YouTube’s Hydraulic Press Channel has more than 1.7 million subscribers and 218 million views, and its success is grounded in one simple yet brilliant concept – find an object, and crush it.
The channel’s latest victim is a set of speakers, and the Press Association caught up with operator Lauri Vuohensilta after the upload to find out how it all works.
“The hydraulic press is quite a simple machine,” said Vuohensilta. “There is three main parts: motor, pump and cylinder. Motor just spins the pump that forces the oil into cylinder.
“Then the top surface of the piston uses the hydraulic pressure to generate force against (the) thing that we are crushing.
“The maximum pressure of press is 250 bars, which is 250 times the regular atmospheric pressure and the piston is quite large so it then generates also lot of force – around 140 tons to be exact.”
So how did the speakers compare to other items they’ve crushed?
“The outer case was quite soft and easy to crush (but) inside the speaker was really tough and it took over 100 tons of force to be crushed,” said Vuohensilta. “And the song from Darude was really nice add to the theme – he is quite big name in Finland.”
The Hydraulic Press Channel is curated by Lauri from his factory in Finland with his wife Anni.
When asked which were his favourite items he has crushed, Vuohensilta said: “Probably diamond, hockey puck and from recent ones the running chainsaw.”
The YouTube channel was set up back in October 2015, so after almost two years of crushing success what does the future hold for Vuohensilta and his factory?
He said: “On hydraulic press channel the future is just doing funny and entertaining videos like before but our bigger goals are on our second channel Beyond the press.
“For example we are building quite large hybrid rocket engine that is going to push a kicksled to speeds over 60mph and other a bit more demanding builds.”
Here’s an example of what to expect from Vuohensilta’s other channel…
If you’d like to see more from Lauri, follow these links to the Hydraulic Press Channel or Beyond the press.
