My University Project

Polymer Craft Share your creations
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Hi everyone :o)

Whilst looking online for inspiration for my university project I came across the Precious Plastic community and I became very inspired to create something for the project.

My project was to create a seating/storage solution that uses simple materials that can be made from recycled plastic. The only fixings required are M6 screws. This is how I showed the connections but the connection details could be developed further in order to require less or no fixings.

Let me know what you think, it would be great to see if anyone thinks they could make this piece of furniture. I have CAD drawings with dimensions etc and am currently finishing off my presentation. I can upload that too once completed and possible create a video presentation.

thanks,
Tony

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@spin,
Hey, I’ve got a couple of questions regarding the design.

Is there a way to make sure that anything in my pockets won’t fall back/down?

How good it is in terms of disassembly? In case I’d like to replace a piece, whether that would be plastic or (metal) or whatever.

How would you approach making (what seems to be) quite big plates of plastic?

Overall, I am not an artsy designer, but you’ve got a good design. I’d use it if I had enough space))

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thanks for sharing @spin
creating storage / organizing rack using recycled plastic can’t win economically againts conventional material (wood) as below…
but more solid (result stronger), will last for decades, & maybe win by appearance,
keep up!! 😀

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If the plastic sheets will be mounted over a steel frame then a heat press should be enough since the sheets would probably end up being 1cm thick or less. If the entire thing is going to be made of plastic you would probably need 1 inch thick sheets to support the weight, which means you will need a sheet mould and a compression machine.

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Thanks for sharing your ideas. The heat press idea is an interesting one although I was trying to avoid using non-plastic materials. This could still be an option though. I have currently shown the sheets as 20mm (like you say, quite thick to support the weight) and I did assume that they would be moulded as I’ve seen on some Precious Plastics videos. I’m not sure if anyone has moulded sheets at this size before though.

Just for the record, I don’t have any facilities to build this, I just wanted to contribute some ideas for discussion and for others to perhaps try building if they found the ideas useful.

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Looks solid, i have ben thinking about making somerhing similar. Just made in 100% Plastic. I like how you want to make a metal frame and then fill in the plastic sheets.
With the right oven, or right hydrolic press, or heat press, it should be doable.

– best of luck

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Hi Anris :o)

I think in the GIF above it looks like it has a steel frame. I’m still working on this and adapting it before submitting it for my uni project. I actually envisioned the entire thing being made from plastic. This is still very much an idea for prototyping but I tried to design it with simplicity of construction in mind and as few materials as possible.

I was planning on it having plastic extrusions for the frame and then wrap it in plastic cladding plates.

Currently I have shown the side panels as 1020mm x 755mm and about 20mm thick. I’m not sure if anyone can make the panels that large but I have seen some examples of fairly large panels being made. I’m also a little unsure just how strong the plastic framework would be and if it would require additional support. Currently I have shown 50x50mm extrusions.

cheers mate,
Tony

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Hi, thanks for your comments. The design would be quite light weight plastic so if anything fell down it you could move the chair and pick it up I should think.

The assemby as I’ve shown it is quite simple, only using M6 screws and drilling threaded holes the plastic peices to recieve the screws. I have seen people making big plastic plates with the interesting patterns like the ones I’ve used in my above visual.

I thought this type of design would be good to show off the nice patterns of the plastic plates without being overly complicated to build and using only plastic plates and extrusions. I also showed some chair pads that could be made from plastic bags with a filling inside them. I saw a video of someone making tote bags from recycled plastic bags, I thought something similar could work here.

I have a lot more info regarding the design which I can upload soon if anyone is interested to see more of it. I just wanted to initially see if anyone thought this might be a realistic design to build in the real world. I could re-work the connection details etc if required in order to make it have less fixings.

I am actually still working on my final presentation for this for uni but I have been putting together a WordPress blog to track the project if you would like a look:
https://sitstoreweb.wordpress.com/

cheers,
Tony