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.

1. Make your own bioplastics. Try various recipes, add other materials, play with textures and use your mold. Document your process and findings.

2. Material properties sheet: Describe the properties of your material

3. 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.

Testing Bioplastic recepies

For the tests I used this digital cookbook: https://issuu.com/nat_arc/docs/bioplastic_cook_book_3/s/159731

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?:

• 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?

• 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.

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

I put everything in a pan cooked it and stirred it until it became more thick.

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.

I poured the bioplastic in the cup mold and let it dry in the sun for two days.

Day 1

Day 3

Conclusion:

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.

AGAR AGAR Foam plant based bioplastic with soap (https://issuu.com/nat_arc/docs/bioplastic_cook_book_3/s/159731)

Needs:

• Glycerine 2.7 g

• Water 40 ml

• Agar 1.6 g

• 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.

Day 3:

AGAR AGAR plant based Bioplastic with honey (https://issuu.com/nat_arc/docs/bioplastic_cook_book_3/4)

Needs:

• Glycerine 5 g

• Water 40 ml

• Agar 2 g

• Honey

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

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.

AGAR AGAR plant based Bioplastic with yellow curry powder and flowers (https://issuu.com/nat_arc/docs/bioplastic_cook_book_3/4)

Needs:

• Glycerine 2 g

• AGAR 2 g

• Water 40 ml

• 3 tea spoons of curry powder

• A few tiny flowers

First I put some Vaseline in my Petri dish, so the plastic would come off more easily when it has been dried.

I cooked the ingredients and added the curry powder. I mixed it together until it became more viscous.

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

Day 3

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.

Making Bioplastics

3D Mold

I decided to fill the 3D mold with the recipe : AGAR AGAR plant based Bioplastic with honey (https://issuu.com/nat_arc/docs/bioplastic_cook_book_3/4)

Needs:

• Glycerine 5 g

• Water 40 ml

• Agar 2 g

• Honey

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:

1. Holding the two parts together:

2. How I added the cooked plastics in the mold:

3. After three days:

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.

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

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.

The smell is really good! The texture is also great. Flexible but firm.

Mold 2: 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.

Mold 3 : The 2D Mold with gelatine and some parfume

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 one week the material has become really thin, but still firm and not flexible at all.

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:

Future Bioplastics concepts

See my conclusion and final concepts here:

Bioplastic that suits the concept

For the concept I will use the outcome recipe of Mold 2:

Which will be the gelatine recipe with some perfume added to cover the smells of the gelatine. You can find the process and recipe here:

Why this bioplastic?

This bioplastic is really firm, but also a little flexible. It really looks like plastic and feels like plastic. It can handle a little water and UV lighting.

Material properties sheets

Concept

You might have heared it in the interviews, but I think the material is perfect for bioplastic lids and covers for temporary packed products. The bioplastic is suitable for re-use, for recycling and to get lost in nature (not prefered).

It's firm and flexible. So you could stack a few packages on each other and you can remove the lid/cover with a little bending.

The packaging will be really suitable for companies like Albert Heijn To Go, which are already aware of the plastic soup situation:

Suitable lid packaging:

This week we had to think about materials and how we use them in our designs and what the purpose is of these materials.

Text:

As a designer of interactive / smart concepts I always thought that the interface of the screen attached to the product was the most important aspect of the concept, but after thinking so much about materials and their attitude, shape and textures I wonder what’s more important: The interface or the material of the product itself?

If the user doesn’t like the material of your product he won’t use it or even stare at it longer than a second. During material centred projects I came across the fact that material research is definitely important for every concept you make. It’s important to find matching materials for your concepts, even if it’s not your job to think about the materials. The materials of your product can change a lot about the concept you have in mind.

Files:

Testing the bioplastics

Before making the material sheets and making my final conclusion I wanted to test the materials with a few people.

I tested the plastics with my mom(Karin) and my dad(Edwin).

Test with Karin

With this link you can watch the video:

Interview details:

• The first material we tested (Gelatine) was not nice to hold. The material felt and looked a bit dirty, it is also really hard and not flexible at all.

• The second material we used (Agar honey) felt just like rubber. It was nice and soft.

• The third material (Agar Curry) we tested was not nice at all. She found it really disgusting, especially the strong smell of the curry. The flowers didn't came out nice either.

• The fourth material we tested (Agar robot) really looked like the agar honey material. Also soft and cute.

• The fifth material we tested (Gelatine ink) was really shiney, she loved the look of it. It's also a bit flexible and looks just like plastic.

• The sixth material we tested (Gelatine perfume) Was really hard, thin and looked just like plastic. It also smelled like perfume.

• The seventh material we tested (Gelatine texture) Was aslo really hard and not flexible. You could hear her ticking on the material. She didn't liked the texture. The material felt just like a plastic cup.

Conclusion:

The materials that looked and felt the most like real plastics were seven, six and five. Two and four were more like rubber.

Test with Edwin

With this link you can watch the video:

Interview details:

• The first material we tested (Gelatine) was really hard, just like real thick plastic. It looks a bit weird because of the flower on it. it's a bit weird and smells like nothing.

• The second material we tested (Agar honey) is much more flexible, I can bow it! Really want to pull it apart. It smell like honey and has a bit of sticky texture, but also not really. It is transparant.

• The third material we tested (Agar curry) looks really weird. I see flowers. It stinks. Not comfortable at all.

• The fourth material we tested (Agar robot) is really small. It looks like it has the same material as two. Small, but nice.

• The fifth material we tested (Gelatine ink) is a firm material. It's comparable with the first, but the first one is really hard. It smells like soap or something. It's really flexible.

• The sixth material we tested (Gelatine perfume) is way more firm and hard. It looks like a lid or cover of something. Thin and transparant, but also really fragile. Smells like perfume.

• The seventh material we tested (Gelatine texture) is much more hard and firm than the previous ones. Also really round. It has a weird texture. It has also got a bit of a lid/cover feeling and look.

Conclusion:

The materials which are really suitable for a reaplacement of plastic is number six, the Gelatine perfume material. If you want to have something for rubber I would choose number 2, the Agar honey.

Outcome

It's so funny because I never thought that the gelatine materials would be loved by the test group the most. When I made the gelatine bioplastics I was not a fan of them at all. They really smell nasty while making it and when they are dried up. But because I added some perfume in it the materials didn't stank at all! And thet really feel like plastic. Because of the test I look different at the gelatine materials. I first had a negative feeling with them, but after the tests I really think they could be the future. But don't forget to add a little perfume!

Material sheets

Now it's time to make some material sheets. I'll give some specifics about the material I made.

Here you can find the recipes:

1. Gelatine

Material properties sheet

Technical properties sheet

2. Agar honey

Material properties sheet

Technical properties sheet

3. Agar Curry

Material properties sheet

Technical properties sheet

4. Agar robot

Material properties sheet

5. Gelatine ink

Material properties sheet

6. Gelatine perfume

Material properties sheet

7. Gelatine texture

Material properties sheet

Future Bioplastic concept

Fot the final concept go to: