Seriously. Just kick back, relax, and enjoy the show — because chances are you've never seen steel like this.


What you're watching is a close-up, super slow motion look at different pieces of steel being whittled away by a variety of high-precision metalworking tools (click here for a video of what this looks like in real time). Most of us probably don't think of steel as being a particularly malleable alloy, but zoom in close enough, and slow the frame rate to the pace you see here, and it's like watching a pad of butter deform at the edge of a knife. Seriously captivating stuff.

If you're into this kind of thing, be sure to check out the National Institute of Standards and Technology's website for tons of information, videos, and research on high-speed machining processes.

[Spotted on reddit]