Awesome Destruction

Over the years, the Hydraulic Press Channel has smushed all kinds of stuff in their powerful industrial machines. Rather than having to dig through their YouTube channel for all of the best bits, they’ve compiled their favorite moments of destruction into one video. So sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the carnage.

The Hydraulic Press Channel took a momentary break from just smushing things for fun, and instead performed a bit of a physics experiment. By creating multiple 3D printed objects of the same weight and mass, but just different shapes, they were able to evaluate which shapes were the strongest of the bunch.

The Hydraulic Press Channel took advantage of the brief daylight in Finland to step outside of their workshop and play with another toy, lovingly known as the Smashinator 5,000,000. This pneumatic press is much faster than the one they typically use, and it makes quite the mess when it makes things explode.

GMC’s 2020 Sierra pickup trucks offer an innovative bed made from a carbon fiber reinforced polymer. This makes them extremely durable and impervious to about everything. To prove this, they compared ordinary beds to theirs by flinging objects at them in hurricane-force winds. Suffice it to say, the CarbonPro won hands down.

Hobbyist Crouzier Benjamin loves to build complex structures using thousands of Kapla wooden planks. For this build, he took about 2 weeks assembling 20,000 of the beams, then watched it all fall in about 30 seconds. Check out his YouTube playlist for lots of other fun architectural collapses.

The area along Wacker Drive near State Street is one of Chicago’s most architecturally significant and iconic locales. Perhaps that’s why Hollywood loves to destroy it over and over again. The A.V. Club looks at some of the many movies which made a mess of the place.

Between steel, aluminum, copper, and brass, which one is strongest? The guys at the Hydraulic Press Channel decided to put each one to the test on their 150-ton press, with some pretty explosive results. We wonder what titanium or tungsten would do under the same forces.

Magnets and destruction. What’s not to like? Magnetic Games rigged up a variety of fragile panels in front of a powerful neodymium magnet, then launched a steel sphere in its direction, and captured the smashy goodness in slow motion. Don’t try this at home without proper eye and face protection.

The folks from Let’s Melt This undo some of the wanton destruction they’ve shared over the years by playing back a series of their clips in reverse. We’re still partial to the jawbreaker. Also, who knew you could melt a sock?

We already know that stacked paper is one of the most explosive things you can put under a hydraulic press. Now, let’s find out what kind of paper makes the biggest boom, as the Hydraulic Press Channel tests paperback books, playing cards, paper pulp, and more under the pressure of their 144-ton press.

Sculptor Steven Richter has a thing for melting his wax creations after he builds them. This time out, he decided to craft a bust of the Wicked Witch of the West out of crayons, then hit it with a heat gun to put the old bag out of her misery.

The Hydraulic Press Channel previously tested the strength of LEGO bricks. Now they’re here to do the same, but with the actual construction material used to hold up real world structures. Both red solid clay bricks and concrete blocks are able to withstand an extreme amount of pressure before failing spectacularly.

We’ve seen some pretty wild and messy things subjected to the world’s most popular hydraulic press. This time, they took their special noodle making tool, and transformed LEGO bricks into colorful worms. We’re thinking this would be a good way to take care of the random blocks your kids left on the floor for you to step on.

(PG-13: Language) It’s common knowledge that spinning a CD too fast can cause it to fail spectacularly and shatter into thousands of shards. The guys from the Beyond the Press channel captured the deadly carnage in front of their $400,000, 72-camera Chronos bullet time rig.

We know that crushing and cutting playing cards with a hydraulic press can be quite spectacular. Now, witness the explosive dispersion of energy in the most impressive way yet, thanks to the guys at Kron Technologies, who helped put together a bullet time rig with 72 of their Chronos 1.4 high speed cameras.

The guys from How Ridiculous worked with LEGO to put together a bunch of colorful brick-built bowling balls, then dropped them from a tower onto a trampoline, culminating with a gigantic 66 pound ball, built from about 20,000 bricks. We wouldn’t want to have to clean up the mess they made, even with the tarps.

Game developer Dennis Gustafsson is working on a voxel-based engine that features incredible environmental destruction physics. While the video posted by Bluedrake42 is lacking in gameplay, to see how the world reacts to damage is one of the holy grails of gaming we’ve been promised and has yet to be delivered.

The Slow Mo Guys decided to steal a page from the guys at Corridor and used a katana to slice an arrow in half. But in their clip, they captured the feat in front of the lens of an ultra high-speed camera. We have no idea how Gav manages to connect with such ease.

Mr Machines compiled this footage of high-power demolition machinery as it rips apart industrial equipment for scrap. The part where it tears up the red truck like a dog with a chew toy is especially impressive, as is the bit where one cuts through steel beams like snapping twigs.

You’d think that pots and pans would be quite strong, but all who face the wrath of the mighty hydraulic press will eventually bend the knee to its crushing force. Watch as these everyday kitchen items from IKEA satisfyingly meet their maker. It was cool to see how the enamel from the pasta strainer flaked off.

David Damek of Plasmo shows off an impressive (and depressing) build – an incredibly detailed 1/72-scale diorama of an abandoned house inspired by the scenes of devastation around Pripyat, Ukraine after the Chernobyl disaster. The tractor is based on a kit, but David’s artistry really elevates it.

You know those fireworks that look like a tiny tank? Well builder Peter Sripol decided to celebrate the 4th of July (and 1 million subscribers) by building himself a gigantic replica of the thing. Naturally, his version makes a lot more fire. Plus, it was reusable – at least for a while.

Domino fanatic DominoJOJO set out to break the record for the largest ever cube made out of the little plastic tiles, using more than 20,000 dominoes to create a Minecraft-inspired cube. First enjoy a brief time-lapse of the build, then watch it all come crashing down in seconds.