Awesome Wire

What you’re looking at here is a satisfying montage of machines designed to bend and bond tiny wires in place. The machines use ultrasonic and laser technology to reliably perform this exacting task. The part where they show the coin for scale puts things into perspective. Such machines are typically used to connect external components to silicon chips.

Burls Art is back with another unusual handcrafted guitar. For his latest build, he melted 50 pounds of braided copper wire and tin, then poured the molten metal into Petrobond molds to cast its neck and body. He made a mistake with the first casting, but fortunately, metal is easily recycled, and a do-over was possible. The finished guitar weighs nearly 40 pounds.

Redditor arcedup works in a steel mill and wanted to test out the video capabilities of their phone. While they were at it, they captured this wonderfully satisfying clip of molten hot steel being turned into a coiled rod. Is it wrong that we want to make the world’s largest Slinky with it?

Bonsai trees are typically living plants that require an immense amount of care and precision pruning. These talented artists show us how they make bonsais that require no watering – using thousands of strands of stiff metal wire to create their intricate designs. We wonder how long the process takes to do in real time.

Germany’s Fatzer Brugg is one of the world’s leading producers of industrial wire rope. These thick braids of wire come together to form incredibly strong cables which are used for gondolas, ropeways, and bridges. This short clip shows one of the machines they use to twist together spools of wire to form a finished rope.

If you’ve ever wondered how they make the wire mesh material used in screens for doors and windows, wonder no longer. This video from Hebei Kaiye Machinery Equipment Co. shows us how a computer-controlled machine takes thousands of strands of stainless steel wire and weaves them into a screen pattern.

For a motor to work, it needs tightly-wound copper or aluminum coils to generate a magnetic field when current is applied. This fascinating video from NIDE shows how their machines do the work automatically, first loading an armature, then rapidly winding copper wire around its fins.

We’ve seen how factories make full-size chain-link fencing by bending and twisting stiff wire. Now watch how it’s done on a much smaller scale. W&M Levsha created this custom machine that bends copper wire into the proper angles to make a mini fence. The weaving still needs to be done by hand though.

This pair of stiff wires have each been bent into a spiral shape, then coiled together. You would think that pulling on their ends would pull them apart, but they don’t. Vsauce’s Jake Roper shows off this curious illusion and explains how it works. The Mephisto Spiral and other fun items can be found in The Curiosity Box.

Artist Conty Fonane spent more than seven months building this amazing life-size replica of a 1967 Ford Mustang GT500. The sculpture is made of stainless steel wire and aluminum tube and rides on rubber tires. It has a complete interior with seats and a working steering wheel, and the doors and hood open.

There are plenty of kits out there that let you build a tabletop marble run, but Daniel de Bruin shows you how you can build your own marble track using a spool of picture hanging wire, some solder, and a few household tools. Daniel previously built a room-size marble machine as a demonstration of how economies work.

UK artist Derek Kinzett creates incredibly detailed sculptural figures using precisely formed lengths of wire. His life-size human forms are pretty amazing, but we’re partial to the motorcycle.