The design museum

I went to the design of the year awards at The Design Museum, London.  Here are my favourite bits....

PET lamp project – designed by alvaro catalan de ocon

The Bradley time piece, a watch for blind people.  Tells time by a ball bearing and magnets.

Makoko floating school, Nigeria designed by NLÉ, 

Phonebloks mobile phone concept by Dave Hakkens

The Alchemist's Dressing table by Lauren Davies

I cut up the previous failed wheel into pieces so I can be easily re-metled them for the next wheel attempt to make.

First attempt at full size wheel

This is my first attempt at making a full size wheel for my kiosk.  After the success of the previous test run, I continued to attempt to make a wheel out of recycled HDPE plastic.  My aim was to make a wheel with a radius of 20 cm.

First step is to wash all the plastic and remove labels.

I have been collecting plastic for a while.  This is what 500g of HDPE looks like. 

I then weighted the plastic to that it will be enough for the size and thickness of the wheel I need.

I then put the plastic bit by bit into an oven at 180 degrees, hot enough to melt but not burn the plastic

I then put the motlen plastic blog on my tool and put the top on and pressed the MDF together.

I miss calculated the weight of the plastic so this is blob is too small for me to use. 

Making Plastic wheels experiment

This is a small scale test to see if its possible to make wheels for my kiosk out of recyeld plastic.

This is the equipment I will use to form the melted plastic into a flat piece.  Using 2 nuts to determine the width.

The molten blob of HPDE is pushed between the MDF boards and tightened with block nuts.

I then cut the plastic into a circle using a band saw and disc sander. 

The HDPE can be planed with a wood hand plane to create a smooth more even surface .