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🇪🇪 Precious Plastic Estonia

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  • This topic has 95 replies, 24 voices, and was last updated 2 years ago by Jegor.
Jegor jegor-m

🇪🇪 Precious Plastic Estonia

25/06/2017 at 20:39

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

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warrior
23/03/2018 at 23:32

🌎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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warrior
27/03/2018 at 22:29

⚡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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warrior
22/01/2018 at 12:13

Winter in Tallinn = cold. But we are working!

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warrior
11/07/2018 at 19:22

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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warrior
25/11/2017 at 14:42

🌎Update N.14

We have finished the working model of the injection machine and tested it out. First I have to say that I took quite a while to set up all electronics to work predictably. Then the end bit for the barrel and the injection point link is still being optimised. We tried using ball gate valve, regular pipe reducer and just a carjack press holding the mould. The first tests are seen below – coasters.

Red and blue mixture coaster:
PP in an PMMA / Plexigalss / Acrylic mould / Injection point in the middle
Process temperature set to 290 and 300degC (yes, yes, I know)
Mould cooling in a barrel of water (10mins)

First ever injection test. Badly overheated plastic. Resulted in visible bubbling and additional sinking (surface not flat, bent inwards). The mould was attached directly before injection, so that plaxiglass won’t melt. As the mold was quite precise, the only post-processing was to get rid of some small side flashing.

Grey coaster:
HDPE in a metal mould / Injection point off center
Process temperature set to 240-250degC.
Slow mould cooling (1h)

Third injection test. Plastic not visibly overheated. Bad plastic smell. Surface sunk a bit, but to an acceptable level. The first plastic bit to touch the mould was a bit cool – resulted in a surface irregularity on the outer side of the injection point. The mould made of metal had some wide gaps – plastic flashing > needed additional finishing up.

Mould arrangemets are shown in the photos below.

Second injection test, which I intentionally skipped, was a fail. Reasons listed below.

Lesson learned: Injection
– Before plastic moulding, you need to perform a heating test. Take a finished injection machine and measure how log it would take to heat up the inside of the barrel. This way you can predict when plastic is starting to melt. This test is yet to be done.
– Do not blindly increase the process temperature (like we did 300degC) hoping to heat up plastic faster as this results in burnt plastic, among the other things like excessive sinking and pressure buildup.
– Optimise the injection arrangement. This is done by trial and error.
– Clean the inside after each use. Sometimes plastic gets stuck to the inner walls and can contaminate your product.

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warrior
25/06/2017 at 20:42

Here are some photos

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warrior
10/07/2018 at 23:08

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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warrior
15/04/2018 at 16:50

🌎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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warrior
28/03/2018 at 19:02

🌎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! 🌲♻
_____
Precious Plastic Vienna – Instagram

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warrior
16/01/2018 at 22:17

The garage is slowly getting into the right shape, machines coming in..

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warrior
15/10/2017 at 18:43

🌎Update N.13

In september we tweaked our shredder and now our badboy shredder looks like this (first photo)..

Also, you might remember the story about us filling the aluminium beer can with plastic. The second photo shows what a cross section looks like. As you see it is quite porous, mainly due to the fact that no compression was performed and it was just melting in a can. The air stayed trapped.

We tested our shredder and got this nice enough grey HDPE. We will probably use it for the skateboard we’re gonna make at some point.

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starter
07/08/2017 at 14:38

It might be useful to collect all the lessons learned in a document, which is similar to @lyricalpolymath’s list for the Motors externally, so that folks will not repeat those mistakes when setting up their own stations. What do you think?

warrior
07/08/2017 at 11:39

It’s time for weekly update N6:

This week we tried making some thin plates of PP(5). The shredded plastic mixture used was the same as for the things above. We are still using the oven separately from the press.

If you want a full description of the process, message me. The short description goes like this:

A square piece of metal covered in baking paper was placed into a pre-heated oven (about 230-250 degC). Some shredded plastic pellets were placed on top of it and all of this was covered by another square piece of metal (again covered in layers of baking paper). This arrangement was left in the oven for about 20 mins. It was then taken out and placed between bigger metal plates and squeezed with a press. As the plastic was fully molten, it was squeezed tightly and left to cool down.
As the result, the plates you see below are about 1mm thin and have some cool patterns. The patterns depend on the variety of colours you throw in.

Lesson learned:
– Leaving plates in the oven, which is not leveled (tilted), can result in plate slipping from the melting plastic. As we did not have any guiding walls / plates, the top plate moved to the side a bit, but was corrected in time.
– Cooling inside the press is better and gives a flat plate. Pressing hot plastic and taking it out while it is moderately hot / not cold warps the plate.
– Using multiple layers of baking paper allows easier and more safe ejection of the ‘mould’ out of the oven
– Using multiple layers of baking paper increases the risk of folds appearing, that could affect the appearance of the resulting plate. A good paper securing arrangement could be devised.

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warrior
04/08/2017 at 11:27

Weekly update:
We contacted local clothes shop and managed to source plastic hangers that are thrown away as soon as they are used once. We separated all the non-plastic bits and shredded a batch. All the hangers we got are made of PS (6), so it is quite easy to break them by hand and they shred nicely.

We also continued practicing plastic baking. This time we heated up some PP (5) in the oven and then placed it between two plates into the press (not heated press). Then this assembly was pressed till the plastic squeezed out. The photo of the result is shown below (banana for scale; banana is not made of plastic).
You might think it looks awesome, but unfortunatelly the process was not optimised well and pressing didn’t go as planned. As a result the plate is not quite flat and thickness is not uniform (approx. from 3-8mm)

Lesson learned:
– Baking paper was used – no problems with plastic sticking
– Middle solidified faster so pressing did not go symmetrically. Metal form / plate should be heated up with plastic.
– Integrated compression machine is way better solution than separate oven + press.

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hero
11/07/2018 at 19:50

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

warrior
10/01/2018 at 11:17

🌎Update N.16

A friend of ours gave us keys to his small damp garage in Tallinn that we are going to use for production. In a month or so we will try and get the machines in and will be ready for visits.
In case you’re planning to come over to Tallinn 🇪🇪, give us a shout.

warrior
05/12/2017 at 20:50

🌎Update N.15

A quick update:

1. NGO registered; Bank account registered; Meeting the representatives of the Producer Responsibility Organisations soon.

2. It has been a while for sheet press action for us. We fired up the oven, got some plastic in, waited a bit and pressed the molten pile between the metal plates in the sheet press, like before. This time we used regular office markers (Photo 1). You might have seen these shredded in the earlier photos.

What we got is shown in Photos 2-3. Thin sheet of PP, very multicoloured. Thickness 1-2mm. On the photo you can see some wrinkles and creases. This is due to top metal plate sliding and baking paper creasing while it was transported from the oven to the sheet press (literally 1 step, managed to mess it up)

The apparent dirt is not dirt at all. It is all the black ink that you can see on the Photo 1. The barcode and the text got shredded and are now inside the plate. Looks like dirt. Not cool.

Next, Photo 4 is a quick mock-up of what a wall clock made of this sheet would look like. We have not yet decided to turn it into the wall clock though.

3. Photo 5 is a teaser for our extruder. It just needs some drilling, polishing, electrics set-up, painting, re-grinding, re-painting and testing.
For now: we increased the barrel diameter, auger bit is 32mm in diameter. Will see how it turns out.
FYI, on the last photo – it is Max ( @maximmm ), add him as a friend. He’ll be super happy.

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warrior
18/09/2017 at 13:14

🌎Weekly update N.11 – PART 1 – ‘The cool stuff’

This weekend we did some shredder upgrading. The photos and some ideas behind the upgrade will be posted next time (when the paint is dry).

Today I’ll tell you about our recent plastic melting experiments.
1) The plate that we showed in our previous post (weekly update n.10) was cut into roughly equal squares. Then placed in a chess arrangement onto a squared metal plate, covered in baking paper. We used this metal plate for all of sheet press moulding tests. As the plastic got molten in the oven, I placed another paper covered metal plate onto it and waited for some time. Later these plates were placed into our sheet press, which at this moment is just a metal frame with a car jack. This plate moulding arrangement was then left there to cool down.
We say it was left there, it actually means we switched to another task and forgot about it 🙂.
As the result, we got this cool patterned sheet of PP(5). Photo1 is the pattern, Photo2 is the same pattern with a light source behind. I had this idea for a while and wanted to make a chess set.

How did it happen anyway?
In the previous post we made a plate. One side is more red and the other mostly black. It happened that red PP plastic we used had a lower melting temperature so it melted before any other plastic. As all the plastic was lying on a plate, red molten plastic filled the lower layer. The black plastic took longer to melt so it mostly stayed on top. It takes time to get to know the material you are working with.

2) The other test we did was filling an aluminium beer can with PP(5) and leaving it in the oven for some time. From the very start I decided to do it gradually by adding plastic in layers (approx.2cm each load up).
For that I took the top of the can off and prepared the ‘batches’ / layers of plastic pellets. The result below is a partially filled can / cylindrical block of PP(5). We don’t know yet what to use it for, but will come up with some ideas.
Photo3 is the ‘mould’ being taken off. Photos4-6 – cylinder / pattern / texture result.
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As there is a lot of things involved and this is merely an overview, feel free to post questions here or message me directly.

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warrior
11/09/2017 at 14:31

🌎Almost weekly update N.10

Why were there no news in the previous weeks?
-Well, project participants attempted to get some rest before the summer ended, some of us had holidays / pre-planned events and so on.

👨‍🔧 We got a little bit of planning done. Prepared a huge list of things to be covered, from machine and mould building, to registering and plastic collection organisation. A lot of things require our attention and as you can imagine/ may be experienced – it is going slowly.

Meanwhile, we got a full-sized working oven, made more plates and tried some wooden moulds. Also we started painting the machines, this to be continued..

Lesson learned:
– Wooden moulds tend to dry up in the oven and distort with heat, so it is better to use a thicker layer.
– Different colours of the same type of plastic tend to melt at a slightly different temperature. Material melting and mixing compatibility tests should be performed before any batch production.
– Plastic still sticks to a polished plate of stainless steel. More fine sandpaper is required. (I used 150 grit size)
! Sadly our bag of coloured PP(5) got contaminated with some amount of tiny metal chips, that are visible in the final plate. These chips don’t stick out, but still a plate of 220 x 220 x 2mm had three pieces. The material chosen randomly from the bag. Good material sorting and storage is essential!

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warrior
14/08/2017 at 15:46

Weekly update N7:

This week we split our Sunday workday into three parts:

– Work with materials: Materials got sorted, shredded and stored.
– Injector building: We decided to build the hopper from a single part of sheet metal. The plate was bent and hammered into the right shape and welded onto the pipe. The overall structure of the injector is ready, but there was a problem with the pipe straightness. After welding the hopper onto the pipe, the welding seams bent the pipe slightly, so that the piston jams inside. Metal twisting and warping is a regular thing during welding that needs to be accounted for. A couple of solutions are brainstormed already and this problem is going to be corrected at the next session.
– Third activity done – Flat sheet pressing. This time we made two thin PP(5) plates of about 1mm thick. One of the plates coloured (picture below), the second one made from transparent PP. While it took more time to melt it, both of plates had a good quality and nice surface finish. In both cases we used flat metal plates and layers of baking paper.

Lesson learned:
– Water jet pressure gun can be used for peeling labels off the plastic. This is a fast and efficient enough method. The drawback is that it has to be done outdoors and during cleaning it is very easy to get soaking wet, so waterproof clothing is to be worn.
– Welding seams ‘pull’ the metal after welding, which results in bending and twisting. This is easily seen on thin structures. In case of a pipe welding, it should be monitored and checked all the time. The advice is to avoid welding too much, expecially where it is not needed.
– Electronics can be prepared, assembled and tested alongside the machine building. All the necessary instructions and guides need to be accessible during the building stage. It is very annoying to finish the construction only to find out that some of the components need calibration and the instructions for those are in Chinese.
– For old ovens used separately for heating up plastic – good to have a temperature reading for more accurate process optimization.
– If plates are made of transparent PP plastic with text printed over it, which cannot be cleaned off, then the result will have this printed ink inside the part warped, which will look dirty and generally unpleasant.
– Any dirt on the transparent plastic is easily seen in the resulting plate. Plastic is to be cleaned well.

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warrior
11/07/2017 at 07:38

Weekly update:

This weekend we managed to finish our shredder and test it even more. We added a hopper and tried shredding PS and PET. PS(6) got shredded nicely. Shredding PET was way more tough.
– First problem is that blades (56rpm) tear the plastic and pull it in between the ribs and the plastic then stops and needs to be replaced.
– Second problem is as soon as it jams, the physical connection between the motor and the shredder axle breaks. The link is in a form of bolts, placed in a hole that was drilled perpendicular to the shredder axle. The bolts are shear cut every time the motor jams. This weakest link is to be solved at our next meeting.

Also we built about half the frame for the injector. As we have all the electronics, the final injector assembly and testing is going to happen soon.

While working on the things listed above, we also tested the mini oven we got. We placed an Aluminium baking form with some shredded plastic in it into the oven and waited for it to melt a bit. Then we placed another one of these baking form over the plastic and left it in the oven for some time. The result below shows the texture we got. Initially it was filled with black, red and transparent PP.

Lesson learned:
– The mold needs to be at least warm when it comes in contact with hot plastic
– Wait till you think it is ready, and wait more, only then take it out of th oven.
– Hollow aluminium is too soft (not quite the mould material, unless it is in a block form)
– Better to overfill the mould with plastic
– Don’t forget about the stickiness of the mould. Something needs to be applied to the surface (baking paper, non-stick spray, mirror finish, etc ..)

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hero
25/06/2018 at 22:36

@jegor-m o shit, that branding technique is just what I was looking for :O

Cheap and easy to make

warrior
25/06/2018 at 17:22

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!

_
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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warrior
02/05/2018 at 22:38

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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warrior
30/03/2018 at 08:38

@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.

warrior
27/12/2017 at 09:08

@dbougas,

Yes, there are a couple of factors that contribute towards bubbling.

If you’re not compressing the plastic for example, then the air trapped between plastic pellets just stays in place and eventually turns into bubbles.

If you badly overheat the plastic, then bubbling will not be a problem as you will simply burn it. But if you go high above the melting temperature, you might get more bubbles in the plastic, even if compression is involved.

PS. Please use @ and a nickname to mention a user. This allows monitoring updates more easily.

warrior
23/09/2017 at 19:05

🌎Weekly update N.12

This week we were still tweaking the shredder. As a test we got some office highlighters shredded.
Yes, yes, I remember, I said that you shouldn’t really shred different colours together and should sort it, but this is not the case as we are 100% sure the manufacturer is the same for all the colours (same markers), so this gives us a high chance that this plastic would melt nicely together when the time comes.

We also got a filter / netting installed (in our own way of course)..

Apart from that, we got the auger wooden drill bit, so extrusion machine building is going to start soon-ish..

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warrior
29/08/2017 at 11:38

♻️ Weekly Update N.9

This week we tried to start the injector. We got the instructions for the PID controller and later found out that the instuctions are not suitable for our model. The injector was left un-calibrated. Photo below shows Max trying to calibrate this crappy PID controller. To be continued..

Along with that, we sorted some bits in our workshop, now we have got shelves for materials. One shelf is on the photo.
Left to right: 2kg of transparent PP(5); some pink/red PP(5) and 3.2kg of PS(6)..

Lesson learned:
– For more control over the colour patterns, plastic should be sorted by colours before shredding and should not be mixed during shredding. Shredding all the plastic of the same type gives you almost no control over the beauty of your products.
– Usual industry injection moulding process includes material drying before injection. This lowers the moisture content and improves the melting/connection between different colours.

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warrior
23/08/2017 at 09:26

Hello everyone 🌎
Time for Weekly Update N8

During our last session we almost managed to finish up with the injector. We wired it up and tested and it did not work. 😐 The problem was with the the PID controllers. The controllers are not set up properly, while all other components work well (we tested heating elements separately, they worked).

First HDPE melting test performed – resulting material is quite strong and uniform and melts nicely. The problem we stumbled upon was with the baking paper. As we used our first pack already and forgot to buy a new one, we had to use the one from the kitchen. Unfortunately, the paper from the kitchen had no non-stick properties 😕.

Lesson learned:
– Reading prevous lessons and learning from them. (Obvious)
– Old baking paper might not be suitable due to lack of non-stick surface properties.

Our injector below doesn’t look nice and shiny, but we are planning to paint it at some point for publicity purposes. ♻️

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warrior
17/08/2017 at 11:22

Weekly Update N7.1

This mid week update is about a problem we had during shredder assembly.

To cut down on the price for the lasercut parts we decided to order only the essential parts, which excluded most of the walls and the net holder plates. As I was told, a friend of a friend of a friend had a laser cutter and could cut the parts for us cheaply. So they did.

After the blades were polished we found out that instead of 6mm we had blades of approx. 6.2mm thick. When all the blades were stacked, this extra thickness took the space of the last blade and overall the structure got a bit loose.

Test footage of PS shredding below can clearly show how the back plates move.
(awesome to look at PS flying around at 0.25 of playing speed)

At the time we dismissed this as a minor issue.

Now, when we have a list of issues like that, we are planning to rebuild the shredder into our own v2.1

Lesson learned:
– Check what you get from laser cutting company and adjust the design respectively.

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