Week 12: Experiment Report (old version)

⚠️This is the old version that I could not find but now I find it. You can just skip it and scroll down.

During the class, I didn’t really start the experiment, since the experiment needs the mold so I spent most of my time doing the mold. Special thanks to Marcela and Andy, I could not finish the mold with their help.

So first I learned from the video of making recycled paper and drew a draft. Andy told me that we could simply make the mold by cutting by ourselves, we chose thinner woods and cut them into 30cms/27cms long pieces. After finishing the frame of the mold, what net I should use became a problem. The window screen net I have is too big to filter the paper thick liquid. Marcela helped me find some left materials of the trash fashion show, which looks like nylon net and water can go through it. Therefore, after using the big staple stapling the net on the frame, the basic mold was finished. There is still a problem: the surface of the net is even, so the paper might not be flat enough. I will test later and update the result of my experiment.

 

What’s more, for the thought of cooperating with the campus store, I went to ask for the sales of notebooks. The worker there told me that they don’t have a record of how many books they sell every week/month (maybe they just don’t want to tell me 🙁 ) but it is definitely not a small number.

Update:

I FAILED. 

I know that usually, the experiment won’t succeed for one time but I really didn’t expect it to be that hard.

Ingredients:

Paper (mostly from paper shedder)

A lot of water

Tools:

Mold

Big Plastic Container

Sponge

Blender

Iron

Gloves

Cloth

Here is the video of my main experiment process. (If watching the video is too boring  please listen to this)

The main process:

cutting paper – put them into the blender – add water (the first time there is too little water so I added twice) – pour the thick liquid into the container – put the mold into the liquid and get a layer – dry – dry- dry- take the paper off – dry – you got it!

  

During the experiment, I met a few challenges. The first one is to choose the best mode from the blender… I know this sounds a little silly but it is really important. At first, I chose the “fast soybean milk” mode, but it is heating, and the blending process is not successive, with vapor coming out and the whole machine is shaking. Later I switch to “juice” model  and “icy smoothie”, both of them work pretty well. 

Another one is which side to use of the mold: I need to put the one with the net below and the side with net up, and I mixed it several times. Therefore when trying to peel it down, it is hard for me. I think another key element is the unevenness of the net. I am going to talk about it in future improvements in the coming two (1.5)  weeks.

Future improvements:

1. The net is not working well. I am buying a better piece of net from Taobao, and I will test again if that works better.

2. I am also buying a better sponge, the one that can absorb water rather than for cleaning. I will buy a big towel again to help absorb water

3. When I first get the thick liquid layer out of the container, it was a little sticky, so I thought that I might have to add more water next time.  But when I was drying it, it took me so long and there was too much water. Hence, the critical problem so far is to find the balance of water.

4. It takes toooooo long… This piece of paper cost me more than 4 hours. I think with practice I can reduce it to around 1 hour but it is still really long. Remaking is not an easy thing.