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 .

Wooden pallets

I am making the kiosk out of wooden pallets that I have found around Nottingham.  They come in various standard thicknesses which I can cut down quite easily.   They are suitable for the project because they don't cost anything and are very easy to get hold of, I am also giving the wood a second life.

The pallets can be taken apart fairly easily (some more than others) with a small metal wedge tool and a hammer.  I tried saw the pallets apart as little as possible so I could get the longest possible pieces.

To cut down on energy used in processing I have hand planed the wood to make a smooth and even surface.  Also there is risk with the wood through a machine planer because there may still be nails left in.

Showing the kiosk breaking down into transportable parts.

All the wood (which was collected from the wood free-cycle at uni) has been cut to a standard size of 35mm in width and 7mm in depth to represent a wooden pallet which is around 70mm wide and 14mm thick.

I have made this 2:1 model with no glue.  And the structure breaks down.

5th scale model of kiosk.

Following the previous cardboard model , I developed the design into a to scale model.  Including some idea of where the equipment like the disc sander (blender ) and shredder will be housed.

Model based on Enzo Mari manual Autoprogettazione

This is the first small scale model I did of my kiosk.  It is based on the designs shared in Enzo Mari's open source manual Autoprogettazione in 1974. 

His designs are based on only using standard size planks of pine and a hammer and nails.  

The design of this cart is based on Enzo Mari design for shelving.

Here are some more of the designs, which are accompanied by full instructions.

Hacking a blender into a disc sander

The aim of this experiment was to see if I could turn a domestic blender into a disc sander that allows the top to be changed easily.   The means I could have options of different grades or sandpaper and still allowing me to use the original blender.  I am not allowed to glue anything to the blender because of the rules my project where everything has to be able to be dismantled.

 

Making a cast of the rotating blender fitting out of resin.

Then making a mould of that cast so that I can produce multiple pieces.

Experimenting with heights of disc and fixings. Above the resin part had been drilled into and secured with a bolt and nut. 

I would then stick or velcro a pice of sand paper onto the top and then it becomes a disc sander!

It works!! - for about 10 seconds, then the disc comes flying off whilst spinning very fast, which is quite dangerous! 

To make it work I would need to perhaps have something holding it down in the middle , or cover the right hand side which will not be used to make sure it doesn't come off.