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Six months ago, I got a steal of a deal on this in Vyrotronic's thermal testing chamber.

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Brand new, these puppies can go for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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How much did I pay? Less than $1,300 US dollars.

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And that included delicia. Sorry, I mean delivery.

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Back when we unboxed it, we were blown away by how good the condition of it was.

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I mean sure it was decommissioned over 10 years ago and left outside,

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but there was next to no corrosion and it even had full documentation,

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service history and schematics in the box.

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I mean how much more could it cost to integrate into our testing lab?

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A quarter million dollars? The good news is we got in touch with the guys who decommissioned this exact unit

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and they got in working for less than a tenth of that.

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Oh well that's wonderful, what does working mean?

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What does working mean? For you, it means that we're going to tell these fine folks about our sponsor.

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Before we get into why it's only working today

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and would cost us over $250,000 to permanently install in our warehouse,

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let's take a look at the progress that we've made on the unit. I mean I can already see that a lot has changed here.

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And to get the details, probably be best to talk to one of the technicians

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who's been here grinding away at this particular achievement over the last few weeks.

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First things first, Stefan, can you talk me through why you guys needed to bolt

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this sheet of plywood onto the side of the unit? So basically what we ended up doing is creating a whole pump system for this unit

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because it's water cooled. It's not air cooled so normally this unit has a much bigger condenser

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or cooling unit up on a roof or a cooling loop in a building

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but we had to make it work.

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One of our ideas to dissipate the heat from the unit was to use these scrap cooling towers that we dumpster dived

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but unfortunately it just plain wasn't enough capacity.

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So why don't you walk us through what we're oh lordy actually doing?

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We're using your water connection to cool the unit. So we're just running cold tap water through it and then dumping it once it's heated up.

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Okay City of Surrey, if you're watching this, this is temporary.

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Okay just like to do this video and like there was a heavy rainfall

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atmospheric river like a week ago this is not permanent please don't be mad.

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To be clear then we're not using this at all. No we aren't.

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Okay anyway there wouldn't be anything for us to cool if the system wasn't working.

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So why don't we talk about what we did on the refrigeration side? When you're going through the initial bit and explaining all the bits and pieces, spot on.

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Oh really? We got that on camera nice. No absolutely because I was impressed actually.

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It's like oh this guy you've done some homework on this.

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Most of it was actually back when I was a teenager because I really really really wanted to build a DIY phase change CPU cooler.

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So I learned about the refrigeration cycle and then ultimately never did it.

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And a big part of the reason I never did it was because handling the gases freaks me the crap out.

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And as we mentioned in the first video that was one of the biggest challenges with this

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is that it came completely non-charged so it was it was empty.

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And we really weren't sure where or how we could get our hands on the gases.

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So you guys have obviously got it charged up now was that a big challenge?

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For us not a problem we deal with the cascade systems all the time so

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getting the R580 the ultra low temp gas not an issue.

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Okay so it's not one of those ones that's restricted and you're not allowed to buy it anymore?

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No it's it's just not that commonly available.

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Let's put it that way. What does that mean?

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That means you need to have a refrigeration license and it's bloody expensive.

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You're just going to keep hitting me with that stuff aren't you? Unfortunately yes that's the way this project went.

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What kind of condition was all the mechanical side of it in? So like you said there's no rust in here but the question was is how did these age?

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And out of these two compressors it was this one that was the biggest problem.

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When we decommissioned it we put in nitrogen as a holding charge to basically protect everything.

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Thinking that no rust, whoever's going to whoever wants to buy it or whatever they're

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going to do with it it's going to be safe they can just turn it on and away it goes.

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Inert gas and it's not going to interfere with whatever you want to put in after.

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That's kind of the idea right? Exactly okay. Problem is this compressor didn't have any like no gas.

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So that's on you guys then? No no there's a leak on there there's a leak.

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I'm not I'm not taking the blame for that one.

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Okay so at some point while it was being stored outside it sprung a leak.

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Yeah it sprung a leak and so what ended up happening is that the oil that's sitting in this

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compressor becomes contaminated and in order to refurbish it not only do I need to take the

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oil out but I also need to get rid of all the moisture that's in there that was the biggest problem.

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Because here's the thing water is also you know a refrigerant in a sense and that it has its own

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behavior around freezing and evaporating and so if you've got any of that in your other more

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different refrigerant unless it's part of a gas mixture you intended to make it's a big problem.

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This fix was a lot cheaper this was just a coupling right okay able to put it back together

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because this forms part of the water loop that cools that low stage compressor.

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Got it okay this is such a tiny silver lining on a giant rain cloud but there is some good news.

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One of the big challenges we were not looking forward to was dealing with the control system

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for this thing. You guys might remember there was a little touchscreen here and then inside here

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let's crack this open there was like a Windows XP era machine was it? Well that's gone and what are

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we using now? So right now what we're using is a little Wattlow F4 controller so this is primarily

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what a lot of chambers use and we dumb this thing down a lot. What are you saying? Take a really good

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PC from the 2000s and throw in a Raspberry Pi instead. Oh I thought you meant you dumbed down

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the simplicity of the interface for the target audience. Well maybe a little bit of that too.

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Fair enough I mean realistically our needs are not that complicated we want to be able to over

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the network I assume tell it here's my target temperature here's how long I want it there

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and here's my next target and here's when I want it to turn off. Absolutely and we can do all of

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that these days with a Raspberry Pi rather than a full-fledged PC tower and look at this there's

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so much space it's free real estate and all of the other relays and stuff that are in here these

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are all just the originals? Yes that is so cool so do you guys just refurbish and repair these

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things or do you like build them? We don't build them so we service them we repair them right but

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we work on a host of other equipment that uses cascade refrigeration so if you had a minus 80

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freezer if we if you remember a little thing called COVID and the COVID and the COVID vaccines

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can't they need to be stored in at minus 80 those are the freezers I typically work on as well as

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this Carmichael does all that laboratory stuff. Cool okay can we fire it can we fire it up then?

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Absolutely we need to turn on the water first. Okay well I can do that. Yeah turn now hold on

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gotta turn on this one too. Nice solid. Yep there we go. Okay so now we've got water coming through

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flowing out. Uh-huh I'm flowing out to what the garden where at least it can be used by our plants?

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Absolutely. Is that where it's going? Yes. Okay you can tell that this man has experience working

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with organizations where the executives don't want to know because once they know they have to deal

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with it. I just fix things. Yeah as far as you're concerned everything's fine sir. That's exactly it.

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All right so our cooling is doing our first stage compressor essentially the hot side

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of our first stage compressor loop. Correct there is a small circuit going to the second stage but

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for primarily really what would the water be doing for the second stage compressor because I thought

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the second stage is hot side is cooled by the first stage is cold side and that's the whole idea.

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Yeah and you're absolutely right about that but what this unit has that's unique is called a

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desuper heater. So you end up be you essentially make the second stage compressor run cooler run

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more efficiently run better. But yeah primarily the condenser for the first stage does all the

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cooling and transfers the heat because ultimately that's what this chamber is. It pulls heat. Sorry

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you mean the evaporator. It depends which system we're talking about. Wait right because it heats

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and cools. Speaking of which what kind of a temperature range can we do with this unit because

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we didn't know that much about it when we bought it. Um minus 73. Is that cool in that freeze?

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All right so the water's on. Yep. The unit's energized. Yep. Do we just press the button?

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Pretty much. Holy s***. Elijah I don't know if you're going to be able to talk me out of us

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not deploying this. Yes I will be able to because I'll get you another quote. It's all good. So that

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that's just the internal fence. And those are not responsible for cooling any of the hot sides

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or anything. Those just circulate the air through the what I guess it'd be in a vat inside here

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and also just circulate the air in the chamber so you have a constant temperature throughout

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because if you need an environmental control chamber then you obviously care about the

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consistency of your bloody environmental control. How cold do you want to go? Cold.

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Minus one. Minus one. All right there we go. Right arrow turns on. Wow that's simple huh?

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That's simple. And then how long should this take to pull down? So the specification the original

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unit ran at 100 yeah ran at 1.75 degrees Celsius per minute. Oh okay. So pretty fast. Wow. For a

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chamber that's this big. It's huge. But that was with a load correct? That was with a 600 pound

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aluminum load in it. Oh so when it's empty she'll rip. She should but remember what we were saying

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about it's almost working? Yeah. Well it works just not as it was originally designed. It's a

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little bit slower now. Kind of like me as I age. As you age. Hey. Just so we can have this conversation

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where it's a bit quieter. Why do you think it's slower? Did we not put enough refrigerant in or

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like? The refrigerant is correct. I know that. The problem is is the controls. So because we

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dumbed it down so much eventually we can fine tune it to get its original performance back. Right.

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But for all intents and purposes it's working at about 80%. Okay which is still pretty quick. And

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it's not going to damage it in any way to run it this way. No it's just not it's just not as efficient

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at cooling or pulling out the heat. Got it. Okay I'm good with that. Let's go see what kind of

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progress we've made while we've been standing here. Wow. We got we got better than our one degree.

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I mean given the size of the things that we would ever put in something like this that's actually

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perfectly fast for us. Want to go in it Elijah? It's really loud inside. Double up the hearing

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protection. We might have to. It's over 100 decibels the last time we measured it.

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I actually can't hear you. I didn't talk. Do you want a do you want a jacket?

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Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah okay. That's our new one. Yeah buddy. lttstore.com

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What can I say?

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Oh my god.

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So cold. It's fine. It's only like zero. This is Canadian summer maybe.

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Okay close this here.

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Let's see how long it's going to be inside here.

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Okay. It's very dry. Yeah. So it's not that bad.

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It's not great. No. Do you want to go more? Okay.

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My nose is running now.

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There we go. Just set it for minus 40 so it'll get a bit frosty now.

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My mustache is starting to ice. My nose is. Okay. Are you done? I'm done. You're good?

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All right we'll call it. We'll call it.

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So nice.

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Well she works. What'd we make it to? Minus 22. Minus 22 which okay with how fast the air

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was circulating in there. I wonder what the wind chill was on that. Yeah it was really bad.

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Freaking cold. I mean my nose started to run about halfway and then the last minute or so I

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could feel my nose hairs freezing and I was like this is very uncomfortable. That was so fun though.

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But it freaking works. It's real and we that's not even as cold as it can go. Can we see how

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much we can push it? Yeah we should let it keep going. I just set it to minus 40. Yeah well so

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let's let it keep going in the meantime. You asked me a question while we were in there and

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the audio was obviously not usable. Like what would we use something like this for? Yeah. And the

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answer is us not really anything. Our small chamber can accommodate what is realistically the largest

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thing that we would test which is a desktop PC. But what these are used for in a more industrial

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environment is a validation of apparently this one's former life was validating solar panels.

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So really it would be for environmental validation of outdoor rated equipment. Got it.

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That could be deployed anywhere from Arizona to Antarctica. Let's go take a look at negative 40.

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Remember how I was telling you we move energy? Yeah. Put your hand on here. That's the water inlet.

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Put your hand on here. That is a huge delta. Yeah. That's crazy. No. This is warm water coming out

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of here. Can we throw the panels on right now? Absolutely.

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It's still really loud. Oh yeah. Yeah I know it's not not at all conceivable for an open workspace

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like you guys have. It is a lot better though. It is. Stop. I'm just thinking. We haven't even gone

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over why it would have cost $250,000 to keep it permanently yet. Okay we should probably talk

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about that. But first I want to experience minus 48 degrees Celsius.

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Oh man. That's chilly. Wow.

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Oh my god. You're blue. Chilly boys. I'm Canadian but I'm like Southwestern Canadian. Doesn't get

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that cold here. I have never experienced minus 50. That's crazy. I've never seen my breath come out

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like that. Like immediately my mustache started to freeze. All right. Let's talk about the challenges

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of keeping it. There are several reasons we can't run this long term. Starting with probably the

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most expensive. As you heard it was too loud to operate out in the open like this. So we would

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need to build a up to code room to house this thing. That means plumbing in case it leaks. Fire

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suppression in case it blows up. You know noise treatment and electrical and so much more. And

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it would have to be big enough that it can not only fit in it but service technicians who would

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need to come at least annually need to be able to access every side of the machine in order to

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crawl around and find out what the mystery pitle stain is. That's right. With that said that doesn't

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sound like a quarter million dollars. You're right. We would actually need to reinforce the roof

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because for every energy unit of cool or heat that you put inside of this chamber you need to

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dissipate it you know somewhere outside of this chamber preferably outside. So that's where like

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our cooling tower might come in except that we're talking about up to 200,000 BTU an hour.

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So that cooling tower ain't going to do it and even something quite a bit larger might not do it.

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No. And I really don't want to reinforce the roof again. We already had to do it once in order

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to air condition the warehouse and it was terrible. It took so long. However. No. No we're not doing

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it. Okay that's fair. But that actually doesn't mean that this unit's story is over. The quote from

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Carmichael as I alluded to earlier was extremely generous considering the incredible amount of

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work they had to do here thanks to some extra stuff they had lying around and also just wanting to

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be turbo bros. So we're going to have them linked down below for your refrigeration and heating needs

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and that cost savings they gave us matters because now this thing is in pretty much fully functional

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ready to be integrated condition. It's a pretty nice system and we'd be happy to let it go for

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what we paid plus transport. You will have to capture the gas and re-gas it but that cost is

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a fraction of what you'd spend on a machine of this size in class brand new. So slide into my DMs.

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You know what I'm saying? Hit me up. Yes I'm up. You know what I'm going to slide in here?

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The segue to our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video go check out part one when we unboxed it.

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It's a pretty cool little piece of hardware and we skimmed over some of the details from that video today.