Week 5: Workshop experiments and results

Testing the plastic heating press:

During last class, I partnered up with a classmate to test out the heating press, which would aid us in the creation of our midterm project. We chose to use the heat press, rather than the irons to practice molding/fusing together multiple bits of plastic, in an attempt to learn the right amount of heat and time needed for type 2 plastics.

We chose two regular plastic bags and placed them between two baking sheets in the heat press. Initially we did 120 degrees celsius for 9 seconds to see if the plastic fused together, however, we discovered that the time was not enough and the two plastic bags were unattaching from one another as soon as we removed the plastic bags from the press. 

We made several attempts of fusing the two bags together to create a plastic “purse”. We tried different time settings, as well as different heat settings but ultimately, we discovered that at a temperature of about 120 degrees for around 15 seconds, the plastic bags seemed to steal pretty securely. It would be interesting to try a higher temperature of heat, however my partner and I were worried that the plastic would start burning, since we noticed that the machine began to emit a rather chemical smell once we attempted to change the degrees of the machine to a higher amount.

 

 

Conclusion:

All in all,  the method was rather effective at fusing the bags together, however I am not quite sure I will be using the knowledge I gained from this experiment in my midterm project.