7 - Coronaweek Transforming: Molding and Casting with Bioplastics
19 - 25 March 2020
THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENTS
Assignment 0 - with the entire group
Produce a class zine on the RISO printer together, 2 people will be editors this week. Individual contributions in the form of zine spreads.
Assignment 1 - individual
Dive into the world of biobased plastic and speculate about future applications using the Material Driven Design Method. The assignment of this week is to make your own bioplastics and use the Material Driven Design (MDD)-method to come up with future applications.
Make your own bioplastics. Try various recipes, add other materials, play with textures and use your mold. Document your process and findings.
Material properties sheet: Describe the properties of your material
Experiential toolkit: Understand the experience of your material
Future applications: Develop a concept for future applications
Assignment in my own words:
This week we will discover all different sorts of Biobased plastics by ourselves. My plan is to test several bioplastic recepies at home and let it dry for a couple of days. The best bioplastics will be tested in several molds I made during week 5 - Additive Manufacturing.
I will let them dry a couple of days and then I'll come up with an fitting future concept for Bioplastics. I also have to make a proporty card for the materials I made.
During this project we had to work at home due to the Corona Virus, so we got a little bioplastic survival kit from our teachers.
What was in the Bioplastic survival kit?:
Survival Kit
15 g Maizena
7 g AGAR
68 g Gelatine
73 g Glycerin
Petri dishes
Some 'waste' from the Makerslab (Not necassary for making Bioplastics)
What more do you need for making Bioplastics?
Cook set
Vaseline for the petri dishes
Cooker
Pan
Ladle
Whisk
Measuring cups
Molds
Extra ingredients for the Bioplastics you want to add (Like herbs)
The first thing I did berofre I started cooking is making sure that there is something underneath your workingspace, like a placemat. So the mess you make is easily to clean up.
I gethered all the products which I described above and started to make my first recipe.
I put everything in a pan cooked it and stirred it until it became more thick.
It's a Bubble Bath!
With a spoon I removed the bubbles and placed it in a different pot. You can also throw it away imidiatly.
I put some flower in a cup and made a mold in it.
Flower test
I poured the bioplastic in the cup mold and let it dry in the sun for two days.
Pour it in
Day 1
Not dried yet
Day 3
Dry and flowered.
Conclusion:
Flexible and light
The material has shrunken and the flower really sticks to the material. I find that it still really smells like rotten gelatine. So I don't really like the smell of the recipe. But the texture and strenght is amazing. It's not flexible at all.
Soap 6 ml (I did'nt really measured the amount of soap I used)
First I put some Vaseline in my Petri dish, so the plastic would come off more easily when it has been dryed.
I cooked the ingredients together and made a real bubble bath in my pan. I poured the foam into the dish and waited a few days. But it never became a usefull material. Maybe my cookings were not so great or I poured in too much soap.
First I put some Vaseline in my Petri dish, so the plastic would come off more easily when it has been dryed. I cooked the ingredients together until it became more viscous.
I poured it in the dish and added some honey.
I let it dry in the sun for a couple of days:
Day 1
Not dry yet
Day 3
Conslusion:
It has dried really nice! Really love the meterial. It's strong, it's soft and a bit juicy. Really love holding it! Definitly going to use this material in a mold.
First I put some Vaseline in my Petri dish, so the plastic would come off more easily when it has been dried.
The curry powder I used
I cooked the ingredients and added the curry powder. I mixed it together until it became more viscous.
Viscous curry
I poured it in the dish and addes some tiny white flowers that had fallen on the ground. I let the dish dry in the sun for a couple of days.
Day 1
Letting it dry
Day 3
It has changed a lot!
I have never seen a bioplastic shrunk so much! It's so tiny but really strong. the flowers make it a little bit more flexible and add a funny feeling to the material. It's a cute form of Bioplastic but I'm not going to pour this into a mold.
I will make a little change to the recipe, because the bioplastic is really flexible and I want it to become more stable. So I will use 3 g Glycerine. I won't add the honey. I am curious what the natural material will look like.
This is how I held the 3D Mold together and put in the plastics:
Holding the two parts together:
The 2 3D parts
2. How I added the cooked plastics in the mold:
Bottle
Watch out, It's really hot!
3. After three days:
It almost worked out
It has not really dried yet. I didn't wanted it to schrunk so I layed the mold out of the sun. That's why it hasn't really dried yet. The legs of the robot are really 3D the rest is a bit flat.
End result after one week with a little sun:
The Bioplastic has shrunken a lot! I really think it became like this because I let it in the sun behind a window for like a week.
Tiny robot
2D Molds
I will make my 2D model with the gelatine recipe. I will stick the 2D model on top of the dish so the material can't bow. Needs: The Gelatine animal based Bioplastic (https://issuu.com/nat_arc/docs/bioplastic_cook_book_3/3)
Needs for the most flexible material:
Glycerine 7.2 g
Water 60 ml
Gelatine 12 g
Honey
Mold 1: Inked honey
Bioplastic with honey and ink
I will use some honey in it for a better smell and more flexible feeling. And I will make the material less flexible by reducing the amount of glycerine to 3 g. I'll add some ink for a marble effect.
Ink gelatine
The smell is really good! The texture is also great. Flexible but firm.
Mold 2: Perfume
Added some perfume
I used some leftovers from the cookings of mold 1 and poured it in a new dish. I really find the gelatine Bioplastic smell like poop, so I wanted to do an experiment with perfume. Lets see how it will react!
The smell is again super nice! Love the texture and it is really firm and a little bit flexible at the same time.
Gelatine perfume
Mold 3 : The 2D Mold with gelatine and some parfume
2D Mold idea
I used the same recipe as mold 1 and mold 2, but I removed less foam. As I poured it in de the dish I noticed that the material is much more yellow then mold 1 and mold 2. I think if you remove less foam (I might be wrong) it will become more yellow. Also I didn't add any honey, only one spray of parfume.
After 1 day, not dried yet.
After one week the material has become really thin, but still firm and not flexible at all.
Gelatine texture
Material properties sheet + Experiential toolkit
I'll test the plastics with my family. Click on the link for the documentation about the test and the material properties sheets:
