2. Week 02 - Sustainability

Create a mold to produce biomaterial

Create a mold to produce Biomaterial with the 3D Printer

I decided to 3D model a mold to produce 100x100mm samples of Biomaterial. I used Fusion 360 to design this mold. Here are the sketches :

Here are the 3 parts of the mold : A “collar”, a press, and a perforated press to evacuated excess of liquids, or humidity.

Then i imported my STL files in Creality Slicer to print the parts one by one.

The mold came out perfectly : ( pictures on the way)

However, I wanted to try a recipe including pine resin, and I didn’t read the instructions before. Big mistake as this recipe requires to be cooked around 110 celsius degrees, and I printed my mold with PLA filament. The mold would have bee bending or melting a bit, so 3d printed mold with PLA as a filament is certainly a wrong solution for pine resin based biomaterial.

Create a mold to produce Biomaterial with the Laser Cutter

Test 2 : Laser cut mold, design with Illustrator and 3mm MDF.

Out of the laser :

Mold ready to be assembled :

Mold assembled :

Produce Biomaterial

I used a Shemakes recipe, available here : https://shemakes.eu/sites/default/files/doc/workshop/PineResinBiocomposite_Brochure_Layout_440x105_0718.pdf

I gathered all of the parts needed :

Prepared the mold to welcome the biomaterial and make sure I will be able to use them one more time :

At this point I was not perfectly sure if it was part of the normal process, the recipe described “Bubbles” and this appears more like foam to me.

From this point it went really fast, I added the filler, coffee ground and proceeded to press it zith my hands first, the with those tools :

The drying process was also real quick : around 20minutes after pressing it, the material had already been cooling down enough to be unmolded.

Here are the result with close-up :

This mark in the middle is because I pressed it first with the wrong side ot the mold, also we can clearly see the paper shape molded on the side, this biomaterial dries really fast and catches interesting details.

Pictures to come : The same recipe with a mix of coffee ground and sawdust.

Have you considered sustainable practices in your teaching in the pasts? How? What aspects do you think should be improved in your own teaching environment?

How Digital Fabrication might support sustainable practices? When using Digital Fabrication what actions you can take to support sustainable practices.

Do you think your school is ready to a change in mindset? Why? How can you get support from other stakeholders? How would you structure a training for teachers?