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.