YouTube channels unboxing their latest “Play button Award,” a replica of the popular logo in silver, gold, or faux-diamond depending upon the popularity of the channel, are getting passé. however a metalworking channel that makes its own copper Play Button award to celebrate 25,000 subs is something worth watching.

[Chris DePrisco] is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, working in different materials however with a strong focus on metalwork. He just recently completed a beefy home-brew vertical milling center; we covered his attempt to leverage that platform by adding an extruder as well as turning it into a big bed 3D printer. For the Play button build, [Chris] relied on the VMC to mill a mold from what appears to be a block of graphite; great luck cleaning that mess up. He melted copper scrap in a homemade electric furnace as well as poured it into the preheated mold — a solid tip for [The King of Random]’s next copper casting attempt. The rough blank was CNC machined as well as polished into the Play Button, as well as lastly mounted behind glass neatly inked with paint pens in the flexible VMC. The final result is far nicer than any type of of the other button awards, at least in our opinion.

[via r/CNC]