Any way to get in contact with someone on the man crew?

[FossaFerox]

I found something pretty remarkable in the ashes of the man and I'm almost certain I know what it is. I'd love a chance to pick someone's brain, but from what I've seen details on the man's design and construction are typically pretty scarce. Does anyone know in which direction I should shout my question into the wind to have a slightly-higher-than-zero chance of hearing something back? If it matters, my question centers around the mechanism used to raise his arms this year.

[otakup0pe]

I found something pretty remarkable in the ashes of the man and I'm almost certain I know what it is.

As they say on the Internet; pictures or it didn't happen.

[FossaFerox]

I found something pretty remarkable in the ashes of the man and I'm almost certain I know what it is.

As they say on the Internet; pictures or it didn't happen.

The crappy lighting in my apartment and my phone camera don't do it justice. It's a brilliant combination of golds and silvers with opalescent colors appearing throughout. The whole thing is incredibly light and fragile. It looks/feels like fused layers of thin metal foil that were heated in the absence of oxygen (since the fire was consuming it all).

[Jovankat]

So what do you think it is then?

[FossaFerox]

I believe it's what's left of a squirrel cage rotor, the center piece of a particular type of induction motor. I found what looked like the casing of a huge induction motor near two giant winches, so it seems likely. It would have looked something like this before the shaft was ripped out and the heat fused the separate pieces together.

[otakup0pe]

That could be legit. According to the scuttlebutt I heard there were heavy duty winches used to raise the arms.

[spacetime]

Whoa. Cool find if so.

[FossaFerox]

Thanks to everyone who helped me get in contact with the right people. The ball is rolling.

So far I did learn that there were in fact two separate motors, so there's possibly another one of these out there, if it is what I think it is (which is seeming more and more likely). It all depends on whether conditions were right for the other piece to fuse without oxidizing and tear out of the housing intact.

[Lonesomebri]

I wanted them to use some sort of counter balance to raise the arms, and not motors, but once more I was ignored.

[mdmf007]

Your burned object is not from a shaft - shafts are mad eof hardened steel, and the fire that consumed the man was never in the range to convert quality steel into a mess like that. That the fire did not get hot enough to consume the steel was evidenced by the hundreds of pounds of nails, brackets, bolts, screws, wire rope, etc that were left over. Is it possibly part of the pyro left over from the fireworks show? there are a lot of high temps there in burning aluminum and the other exotic metals used.

Is it ferrous? will a magnet stick to it? this helps narrow down what it is.

[FossaFerox]

Your burned object is not from a shaft - shafts are mad eof hardened steel, and the fire that consumed the man was never in the range to convert quality steel into a mess like that. That the fire did not get hot enough to consume the steel was evidenced by the hundreds of pounds of nails, brackets, bolts, screws, wire rope, etc that were left over. Is it possibly part of the pyro left over from the fireworks show? there are a lot of high temps there in burning aluminum and the other exotic metals used.

Is it ferrous? will a magnet stick to it? this helps narrow down what it is.

Not the shaft, the rotor. Some induction motors use a relatively delicate rotor made of incredibly thin, carefully arranged metal plates. It's called a squirrel cage rotor and it's one of the few items that could have been turned into what I found, even in the absence of the induction motor housing I found nearby which is a bit of a smoking gun. The metal wasn't "consumed," it's still very much the same metal (which was thin/delicate to begin with, remember), just altered slightly. The effect of heating it in the absence of oxygen is often termed "torching" as it's frequently done deliberately with a gas torch to create an artistic effect like this:



And no, it wasn't part of a firework mortar or shell. Those mortars are WAY sturdier than a squirrel cage rotor.

[nocturnal_steve]

That's my alien probe. Please return COD to planet Kapteyn b.