff, but some things just make too much sense to not do. And even a rotary tool can send shards slamming into your eyes or something that could cost you your vision. :-(

walterbell 4y ago

Modern version, via Dremel or similar rotary tool, https://makezine.com/2015/04/30/turn-dremel-tool-plastic-welder/ https://makezine.com/2015/04/30/turn-dremel-tool-plastic-wel... & https://makezine.com/projects/skill-builder-finishing-and-post-processing-your-3d-printed-objects/ https://makezine.com/projects/skill-builder-finishing-and-po...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
b3morales 4y ago
Another interesting demo on Hackaday: https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/make-your-own-plastic-friction-welder/ https://hackaday.com/2012/12/31/make-your-own-plastic-fricti...
bluedino 4y ago
Modern version: https://youtu.be/-aEuAK8bsQg https://youtu.be/-aEuAK8bsQg
- postalrat 4y ago
  Nah, that's been around since the 60s.

tgflynn 4y ago

I grew up during the 70's and was an avid reader of the toy section of the Sear's catalog (until they stopped sending them for free) but somehow I never heard of this kind of toy.

david927 4y ago
Same here. I find it a little funny that I’m 54 now and when I was watching the video of the ad I was thinking, “That’s so COOL!!”
euroderf 4y ago
Yes, the Sears Wish Book. A veritable gold mine of toy desire. For years I meticulously crafted lists of wants for my parents to process (or not).

bediger4000 4y ago

There were some very weird toys in the 70s. I recall an actual injection molder (not the "Thingmaker", that was just heating thermoplastic) that could be used to make small soldiers that smelled vaguely of dog excrement. It had a hopper that you filled with pellets of some kind of polymer, and a plunger that injected melted polymer into a mold. I coveted this one. I haven't been able to find anything on this one, due to information camouflage: all I can google up is references to injection molded toys, and companies that do injection molding. The toy I'm remembering had you doing the injection molding yourself. There was also the Mattel Strange Change: https://flashbak.com/youll-burn-your-fingers-remembering-mattels-strange-change-toy-1967-30791/ https://flashbak.com/youll-burn-your-fingers-remembering-mat... Just like the "Thingmaker", everyone burned themselves on this one.

mgdlbp 4y ago
Toys with similar functionality to the Strange Change exist today, only they're made from polymers that expand upon absorbing water. Some are packaged in literal capsules - the pharmaceutical kind. https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/05p85hp https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/05p85hp
- bediger4000 4y ago
  Close, but the Strange Change machine had a vise. You'd reheat the monster until it was rubbery, then cram it into the vise and squeeze it back into a square lozenge. Let it cool, and it stayed a square. They only lasted maybe 5 cycles before they didn't keep the square shape.
shitloadofbooks 4y ago
The 90s had something similar (but made to 90s safety standards so a little more boring). It was centipedes and the like made out of a rubbery material that you melted into moulds.
teekert 4y ago
Looks cool, but I can't help thinking about how the plasticizers in stuff like that helped reduce male fertility to the 50% we see today compared to the 70's (yes, I know, we sit around all day too, and there are many more causes, just saying perhaps there is a reason this is not distributed like this anymore).

aj7 4y ago

My No. 6-1/2 Gilbert Erector set. Got it for Hanukkah about 62 years ago. The smallest set that still had the full electric engine, a plug-in motor with a gearbox fully assembled to it.

bitexploder 4y ago

For grown ups, get yourself a 110V MIG welder and just start sticking metal together. It is a surprisingly fun and accessible hobby with tremendous practical applications.

causi 4y ago
It can be a huge pain if you don't have a source of known alloy pieces, though. When you don't know what material you have finding the middle ground between something that's barely held together and blowing holes in it can be surprisingly difficult as an amateur.
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  Any big box hardware store has a handful of steel sheet and L-sections, and a store called "Metal Supermarkets" is pretty common throughout North America which will stock anything a hobbyist welder could dream of, order whatever they don't have, cut to length, etc. There's cheaper, better sources but they are not always accessible to a walk-in shopper with a hand sketch.
  - mcguire 4y ago
    For practice, most welding suppliers/metal shops have a bin full of mild steel scraps and cut-offs that they may even let you have for free. (The one I went to even gave me a box for them.)
- mindcrime 4y ago
  if you don't have a source of known alloy pieces If you happen to have a high-school or community college nearby with a welding program, it would probably be productive to ask one of the instructors there where they source their practice material. When I was in high-school I think most of ours came from Horton Iron & Metal[1], the local scrap metal recycling firm. Probably many areas have something similar? [1]: https://www.hortoniron.com/ https://www.hortoniron.com/
mikewarot 4y ago

mindcrime 4y ago

Since we're talking about cool toys from back in the day, let me ask if anybody can help me with something. I had a cool toy back in the late 70's, early 80's, and I'd occasionally like to mention it or refer to it (or maybe even indulge nostalgia and try to find one on ebay to buy) but I can't remember what it was called. Does anybody remember something like this: a wheeled toy that I vaguely recall had stylings something like a tank or an APC or something - or maybe one of those weird vehicles from Damnation Alley[1] - but with a bunch of buttons on top with numbers and directional arrows. You could "program" the thing to roam around on its own by pushing a sequence of directional arrows and numbers. It was something like "Go forward 5 units, turn left, go 4 units", etc. I don't even know now what distance units it used, or if the speed was programmable. Once you programmed it there was a "Go" button that would send it off on its little adventure crawling around the living room (and promptly getting stuck under the TV stand or something, but that's neither here nor there). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnation_Alley_(film)

klyrs 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trak ? edit: oh boy, relevant patents are expired, there's a hacker community and everything. This looks like a delightful rabbit hole.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  Hah! Yes, that's it. Thank you! oh boy, relevant patents are expired, there's a hacker community and everything. It would be fun to build a modern version of this, with an Arduino or Rpi or something providing the "brains", and with some input sensors (ultrasonic distance sensor, camera, etc). But instead of just having the input buttons on top, you could also program it over the network (or USB) using a real programming language. I guess that wouldn't be much different though, than some of the other low-end experimental robotics platforms that are out there?
  - pxndxx 4y ago
    Yeah, it sounds a lot like Lego Mindstorms.

randomifcpfan 4y ago

That is a cool toy. The 70s had some great toys. But IMO the coolest 70s Christmas gifts were video game consoles and early home computers.

LanceH 4y ago

The toy I got the most out of was a giant set of tinker toys. The were solid enough to be the structure for blanket forts. They were hollow, so we would use them in our sandbox as pipes between the water features.

smm11 4y ago

Had one. It's a toss-up whether I burned myself more with that, or with the woodburner kit.

Ensorceled 4y ago

My brother won some kind of contest from Mattel in the 70's and got a GIANT 8' stocking full of Mattel products. It contained the Spinwelder, which was incredible. It also included the Vertibird helicopter (mentioned in another thread), Big Jim Ski Jump and also the Big Jim sky commander play set, SSP smash up derby, a couple of barbie things that went to my sister and a bunch of other stuff I forget. It was the most awesome Christmas imaginable for an 8 year old and a 10 year old.

hansword 4y ago

> would spin the rivet to about 11,000,343 RPM I just checked with the datasheet of a current commercial spin welder.[0] The rpm's given on the datasheet are 500 to 2500. I think the author might have slightly exaggerated the capabilities of their 1970s toy for effect. [0] https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-welder.pdf https://www.sonics.com/site/assets/files/2949/spin-welder.pd...

kurthr 4y ago
Maybe those are European decimal commas? I mean... it's a ludicrous number with artificial specificity so I just interpreted it as a kazillion. I doubt the motor was capable of 1000rpm and it certainly wouldn't be necessary.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Based on the size and shape of the tool I'm guessing it's a brushed DC motor, which in that size can easily achieve several kRPM --- unloaded, that is. When it's actually being used to do the work of melting the plastic, probably below 1kRPM.
- eCa 4y ago
  If they were decimal commas there would only be one of them, same as with decimal dots. In other words, I agree with your kazillion interpretation…

tanseydavid 4y ago

I had one of these! Have not thought about it much since then, before today.

ansible 4y ago

I also had one of these. I think I completed one of the designs included in the kit, but it broke apart relatively quickly. As alluded to in the article, it was relatively easy to make a surface weld that didn't penetrate far into those little black plastic I-beams from the kit. From what I recall, the "welding rods" in the kit were the same ABS plastic that the I-beams were. I've got to wonder if a slightly harder plastic (or with a higher melting point) for the rods themselves would have worked better. Years later, I built another dragster from the Lego Technic 853 Car Chassis and the steering from the 854 Go-Kart.

itintheory 4y ago

I've used this premise along with a small piece of 3d printer filament in a rotary tool to weld plastic parts together. It works!

whartung 4y ago

Yea, we had all the fun toys back then. Creepy Crawlers, where you poured Goop(tm) in to metal molds, and cooked them into bugs and lizards and skulls and what not. The Mattel Vacuform, which you could use to make plastic models. You heated up styrene sheets and folded them over molds. I think we had some army missile truck mold set. I think this toy was a bit advanced for us. Molding was easy, assembly -- not so much. We also had the Hot Wheels Factory, which was an injection mold system to make rubber cars. It was nice because you could carve up the cars you made and feed them back in the machine and melt them back down. Then there were the Erector Sets, Toggles, Legos, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs. We also had a zillion feet of Hot Wheels track. It didn't hurt living in El Segundo, with the Mattel factory store very nearby in Hawthorne. My brother and I managed to make through our 5-10 years while maintaining all of our fingers, toes, limbs, and avoiding skin grafts. I think we did little damage to the floor (we always played on the floor, never on a table). We may have scorched a carpet here to there. Yup, good times indeed! All that said, kids changes, toys change. I remember buying some castle toy set for some friends young boys (4-6) for Christmas. It was a step up of from "Fisher Price" detail. Had horses and soldiers, and big castle. I honestly have never seen anyone so excited to receive something (well, maybe my wife when I gave her that ring thing). They were just bouncing up and down. This was a hot ticket toy and I bumbled into. As a kid, I might have enjoyed something like that. We had our GI Joes and Major Matt Mason stuff. But, I don't think these kids were missing out much on not having toys that had open heating elements.

effingwewt 4y ago
Was talking about this with my friend's grandmother just last night. Easy bake ovens even, so much fun! Then one kids does something stupid and of course the parents blame and sue the companies and now here we are. Caution small parts, don't put in mouth, hot, et al. One idiot ruins it for the rest, as always =( Im so glad to find these videos so I can show my kids what fun we used to have w/o cell phones =)
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  Hundreds of kids got their hands lodged in Easy Bake Ovens, many got serious burns, and one child had part of a finger amputated. Hasbro still sells Easy Bake Ovens; they've just been redesigned so that your five year old doesn't have to be removed from it with a bone saw. https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2007/new-easy-bake-oven-recall-following-partial-finger-amputation-consumers-urged-to-return https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2007/new-easy-bake-oven-recall-... https://easybake.hasbro.com/en-us/product/easy-bake-ultimate-oven-toy-baking-star-edition:5C560223-E21B-4CD6-8D24-020542A6E467 https://easybake.hasbro.com/en-us/product/easy-bake-ultimate...

sillyquiet 4y ago

I get nostalgic for some of the toys I had during the late 70s and 80s too, but really, I am super jealous, if that's the right word, of my kids for the toys available to them. Toys today are superior in nearly every way to toys from my childhood. I would have KILLED for some of the robotics and electronics kits that are widespread today.

criddell 4y ago
On the other hand, chemistry sets of the 1970's were pretty great.
- euroderf 4y ago
  I had an A.C. Gilbert set. It had a lump of sulfur that I lit with a match, and then leaned over and took a big snork. OUCH! I learned respect for unknown chemical phenomena.
- zafka 4y ago
  Yes indeed! The skilcraft chemistry set, The world book encyclopedia, the cool aunt who would by me Saltpeter and sulfur from the drug store. It was fun making my own black powder at age 12!

UncleSlacky 4y ago

I don't really remember this, although I'm about the same age as the author. I do remember Riviton, which was similar but had reusable rubber rivets that you stretched lengthwise with the "riveting" tool, then released, whereupon the rivet would return to its original width, holding the bond in place until removed with the same tool. Unfortunately the rivets turned out to be a choking hazard (two children died) and it was recalled (though I kept my set): https://toytales.ca/riviton-from-parker-brothers-1977/ https://toytales.ca/riviton-from-parker-brothers-1977/

zasdffaa 4y ago

Things were more relaxed back then. This is really well worth seeing, pharao's serpent <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQdK7gaZS0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQdK7gaZS0k>. Some of it even looks like CGI but it's not. Pharao's serpent when lit gives of vapours of metallic (elemental) mercury. In some youtube vids you can even see some of it condensing on the glass of the enclosure. You could buy this stuff over the counter at joke shops back then and I did. The instructions said "windows and doors should be opened wide". People complain about health and safety regs now, but... Edit: seriously, if you've never seen this before, watch the vid

zdragnar 4y ago
I'm a bit disappointed in myself for how long I spent watching that video thinking "this looks a lot like a NileRed video" before realizing that yes, it is in fact NileRed

kurupt213 4y ago

why doesn't an even better version of that exist now?