Bet you never spilled this much water on your floor.

You know, I keep hearing about this type of stuff about ATM through "little birdies", but how come you don't hear about it?? I've heard that casinos won't buy from them anymore in Vegas because their tanks "delaminate" - meaning the seams start to pull apart. And I would not doubt this because in talking to Brett at MACNA last year, when I asked him if they really put water in the tank as soon as it appeared they did on the show, he said yes, and that once the acrylic bond is formed you can put water in it right away. I thnk I literally responded "you can't break the laws of physics man!" (Scotty Accent)

Anyone who has studied acrylic fabrication will tell you that this is most definitely not the case. Bonding stresses acrylic, and while the bond may hold just fine initally, the full cure time of a seam is dependent on the bonding technique, thickness, and brand of material. Acrylic has a water component, and will absorb water for about 14 weeks after initial fill. This occurs at a certain rate for a certain material. The area that is "melted" together absorbs water at a higher rate if it has not been allowed enough time to cure fully. This means that the joints start to fail prematurely, when they really should never fail.

So these guys pumping out tanks quickly to meet the demands of their customers are shortcutting proper methods, and this results in big time problems. If you look at that video closely, you can see that the water is spraying out of what appears to be a perfectly vertical crack, at least from the short amount of time that the camera is held on the tank while it is spraying. This indicates to me that the failure occurred along a cast joint between 2 panels. These cylinder tanks are not one solid big tube, they are sheet that are bent in an oven in sections and then the joints are cast together using Weld-On 40, and if a WO40 joint is not done right, it falls apart just like this. In fact James @ Envision Acrylics has posted on the big RC thread that he has seen "more than one tank built with WO-40 literally fall apart upon intial fill". Reynolds material is kind of a special case from what I understand - it is more difficult to bond or something.

So just food for thought folks. If you have a tank made out of 1" acrylic you need to let that tank sit and cure for a lot longer than you think to avoid this type of issue. Talking a few months in order to make that tank last a lifetime. Try telling your cutsomer who makes millions of $ a day that he has to wait 2 months to fill his tank after you build it and he'll go right to someone else who will tell him he doesn't have to wait.

 

Do you mean the ATM guys got fired? And they're going to start filming another company using the "Tanked" title?

 

Yeah, that's Brett. I asked him to quote me a tank after MACNA and his response WAS IN ALL CAPS.