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🇪🇪 Precious Plastic Estonia
- This topic has 95 replies, 24 voices, and was last updated 2 years ago by
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June 2017:
Today we have built the shredder and did a test run. A couple of things still to be tweaked, but overall we managed to get our first batch of shredded plastic.
Thanks to @davehakkens and the team for making this possible.
We would be happy to help anyone who is planning to start building the machines soon with some before-assembly advice.
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December 2017 update: Shredder, Injector and 5/7 of the Extruder ready.
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January 2018: Moving part of the production to Tallinn.
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March 2018: The last – Compression machine almost ready.
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May 2018: Started making wallclocks.
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Sep – Dec 2018: Not so active season, looking for sponsorhip deals.
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Estonian team: @jegor-m; @maximmm; @igor-smog; @dannydadog
Instagram /// Facebook page /// BAZAR page
Sorry next post is from Finland 😛
Some fast facts about PE
HDPE:
It is stronger and harder than LDPE.
It is more rigid than LDPE.
The density can range from 0.95- .97 g/cm3.
135°C (higher melting point compared to LDPE).
LDPE:
It is less strong and weaker than HDPE.
It is more flexible than HDPE.
The density can range from 0.91-0.94 g/cm3.
115°C (Lower melting point compared to HDPE).
So I guess the melting point temperature would be the most inconvenient..
Yes
from wikipedia;
low-density polyethylene is typically 105 to 115 °C
I think this info exist in an other post, about plastic materials in the forums.
Here is one: http://onearmy.world/community/forums/topic/types-of-plastic/
Sorry jegor-m for hijacking your post :S
🌎Update N.19 – Preparation for TEDxLasmanäe.
Here is a wee teaser of the preparation for a local TEDx event where we have a stand and a mini-exhibition. The story is coming soon.
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⚡Update N.20 – TEDxLasnamäe.
Here is our team. We had a great event, met some people with cool new product ideas and talked about plastic waste problem and Precious Plastic movement. Also showed some of our products and even introduced the idea to the president (of our country). It was very quick though, but still! 🔥
Last photo is the back side of the badges we made for the event. Each of them unique as you can imagine and we were asked to make just about 500 of them, not a big deal 😀
This sort of opportunities help to organise the thoughts and reasoning in your head better, so that by the 100th visitor, you already know how to answer any question so that they would have a better understanding of the topic.
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🌎Update N.20.2 – #Cooperation within the PP network.
This post will be about preparation for the TEDx event we recently had an exhibition at.
The organisers of the event had some problems with the original badges delivery and 11 days before the event asked PP Estonia whether we can produce 500 badges for them.
We knew it is a risky thing to do, as we had limited resources, but still decided to go for it as the guys said they will help with supplying ovens and volunteers. Sweet.
We decided to ask our friends from PP Vienna to help out as they make cool sheets – exactly what was needed. To cut the long story short, out of 500 badges 190 were to be supplied by them. For those who are not familiar with their products, please visit
Precious Plastic Vienna – Sheets
The guys delivered the cool sheets (photo below) so I would like to thank them for the work done. The problems with delivery don’t matter at all, as they decided to help out, which is more important.
If you ever need plastic sheets – ask @flo-2 and you’ll get them, boom! 🌲♻
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Precious Plastic Vienna – Instagram
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Haha this story is awesome !!!
You are crazy to accept an order of 500 pieces but really good move and exempl. Thing if know i have the same i make the same choice becaus you made it !
Hey and just for jokking, badg is not a small thing ? Heart about something like we don’t do small object with P.P. 😉
Cheers form switzerland
Gaetan
@geat, as far as I know, the badges we made have the same volume of plastic as in the hexagonal coasters. You can argue that it is a small item, sure, but we would still make it again if needed.
As for the production volume, we had three ovens running simultaneously and the sheet press always busy. We had 6 sets of plates to squeeze the plastic between (which we called molds for some reason) with changeover time to the press every 10 mins.
@jegor-m I just wanted to congratulate you and the team for challenging yourselves and pushing precious plastics further. Great effort!
@plastikfantastik, thanks.
It was a bit surreal to get 500 people in one room on the TEDx event to watch Precious Plastic Promo video by Dave.
🌎Update N.21 – Wall clock
Recently we decided to make some wall clocks like in Dave’s first promo video. The decision was to order a good mould from laser cutting as we definitely couldn’t cut a perfect circle in a plate by ourselves for sure.
After some trial and error and error, we got some product we can show to people.
Material: PP from LUSH Cosmetics
Fabrication time: Roughly 50mins
Thickness: 7mm
Diameter: 245mm
Weight: (250g)
Photo1: wall clock ‘number plates’
Photo2: texture
The cool thing about this material is that it has already been recycled at least once (Lush corporate rule) and that it keeps a nice smell of cosmetics that used to be in contact with it.
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@mattia-io,
Yeah, it is 106th of January here in Estonia. We’re just manufacturing, setting up internal structures, getting ready for spring events and getting torn into pieces by people willing to get machine prices from us. Usual stuff, not much eh🙂
🌎Update N.22 – Mess
For those of you who wanted to see how messy our garage is – this is ‘relatively clean’ state. Not much can be otherwise said apart from that we’re building a custom compression machine, photos soon to follow.
*panoramic photo stiched by a trial version of Autopano Giga. Quite a good software, in case anyone asks.
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Update N.23 – Still mess
Some compression machine building photos. Of course I had to add a cheeky photo of myself holding the oven door (about 10kg). The magic box we’ve built is going to host a platform like in a regular compression machine. But also in one of the oven configurations it will have a rotomoulding unit inside. It will be a 2-axis rotomoulding thingy, similar to this.
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Update N.24 – Great success story
Oh hi there,
Recently we got an aluminium mold from the headquarters, for some time to test and see how it goes. We wanted everyone to know that behind all the fancy looking product photos, there are lots of trials and errors, mistakes and failures.
We got the first two keychains made well and the rest of them, moulded another day, you can see below.
What are we going to do?
Well, melting temp is high enough, no chance of going higher. We’ll try to warm up the mould itself. This will allow slower plastic solidification. Also injection itself should be controlled a bit better.
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thanks for posting the errors! I think we had 2 of these moulds and with one we increases the diameter size of the “injection shaft” to make the plastic flow in easier. Not sure which one I send 😅 But that could help? Mould heating definitely helps but is such a hassle to do every time. Also @jerzeek might have some tips on this one!
@jegor-m You could try leaving one of the ‘failures’ in one side (cut it off at the gate) and next time you inject the plastic you will get better flow and pressure into the empty cavity. I agree about the mould heating, not only does it take much longer but also wastes a lot of energy repeatedly heating and cooling the mould.
Very nice looking mould by the way!
Update N.25 – Great success story v2
Hello people. Today we’ll continue with some difficulties with the keychain mould success story shown above. After drilling the sprue (injection hole) to 8mm diameter, the results started to shine!!
But not for long.
Photo n1 shows why.
As you can see, the mould hook is made of a plate, where the hook is created with straight cuts. This allows for shearing under applied load.
In our case, over cycles of opening and closing the mould, the hook got deformed badly, see photo n2. The hook was strengthened by some welding under it, but unfortunate location of the hole in the plate (photo n3) does not give the weld much of a base, so it doesn’t help at all.
What we did > we added max amount of weld that would fit in the latch, both sides, so it won’t be a problem anymore.
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Update N.26 – Great success story v3
To continue the success stories, here is another one:
During the production of wall clocks, we came to the point when the plates needed to be marked with material type. For those who don’t know what it is, please refer to Precious Plastic FAQ and/or Google.
Our first attempt using PP brass coins failed, so did the second (Photo 1).
Then we referred to our own technique – using specially designed paperclips with unique handwriting (Photo 2) – a limited edition btw (only €19.99).
Look at the result (Photo 3)– now it is perfectly clear what material it is. To heat up the wire we used a simple candle. So here is high-tech solution everyone needs now!
On a bit more serious note, the results shown in the first image are most likely due to:
– PP brass coin temperature (overheated with candle, hard to control)
– No silicone spray is applied to the surface – no mould release – failure
– Plastic itself is a bit burned, somewhat laminated and might have different properties on different layers.
More about the wallclocks later. Boom!
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EDIT
This result of using the PP coins for marking material type is not always like that. Our result shows that we need to optimise our process if we want to use them. Coins themselves mark well if used properly.
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Update N.27 – Garage party
We decided to address all those requests to see the workshop we got, see the machines and get to know us through a garage party. We arranged a set of speakers, related electronics, a fireplace with some marshmallows and so on. Inside the garage itself we set up a wee wall clock exhibition. On the table – traditional food coasters. In one of the corners people also played table football, France won.
In order to get into the workshop people had to pay in plastic bottle caps. The number of caps had to be at least 1. Total amount after the event was about 600 caps. Between all the people who gave caps, we ran a raffle/lottery and the lucky winner got our designed wall clock as a prize.
The whole evening I personally spent telling people what’s up and sharing some ideas about the best or better practices they should consider using/doing.
Please check the photos, give us some questions to ignore (that is a joke) and follow us on Instagram.
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Update N.28 – Wall clock making
Hello friends,
Today I’ll post about the wall clock making. The 3d model version of the mould is shown in Pic.1.
It comprises of a square bottom plate with pieces of flat bar welded to the sides that act as walls. Then in the middle there are two plates with circular cuts that set the shape of the wall clock. We wanted them to be perfectly round, so we ordered that from laser cutting. The lower plate is thin (2mm) and the cut is 250mm in diameter. The one above it is more thick (5mm) and the cut is 245mm in diameter. This can be clearly seen from Pic.2.
The reason as follows:
Thinner plate is below the thicker one. It shapes the number plate of the wall clock. In case there is not enough plastic in the mould (operator error), the thin area would still be filled all the way.
Another plate goes on top just to compress the plastic. For the moment, we compress plastic separately from the oven.
More pictures will show different steps in making the item, please also take a look at the short pdf presentation attached here.
EDIT: A quick note that although the thinner plate cut is ø250mm, the overall shrinkage of the wall clock results in it being ø245mm. Consider this as well!
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Thanks for sharing, I found this one particularly awesome 🙂 https://i2.wp.com/davehakkens.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018-07-08-16.10.01.jpg
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