Precious Plastic

 

Precious Plastic Release status: experimental [box doku]
Description	DIY Plastic Recycling
Author(s)	David, Katharina, Severin

Precious Plastic is a project for DIY plastic recycling. More about the project on their website.

Collecting

We're collecting different types of plastic in labeled black boxes ( + one box for the stuff we're not sure about). Everything should be clean before it gets into the boxes!

• Acrylic is really hard to recycle apparently, so we're not collecting that
• Sorting through the plastics recycling bin helps us reduce the amount of plastic trash
• Dumpster diving on the KQ?

Processing

Plastic Bags

Material Samples (left:2 layer bubble wrap, right:8 layer plastic bags)

Inspired by a video [1] and blogpost [2] of bjornsteinar.

• Material: plastic bags or bubble wrap
• Tools: iron and baking paper

• Steps
  • Place material between two sheets of baking paper.
  • Iron single sheets as the shrinking is quite drastic and not really predictable (if material ruptures or holes are forming, try reducing the temperature).
  • Fuse pre-ironed sheets together to create thicker, stronger material or extend the material dimensions.
  • Optionally imprint their textures to the surface by using fabrics or perforated metal plates.

• 

  Small bag made out of recycled plastic bags

• 

  Small bag made out of bubblewrap

Further research necessary

• Styrofoam
  • Mostly polystyrene, "expanded polystyrene", short EPS
  • Dissolvable in Acetone (but that's kinda nasty and not exactly healthy
  • Topics in the forum: [3] [4]
  • Maybe heat and compression to make it smaller and shreddable?
• Disolvable in D-Limonene (Instructable)
  • D-Limonene [5] [6]

Machines

Money spent so far (not really complete)

Shredder

Status: working!

• Hopper is falling apart, needs some glue
• Funnel from shredder into the collection box needs improvement
• Axis of the shredder might be a bit crooked
• More information on motors and how to start them: Drehstromasynchronmotoren, Starten von Motoren
• Electronics: Got a softstarter, missing a direction switch. But that's for later.
  • Manual of the softstarter

Compression

Status:

• Oven finished
• Need to build "Compression unit"
  • To be combined with the extrusion machine

Injection

Status:

• Base: done
• Hopper: done.
• Missing the thread on the pipe, then it can be put together.

Other stuff:

• Some premade molds [7]

Extrusion

Status:

• Got the screw and pretty much most other parts
• Hopper already built
• Missing the motor

Further pages

• Cost
• Outreach