We Built a Coaster - for MARK ROBER!?

We built an indoor launch coaster for one of the biggest YouTubers in the world, and I cannot wait to show it to you. But first, let me tell you how we got here. I'm here, Magic Texture is here, in the Bay Area. We're here for one reason, to build Mark Rober the coolest indoor roller coaster he's ever seen. It all started when we were approached by our dear friend Paul Gregg, who's really a legend in the backyard roller coaster community. He'd been talking to Mark Rober's team about building a backyard coaster for him, but because of some of the ride specifications, Paul thought that we were more fit to do this. And so he referenced us, we asked them, when do you need this roller coaster built? And they said two weeks, which is crazy. Like, how are we going to build this thing in two weeks? The only way this is going to work is if we start now, we're going to fly out the whole team, we're going to get this thing done. And so every day since then, we've been iterating, getting the coaster dialed in, ready to blow Mark and his entire team out of the water. They're going to love what we came up with, and we can't wait to get started. This has been an amazing first day. I can't believe we're here at the Crunch Labs warehouse. It feels like backstage of a studio, like the Muppets or something. I know everyone here has been incredibly gracious. We're so happy to be here. It's kind of surreal that we're building a coaster here. Even though we didn't get as much of the track done as we wanted, we have a bunch of the parts to build the rest of the track done. Just a lot of the menial work. It's crazy. Started production on the cart, square tubing, all welded up for the most part. We're going to get the seats mounted soon, see where we go from there. Team is still arriving. We're expecting the rest of the guys to arrive tomorrow night, figuring out where everything is. It's all logistics at this point, but in the next 36 hours or so, we're going to be full steam ahead and that'll be real exciting. square tubing, but the seat's nearly done being mounted and we ran the drag wheel today and it's working good. So hopefully Tuesday we can actually start mounting it on the drive vehicle. We've got the painting started, got a base coat down at least for most of it. Got a small portion of the second coat down. It's going to be a real race against the carpenters, the welders, and the painters to see if we can not hold up anybody's critical path with this. I have the energy to go all night now, but I know that as the week goes on, that will not be the case. We just got a few things done today. We got Mark here. He's doing the professional woodwork stuff. Finally got some track up, got the pipe roller working. We've got supports going in. The team is now at pretty much full strength. Tomorrow I think we might actually finish the track. All right, we're day two, which is actually just the first two hours for me. Clearly productivity has already gone up by 40% just with Diego and I being here. So we're hoping that'll be done in the next two days. We're doing great. We're doing great. Out of personality, cold and unfeeling. Day technically three, we have almost three quarters of the coaster completely fabricated. Testing is most likely going to be happening tomorrow. We've got maybe three, four more pieces of track to put in. And the supports that Mark has been working on are phenomenal. We've been using four by fours with this custom mounted bracket that we CNC'd on the plasma table. Right now the top of the hill right there is about nine feet up in the air. You're going to get a lot of air time going over that, followed by a hard banking turn and a kind of like a helix. Every single support is custom built and custom made. Every angle is different. I don't know what the angle is. I wish it would be production as in we could just set somebody up on a chop saw and just go. We can't really do that. Each individual support is unique and special. I think the best part about that is it's going to look really natural for everything because each support is going to look exactly where it should be with its particular tie. It's just a lot of cutting, a lot of work, but yeah, we'll get her done. Oh, well, I mean, you're the guy who's building the support. I think that there's nothing to it, but to do it. We're good. I think we just go for it. Amen. It's end of day three. We're chilling. Actually, surprisingly, no casualties. Everything's good. Hoping to have the track fully finished by somewhat early tomorrow, and then we'll be starting testing and starting to run the vehicle through. Still hard to believe we're here. I'm going to lie if I told you I'm not absolutely exhausted. I am. Very long days, but also rewarding. Looking at this tennis ball launcher all day and at the target back there. It's funny, we're trying to hit a target too, but we'll see what tomorrow brings. Beginning of day four, hopefully going to wrap up the track today. We were very close yesterday, but ran into a tie snafu. Hopefully, we will make some progress on wiring up the electrical and the e-stop and things like that, along with also doing the drive railing. Then the drive wheel, we can set the height of the drive wheel to ensure that they make good contact and we get good traction. As you can hear in the background, we're getting a lot of work done already, putting a lot of cameras in people's faces, like right now. Like that. Thanks, Matthew. We're going to be moving this track over four feet, so we had to keep it this direction so that we had enough room for our pipe roller to be able to roll pipe. Now that everything's done, we're going to be done rolling pipe. We're going to shift everything over, which is probably going to take the entire Crunch Labs warehouse, which will be exciting. I've been working on the ride vehicle most of the day, still need some welding, and starting to plan out where the front seat's going to go. Next is cutting out some pieces, getting all the square tubing cut along with the eighth-inch plate, so that we can weld it all together once the welder becomes free. We'll have the front seat ready to be mounted, which will give the vehicle its full body size, so when we roll it through, we can see what might hit and validate that it will run properly once we do a full launch tomorrow. We're about there. The track is complete, essentially, and we're testing the cart, so we're about to send it on through, and we'll see how it goes. Oh! Yay! Oh! And it's going around again! We're making good progress on the ride vehicle. We're starting to work on the drive system. We're nearly done with all the rails. We got the last strip in. Everything's bolted together, so now we're focusing on actually making the thing move. That's going to pretty much require us putting down a first drive strip that the drive wheel will run on. In order to do that, we first had to mount the drive mechanism. That entailed setting the height of that, so that then we could figure out what height to make the drive wheel, so we make good contact. We are also working on finishing up the frame for the front seat, and getting that whole footrest and all that stuff done, so that it'll actually look like what the ride vehicle will look like in the final product. The entire team is still cooking. We're operating at 110%. Got a new team member, Anthony, which, who knows where he's been for the last week, but I'm glad that he finally showed up. We're working on putting these plates to secure the track. Got quite a bit done, but we're still plugging away. We still have the rest of this track to do. It's kind of a time-consuming thing, but ultimately it's for safety, so we got to do it. I've been working on adjusting the angle and clearance of all the different ties. I've been grinding them all down. This is going to be our most impressive build yet, I think, so. Oh my gosh. Keep in mind, that is the not-before-it-hits idea, hyper. I don't think you guys realize how fast 18 miles an hour is. Going from zero to five, zero to ten is kind of easy. Yeah. Going from 10 to 18 is the hard part. It may seem really fast right now, but when you start getting up into the 10 mile an hour, that's going to be the hard challenge. About how fast do you think that went, just now? Six. It's going to be eight miles an hour. So we're going to be triple that speed. Hypothetically. You can hear it's about one, though. Yeah, we never got to that. About one and a half seconds in is when it actually hits power. I'm currently working on the e-stop system, so this is what cuts power to the total system, including the batteries and motor and things like that. If something goes wrong, or if you just want to shut it down quickly, it ensures that it cuts full power. We're ensuring that this ride is very safe, and if there's anything that goes awry whatsoever, we can both trigger it with the big e-stop, and we also will have a remote system to be able to remotely trigger it and fully cut power to the ride vehicle. We are setting the anchors for the trusses. This is one of the more important parts, because we're going to be concerned about lateral forces and potentially some uplift as the coaster starts to level. There's a rumor going around that you're getting ready to ride this roller coaster. Wow. Wow. I'm the only one who signed the waiver. They sent a waiver in the emails, and nobody signed it except me, so I have to—not have to, I get to. I get to ride the roller coaster for the first time. Has it ever gone around by itself? No, no. We would do test runs. We would have it go around and around and around on its own, or dummies or something like that, but somebody decided that it should be powered by the rider, so somebody's got to be in there to control it. My insurance policy, my life insurance policy is really good. Putting the four-point harnesses, because for some reason we're afraid of people falling out of the ride vehicle, which I don't get it because just hold on. I'm not feeling anything right now. Once I get in and locked in, I still won't feel anything. The sooner I ride this thing, the sooner we can leave. Yeah, exactly. If the video starts with an in memoriam, you know I didn't make it. All right, so just send it? Send it. All right, ready? Yeah. Let's do it. Okay. I did stop because it really lifted off, which was legit. It was like, oh, we're going now. All right, we're just going to go for it. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. All right. Do you feel good, Mark? Feels like your center of gravity is slightly off. A little bit. Last night was tough. We were here pretty late trying to get the coaster to launch. Almost every roller coaster has problems, and you have to get through them. Just most coasters don't have a week-long deadline. We know exactly what we need to tweak to make things work, just minor adjustments, as it is with all rides. We're excited. We're confident we can do another test in a few hours. Everybody knows exactly what they need to do. The team's confident. I'm really looking forward to seeing what we do. You're just doing a slow one first? I'm not going to surprise you here, or myself. Day seven already. Doesn't feel like it. Well, it does feel like it. My body is sore enough to believe it. We're just finessing things at this point and getting things ready for the final paint. There's a lot of little nicks and crannies to mask so that we can get everything nice and We've got our A-team here. Everyone is still going at full speed, even after seven days. I couldn't be more proud of everybody, and I'm super excited for all of you guys to see the final product. Mark's working on the last piece of the drive rail with Anthony. Joe and Matthew are attaching the last couple pieces to the ride vehicle. Today, we're just pretty much finalizing the hardware and all the mechanical portions. Hopefully, the electrical also, like the e-stop. We have to install things like the front seat seatbelts. We're going to install the footrests where you're going to put the gas pedal to make it more comfortable for a taller person in the back. Hopefully, today, we have a completely done ride vehicle by the end of the day. Turns out you can only do 14-hour days so many times, so many days in a row. This is why we decided to up our activity to 16-hour days. We only did 12 hours yesterday, right? Yeah, lazy. Three, two, one, go. Let's go ahead and try full speed. I didn't want to do it. Oh, oh boy. I haven't done that yet. I don't know what's about to happen, bro. What are you nervous about? Because I haven't done fast before. Three, two, one, go. ------- no, no, no. No, dang it. I mean, it's all good stuff. Every roller coaster has launch issues, every single one. We're in testing phases right now, and we're just dialing it in. We're going to add some more drive rail. We're going to do one more test with a single rider just to feel good about ourselves because everyone needs a win now and again. If this was easy, everyone would do it. Hot diggity. It's awesome. That corner is so cool. So we're looking really good. The last 5% is always the hardest. It's all these micro adjustments because we know we can get the cart around. It's just we want it to get around every single time, and we want it to run as clean and smoothly as possible. Day of the shoot, we want to make sure that we have no hiccups. We've got a team working on the drive rail, team working on some last minute electronics for the ride vehicle. We've got a team starting to clean up because we've got to be completely out of here by the end of the day. It feels like a lot of work, but I think we're almost there. I can't say I'm not looking forward to going home tomorrow, Wow, that was fantastic. Oh my gosh. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Damn, I wish I had this in my backyard. It's crazy. This is the last couple hours here at CrunchLab before their team takes over to transform this space into a wintry wonderland. It doesn't feel real right now. So it's fully safe. It can be completely remotely deactivated and activated along with having multiple keys to get it running, and it's everything we hoped for. It's been a journey, but we did it. It's functional. This has been an incredible project, and can't wait to see what project comes our way next. All right. That was insane. We just built a roller coaster in one week for Mark Rober. It was an incredible experience and one that I'm really excited about sharing, but there's something else. We brought that same coaster and we reconstructed it right here in this backyard. Over the next few days, we're going to be testing this thing. We're going to be experimenting, and we want to bring all that to you. So stay tuned because there's a whole lot more of the science behind the ride, the ride testing, the R&D. Like and subscribe, and until next time, take care.