Measuring Grape Trellis’s Size & Collect Material
This week, our group went to the New Garden again to measure the size of the grape trellis, which was the destined location of our installation. We measured the length, the width, and the hight the trellis so that we can map our design on our computer in our designing phase. With the tape measure that Angela provided, the measures of the trellis are as follows: length — 520cm; width — 250cm; height –.
During our last meeting with Mr.Yu, we mentioned our idea of utilizing water bottle caps to create a table. Once hearing such an idea, Mr.Yu kindly suggested that he could also contribute his effort to our design — he would contact Mr.Lu who is in charge of collecting and sorting wasted resources from building no.5 and ask him to collect bottle caps for us. Moreover, he could also help to bring the caps to school by driving a car. We have been very appreciated of Mr.Yu and Mr.Lu’s help of collecting caps, so we told him that we could come and get the materials by ourselves. Therefore, after measuring the size of the grape trellis, we went to collect more water bottle caps from Mr.Lu. The materials we collected from the building no.5 include bottle caps and plastic bags, and we carried all materials from the New Garden to the school. The reason why we collected plastic bags along with water caps was that we were afraid that the number of water caps might not be able to form a table we design. We also asked the professor if we could use plastic bags for forming the table, and the professor gave us a positive answer. The only point that we needed to be aware is that we need to iron various plastic bags together and shred them or else the plastic bags might tangle within the shred machine.
Determining Our Design
After bringing the materials from the no.5 building and measuring the data of the New Garden, we discussed and tried to determine the exact design of our installation. We drew the overall size of the grape trellis on the Rhino 7, and we tried various designs within the boundary of the trellis. We adjusted the number and the size of the tiles that composed the flower-shaped table after considering the possible workload that we might have and the limited time we have. We eventually got the exact measurement of flower-shaped table and that of the tiles:: we would produce We also communicated our design idea with professor Garcia, who suggested that we needed to stick the tiles to a wooden board so that the table can be firm enough. Moreover, other than creating a single table, we also added two another smaller flower-shaped mini tables aside the big table, by designing so, we think that the overall design would be more creative and enjoyable. The following picture shows our design on Rhino 7:
Designing & Buying Molds
When we were discussing the final design for this project, both professor Godoy and professor Garcia suggested that in order to massively produce tiles in a faster pace, we could design and buy molds.By using the molds, all we needed to do was filling the molds with the plastics we needed and placing the molds into the heating machine. Therefore, based on the measurement of the tiles, we drew the design of molds on Rhino 7 as well. We also contacted the seller from Taobao and got to know the deviation between the actual physical product and the design. The seller told us that the deviation would be 0.01mm, so we reduced the sizes of the holes that were used to connect the planes with screws by 0.01mm in diameter. Later on, the seller requested, we transformed the file into DXG version. For the material of the mold, we chose stainless metal. The following pictures show our progress in designing and buying molds:
Attempt to Produce The First Tile
Right after receiving the molds, we immediately tried to put the shredded plastics into the molds. For the first tile, we chose the red and white caps since these two colors are the most frequent ones seen in our collections. We thought that by using the most frequent ones, we can have more chances to try if we failed. However, with other colors which are rare, we might not have the chance to try again. With the shredded plastics in the mold, we turned on the machine to melt the plastics. Initially, we put only one layer that could cover the bottom of the mold. Then with the first layer melted, we added another layer. We repeated the same process again and again until the whole mold has been filled. After the pressing stage, we get the mould out and put it into cold water to cool down. Finally, we use different tools to open the mould and get out our tile. The following pictures show our progress:
Mold Modification
Based on the first tile that we created, we found out that one of the main problems was that the planes of the mold were not tightly connected, so the plastics would spread out during the melting process due the the openings to air. Therefore, we asked professor Garcia for help — we needed to put screws into the holes of the planes so that there would be no air between planes. Professor Garcia helped us to open four larger holes on the bottom side of the last layer of our mould so the screws could fit into the mould very well and have a flat bottom. By doing so, there would be no any air getting into the mould and the we would get a better out come. In addition, we cut the screws to just the height of our mould to make it totally fit.
We also guess that the cause of our tile not being flat enough may because the limited number of pressing so we decided to press our tiles for more times. Moreover, we advanced our cooling process by getting out two water buckets and reuse the water we used before again and again to prevent waste of water.
Producing Tiles Massively
Based on the experience of producing the first tile, we repeated the same process again and again, and the following pictures show the products we have made:
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