Abom79 forgot to turn on his lathe, AvE got his thing stuck in his vice, and Clickspring doesn't know what time it is....brilliant!

I built one of these for my instrumentation lab course at Purdue, back in 1977. The hand drawings and plots that you cite as being from "the Navy" were actually from a book of collected columns out of Scientific American, "The Amateur Scientist" column written by CL Stong. One of the most important things in Ranque-Hilsch tube design (French engineer Ranque invented it in 1931, and it was rediscovered by Paul Dirac and improved upon by Rudolph Hilsch) is the use of a supersonic nozzle to feed the air in to the swirl chamber. It works by having the high velocity (hence high stagnation enthalpy) air hug the hot tube wall by centrifugal force. Low velocity air goes to the center of the vortex, and is driven out through the cold tube entrance by pressure. Using big galvanized plumbing pipe (1.5 inch, IIRC), and a swirl injector that I made into a two-dimensional De Laval nozzle by filing a plate of aluminum with a fine set of semi-round files, I was able to cobble together a working Hilsch tube and reproduce the temperature plots from the Scientific American article pretty well. Now, I had a whopping big air compressor at my disposal in the ME Building at Purdue. I believe it was a 20 HP compressor, and it heated the air in the room I was using (a big room) up to over 100 F during each run. But I was able to get the cold side down to -50 C without any problem. Much later, when I had my own company, I managed to snag a bunch of commercial Hilsch tubes that were used for the purpose of spot cooling metal parts being drilled, milled, or machined on a lathe. They could get down almost to dry ice temperatures. I wish I still had them.

"Don't answer that, because I wouldn't be able to hear you" Subscribed and notified.

When I saw the Solidworks CFD you jumped the shark for me. There is no way you a a hobby machinist. I am now convinced you are a college professor with a slave labor force (graduate students). Seriously very impressive. I consider myself a respectable engineer and your videos continue to humble me. Thanks.

This is an awesome project. I had never heard of this before. Well done.

With a Vortex Tube, you actually ARE trying to "split airs".

You and AVE made me fall in love with machining, before i loved turning spanners now i want to make my own spanners

oh. so it's the opposite of the turbine engine. instead of putting thermal energy in and getting air pressure out, you put air pressure in and get thermal energy out?

First I get phone calls during SNS, then I call you while your building that air cannon! What luck!

I immediately noticed that, per the diagram, your rough-cut parts were the wrong color. It might work better if you fixed that.

“He’s got his what in a vice” Nice reference

I remember learning of vortex tubes in the 90's. The design I remember, had the shape of a venturi in which two tapered sections met at their smaller diameters. This was also the area in which the high pressure air was injected to start the vortex. The cool side was shorter than the hot end. Their use was typically in machining, where cooling a part during milling or lathe work. Not sure, but I'd suspect that Bernulli's principle is at work here, given the velocity and pressure components.

Great stuff! I've been a fan for a while, and this is one of my favorites.

This is SO much more wondrous and interesting than the work I'm actually supposed to be doing right now

Probably not still reading these but I never knew these existed. I've been a fan for a year or two and this is the first time I've seen this one. This is freaking amazing.

Love the "Interociter" reference.

AvE sent me here and I've been stuck for hours now.

wwjd 40 is the funniest thing I've seen all week

Hey tony, we use this in the factory I work at. I'm a industrial maintenance tech. If I happen to get ahold of one I'll send it to you, if that's what you would like

Great vids. Love your sense of humor. Back in the days of carburetors, mechanics used to use a small one of these devices for the purpose of cooling off the automatic choke spring so the choke could be adjusted even after the engine had been warmed up.

The phone calls with AvE are hilarious. Interesting build. Smoke coming out of my ears considering practical applications.

Abom, ave, and clickspring all referenced in one video with heavy sorcery involved. I thought these couldn't get any better

it's so expensive because each one of these tubes houses a Maxwell's demon!

Laughing and learning again. I always love a quick swing by your shop, Tony. Thanks again for all your hard work, bud.

WWJD-40 doesn't just displace water, it lets you walk on it!

Phone calls 1 & 2 were easy to identify...#3 took some spring-clicking before I clocked the answer.

We used these vortex tubes in our sandblasting suits. We sandblasted outside in the middle of summer at 105F with heat index's of 115F...me in my sandblasting suit...and I never started sweating. I could be out there all day long no problem. These tubes are black magic. We just had it attached to a plate which was held onto us by the belt we use to keep the suit tight on you. The plate was roughly shaped to a human back and it fit comfortably and kept the extremely hot tube from melting the suit or burning bare skin if the suit moved.

Never before have i been so entertained while getting so much information. All of your videos are great.

Your sound edits are hilarious. Comic timing is awesome, in the way you cut off your funny lines as if some editor is going "CUT!" and then resuming the 'scheduled program'. I love it! It's inspired.

Glad to see that you were able to help out Abom. There's no helping AvE. He's in a permanent state.

Totally inspirational! i'm with Tikki on this. Have worked with wood and metal all my life in a "low fi" way but when i watch a video of yours i just start twitching to go and build a monster, i need a machine shop! You have a rare gift for teaching & long may you carry on! Thanks so much Stubby (UK)

I work in the natural gas industry. We actually use a device that uses a vortex tube to heat the supply gas for regulator pilots to keep them from freezing up under heavy load. They use the same gas going through the pipeline, and have the benefit of zero emissions because all of the gas used to operate the heater goes downstream to customers. They pretty much never break either because there are no moving parts to wear or catalyst beds to burn up.

I'm not a machinist, not really interested in machining, have no desire to start machining, but man I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS. Thanks for sharing and making me laugh my arse off.

Mostly I come here for the comments and music, but today I noticed all that machiney stuff going on in the background. Really nice!

I've stumbled upon this video by accident and was really surprised by how good and subtle the humor is. Keep it up.

I am catching up on older vijeos. And congratulations on 100K Subs Tony. Really love your humor

I wish you were us, and had to wait for your next amazing video to come out... it's so difficult!

Ave and tony should meet if they havent already(15:05)

I love the surprise callers. Especially the what time is it call. Priceless.

"Outside the scope of this video" never gets old.

TOT: "I could be building an interocitor" Me: Google interocitor Me: LOL Me:

Loved the Django. I was able to play with a prototype Hilsch tube about 35 years ago. It was small, it was dirt simple, we had essentially unlimited air st 175 psi, it worked very well, with exhaust temperatures cold and hot enough to be dangerous to the operator. Oh, and it was LOUD! The friend who had it, Dieter Lezius, was a German physicist who did research for Lockheed. He told me it worked like a tornado, the vortex becoming very small and fast rotating where the flow split into two streams due to compression and the cold side by expansion, and the law of conservation of energy making the thing produce equal total energy gain and loss at the opposite ends at equilibrium. To me it was a fascinating toy, and this is my memory of what I remember my sailplane buddy/mad physicist telling me way back then... Just looked him up, he was still at it in 1994: www.isope.org/publications/proceedings/ISOPE/ISOPE%201994/Abstract%20Pages/I94v3p447.pdf

“This is what slots look like when you don’t give a shi” haha

2:27 that is a great deep-cut physics reference, and I very much enjoyed it.

Love ur vids !!! Showing how to make things + humor !!! keep up the good work! Im 20 years old, studying mechanical engineering and industrial designing and recently learned how to use a lathe so im whatching videos of people making stuff. And i believe i enjoy urs the most!

You're hilarious.

This made how the coolers and heaters on our fresh air welding hoods work make sense. Pretty neat!

Thank you for taking us on a journey to rediscover our inner childnerd. Subscribed!!!

11:28 Actually the reflected air flow of the cold vortex is rotating in the *_opposite_* direction to the hot air vortex. This is actually what causes the initial cooling effect. The super cooling is caused by expansion in the outlet cone, which your project doesn't seem to have.

I love the AeV reference at 15:08 :P

Look at what I learned today...and I thought that I knew everything. Excellent video and build! Congrats and thanks for sharing!

Dude!! brilliant videos don't stop making these videos....theyre truly awesome...keep em coming.

Popular Science, IIRC, had plans for one in the 1960s. That set of Navy plans look just like what they published.

6:03 "not perfect, but close enough for -the girls I go out with- what I need"

I had never thought that I would here about an interocitor on this island earth again. Thank you for your content, it is inspiring.

you know to be honest, I am not sure how many hours I have lost trying to wrap my head around just how the McDlt box worked, I feel like a bridge has been built for me and I can see the other side now. This gives me a better appreciation for Hamburger university, I hope our next Engineer comes from there, you can never have enough magic.

I’ve wanted to get one of these for my mill for years. It works very well for carbide and fair mill speeds, as it keeps the work cool and clears chips at the same time, while keeping things clean. But as a practical matter, most of them require about 20 cfm, and some want more than 90 psi. That’s way too much for a non pro shop.

AH! No CAD in the description!!! I remember this from my thermodynamics class, sounded so odd to me as well. It was always a theoretical possibility in our textbooks, had no idea that anyone actually made these devices. It always looked like a tube in the shape of a "y" in the textbooks.

This is awesome! What would be really cool (sorry) would be to introduce some moisture into the air going in so that it condenses out the cold end looking like those contrails you sometimes see coming off the trailing edge/end of the wind flaps of an aircraft landing in humid conditions.

Besides you're awesome work and projects I love the oddball humour. Nice to hear an AvE problem on the phone :) Please add more of them to your newer videos!

Great video! LMAO on the phone calls... Took me a "second" to catch on to the Chris call. Great stuff!

I'm gonna build a big one that fits in my sunroof, you know, instead of fixing my ac

You've got a rare talent. Seriously enjoying your stuff although I dont get the physics behind the Vortex Tube as of now...but at least it left me with curiosity :)

This old Tony- inspiring- very interesting and superbly presented!

Please. Turn of your phone while filming! All those youtubers are really annoying. Interesting build - I have seen those vortex tubes used with the cold-air side for machining plastics, but I doubt that they have a great effect on the proces. But if nothing else, they are a great noisemaker :D

Anther super video!! Really cool project! :D And i liked det "Chris - Time - Joke"

The first time I ever read about this amazing invention was way back in the mid-1980's in some obscure book in a public library. Always wanted to build one and intend to some day. BTW, where I live in Southern NJ, there is an awesome family-owned steel and industrial supplier that also has a huge inventory of amazing surplus everything. One day about 20 years ago, I am browsing the narrow aisles of bin after bin of hardware ang such, and what do I come across? Vortex tubes. Yes, ones manufactured by Exair. Almost bough one except money was tight that week.

I've used these on sand blasting hoods during summer and they worked quite well.. Inside the hood was very cool temps as well as a watch to keep time and a pair of thermometers for inside and outside readings, usually about a 20 deg F difference. An AM/FM Vox two way belt clip radio rounded out the package. Industrial blasting still sucks and even tho it payed the bills back in those days, I'm glad I don't do that anymore.

I have access to a commercial one of these, I could have a peek side with the bore scope if you want. Also the cold side is the interesting bit here. Turning compressed air into heat isn't hard, it's called a muffler.

UKposts Algo sent me here after the LTT vid on vortex cooling

Just found your channel today, AvE used to be my favorite channel, now both that channel and yours is my favorite. Awesome videos, very informative, technical enough to keep the geek in me happy, humorous enough to keep me laughing. You watch an of his? The second call in this video kinda sounded like him. Lol

Hey buddy, love your humor, and your geek-itudity. Bravo!

Did you only use genuine interociter parts?

In one of your last videos you traveled in time. Now you are creating a vortex. What comes next? A homemade black hole?

When I did underwater welding we dealt with this phenomenon in the decompression chamber’s. After about 10 minutes we have to do a traveling vent which exited the warm air and replenish it with cool air but maintaining the same ATA air pressure. This was due to the air molecules bouncing around in the cylinder which would quickly rise the temperatures up to about 110°

I know this is an older video, but I have an old carb choke tester from blue point, which is essentially a vortex tube. I have looked inside of it the best I could using an inspection camera, and found what appears to be some sort of metal mesh and a spring on the outside of it. The complete unit is very small and works very well. Keep in mind this was probably built in the 1980's for carbureted engines. These days we use it for heating or cooling electrical components that may be failing due to temp changes. In any case, I had tried to machine my own, as a side project following your basic design, on a smaller scale. I cannot get it to function, however, and I am not really sure why. Perhaps it does have to do with the diameter I am working with. I would love to know what makes the Blue Point tick, but am unwilling to take it apart. In any case, this is a very interesting topic. great video, at least yours functions!

Did the thing get a static electric charge building up with all the air going through?

I wonder how many PSI you could put into a clear resin cast version of this. Then pipe in some really fine but non-abrasive chaff to see the air flow.

Thanks for bringing this up. Nice presentation. Here is my take. (1) gas a compressible substance gets hot when compressed and conversely cool to decompress, in case we didn’t recall that before we read this. (2) a secondary compression (first by air tank) take place when gas were pushed (compressed) against the chamber wall by an induced force, centrifuge force. (3) given inlet as port 1, if we plug (cold) port3, then (hot) port3 outputs a mixed hot-cold gas at a lower than ambient temperature due to (A) heat pre-loss on chamber tube wall from centrifuge-compression and (B) the pressure drop from port1 to port2. (4) the cone shape valve at port2 is used to separate and release the hot (centrifuged) gas apart from the less hot gas (vortex) in tube core, also shaped to improve transition of gas from intermediate (neither centrifuged or vortex) to low a (vortex) flow. (5) it should be noted that port3 gas temperature drop isn’t just due to vortex but include pressure difference between port1-3. (6) optimal port temperature difference is influenced by centrifuge radius, axial length, swirl ports geometry, flow ratio port-2-3. When chamber (tube) hot spot migrated down streams towards port2 and t diff is less than optimal, it is a good sign chamber wall is too long. (7) optimal temperature difference require to control play with flow exit gas volume ratio at both port2:3. (8) reducing chamber radius from a larger near port1 to smaller towards port2 linearly (funnel shaped chamber) can be consider for performance enhancing. While a nonlinear radius to radius transformation (inverse exponential, the coin funnel shape at science museum) can be a good way to go. I wish my machining skill and might be like - this old Tony.

Units similar to this are used to weld plastic. We have them all over the shop to weld PVC and polypro. They are hand held, roughly 8" long, and about the same diameter as a soldering iron. They usually run them on roughly 90 p.s.i. They have a feed tube to push in welding rod of the same material as being welded. Just discovered HF sells one with a built-in air motor.

This is definately somethin for the applied science chanel. Make it a contest who can create the bigger temperature difference ....

Very VERY funny, Tony! A fantastic mix of science, making shit, and humour :P I'm watching this a second time :D

Interocitor? Definitely one of the best kits I ever assembled! 🤓

I love your videos and am impressed with your sense of humor.

Was the background music an acoustic version of Stevie Wonder's "Sir Duke?" The chromatics kinda sounded like it.

Tony, I just elevated you to "God" status for the WWJD-40 joke. Hilarious.

Yet another episode covering the ongoing AvE + Tony lovefest. Bravo!

watching linus tech tips video on vortex coolers and i wanted to find out how these puppies work, and of course tony has it covered. 6 years ago. thanks.

Haha! Lost it at the phone call.

15:07 love the AVE reference there ;)

Well well well , a vortex tube ! I made one of those in the early '70s It worked well , someone borrowed it and I didn't get it back ! Amazing how the air spins one way in the hot tube creating heat , then curles back words and spins in the opposite direction in the middle of the hot tube , but goes very cold .

The heat is put into the air when it is compressed, as it loses pressure, it sheds its heat. the cooler air outlet is the product of heat evaporation out the expansion side. basic refrigeration circuit..sorta..

"You've got your what in the vice?"

I tried using WMD40 but found it too destructive.

Been working 3D CAD and modeling since 1981 with mini-computers... ComputerVision, Calma, Intergraph IGDS and CADAM. it's wonderful you are breaking people into the world of CAD-CAM. 3D and Parametric Programming (Dimension Driven Design) along with BIM are the tools of the future.

Fascinating. I read about this in The Space Merchants, a science fiction book from 1952 - quoting the relevant passages: "And Development had not developed but found a remarkable little thing called a high-speed Hilsch Tube. Using no power, it could refrigerate the pioneers' homes by using the hot tornadoes of Venus. It was a simple thing that had been lying around since 1943. Nobody until us had any use for it because nobody until us had that kind of wind to play with." "...Specifically, we've tested out the Hilsch tube in a nine-hundred-degree wind tunnel and got eleven hundred degrees separation. The experiment confirmed the predictions of our physics and thermodynamics sections based on theory and math. What that means is that, at ambient wind velocities on any of a hundred mountain ranges on Venus, we can put these scaled-up Hilsch tubes at the top of a hill and let the wind blow through them, and out of the low-temperature valve we can get liquid nitrogen. Of course, we don't want liquid nitrogen. But we can adjust the apertures and get volumes of gas at that temperature or any higher one we want, with increasing volumes available as the temperature rises. The Hilsch tube, as you know, relies on the vortex generated within the tube by the passage of air to separate the hot from the cold air molecules, in the manner of the so-called Maxwell's demon-"

Is no youtube machinist safe from your mockery? If not. Good. A good old fashion ribbing is good now and again.

I love the comment re an interoceter. I wonder how many of your viewers also know what one is? Can you build one of those next? Beware eggheads! :)

The electronics factory I worked in used one of the little Exair units to get cooling air to use on electronic components instead of freeze mist when debugging and it worked well, but the guys found the cans more convenient - no air hose was one factor. Of course we had a large compressed air system with several (3?) large air compressors - they need a lot of air.

I had the opportunity to work with Vortex tubes about 10 years ago when we were trying to cool cameras that were used to look at boiler tubes in a large furnace. I have a mechanical engineering background and until then I had never heard of one. I thought someone was pulling my leg, that a static device could turn shop air into a cooling system but apparently these have been around for quite sometime.