Back to the Futurecraft

I looked around my room for something which would otherwise be thrown away, either in trash, or “recycled.” Then I remembered how those cheap Bic pens often ran out of ink, prompting me to just throw it away in the trash. Perhaps the plastic would be “recycled” but who knows? The tube itself is a decently sturdy component. Maybe I could find a new way to use it.

I also had some eye hooks laying around. I punched (with a push pin) two holes on opposite sides of the tube. It happened to be an appropriate hole for the eye hook, allowing me to thread by hand.

With this, I made a very lo-tech grocery bag holder. Yes, it can only hold two bags. I’m also not sure what the capacity is. Some of the products below, priced between $2.79-6.95, claim 50 lbs capacities.

One Trip Grip Grocery Bag Holder
The Grabby
EZ Carry

Feel free to improve this design (using the tubes as a bag holder) or find some other nifty way to upcycle!

update
It was pointed out in class that perhaps this is not upcycling, but just another form of recycling. Good call on that. It shows how it’s so difficult to shift mindsets about the way we treat materials. How would a pen tube be redesigned if we knew that it would be used for a new purpose once the ink ran out? Of course, you can buy pen refills, but that isn’t part of the normal practice. I am too lazy to do so. If there is a built in “second-life” to the pen tube, that would be great.

In my manufacturing class, we talked about an alternative way of soda can forming that a Japanese company created. Here, the manufacturing process itself is fundamentally different from traditional processes and automatically, the ecological footprint of making soda cans is reduced.

Japanese packaging manufacturer, Toyo Seikan, about how they reduce effect on the environment via a novel way of can production, called TULC (Toyo ULtimate Can).

National Science Foundation & Department of Energy study on Assessment of Environmentally Benign Manufacturing Technologies
pp.207-209 of the report highlights the Japanese means of manufacturing.

Online demos on how cans are drawn normally:

Ball Packaging Europe

aluMATTER: Deep Drawing Process

I found this link about wasted food. I’ll read up on this and post any interesting facts for Wednesday. I always wondered as a middle schooler whether all the extra food in the cafeteria was just thrown away.

Wasted Food | a look at how America squanders half its food

Mechanical engineering perspective of the green movement. Lots of numbers. Interesting links too

2.813 Environmentally Benign Manufacturing

thought #1 - can you de-technologize things in the process of product design? This refers to the tools and methods by which designers and engineers execute the process. My conclusion is that it is a case-by-case basis. There is need for lo- and hi- tech solutions, from post-it notes to Solidworks.

thought #2 - this deals with potential final products. Transfer Scenarios deals with the concept of using both inquiry and innovation (or user needs and technology push) to create novel products. Scholar google search “Transfer Scenarios:Grounding Innovation with Marginal Practices” to find out more.

ok, so scratch the project on the mechanical turk. still a neat idea.

something that I just remembered was how I get frustrated at bathroom products, especially the ones around MIT often.

it’s great if it is automated, but i have two problems often:
-it’s not intuitive
-it doesn’t work

somehow when I was in Japan for two weeks this summer, the bathroom products, automated or not, always work. when you hide away all the function to a product and it doesn’t work, that’s not good.

for something as simple as pumping soap, dispensing paper towels, or turning on water, wouldn’t you rather have something that is simple, mechanical, but reliable?

I’m thinking about the Amazon Mechanical Turk.

It goes at human pace since humans are the ones doing the work, yet it is sped up by working n number of people at the same time. I can’t imagine the software architecture/infrastructure needed to facillitate this is too hard. They are trying to find Steve Fossett using this, having people look at satellite images.

Perhaps I will look into this as an example of de-technologizing.

This week’s assignment was definitely a tough one. Transmaterial was full of inspiration, but probably not of anything I could do in such limited time. After getting some advice from Amanda, I looked to food. Then, suddenly, while getting up on Saturday morning, I had the inspiration of using cereal foods for this project. Breakfast is usually the first meal. Then there’s the notion of breakfast in bed.

The first cereal that came to mind was one of my favorites, Frosted Mini Wheats. Out of all cereals, this one probably ranks up there in size of individual pieces:

Source: mine

A friend then suggested investigating marshmallows too

Source: mine

I will link you to my flickr and YouTube pages to see the many videos and pages of my explorations with gluing together FMW and melting marshmallows.

(Yes, now I realize that playing around with melted marshmallows is like playing around with the goo in Rice Krispy Treats)

Frosted Mini-Wheats
I call this “Breakfast Table”. I originally thought it would be cool to have a to-scale breakfast-in-table bed made out of mini-wheats. Then when I got to gluing the pieces together, I realized how it wasn’t feasible to do so given the nature of FMW and also that I didn’t have the patience. Rubber cement and Elmer’s Glue-All weren’t effective enough and took too long. I resorted to using a hot glue gun.

Because of the nature of the structure of each mini-wheat, there are variations in dimensions across the bits. Therefore, the surface area for adhesion is quite inconsistent. You could wet the grain so that it could conform, but then you lose strength of the mini-wheat.

With regards to the topic for the week, there is the idea that food can be represented as art or perhaps even functional objects. Irony is found in an object that is both the ends and means to a goal (eating in this case). I also though about using cereal (like Rice Krispies) as filling for pillows. I’m not sure how uncomfortable that would be. Maybe someone should try.

FMWs are strong but brittle.

Observations on marshmallows
Lack of water will start to brown or burn ‘mallow.
Five minutes after heating, will harden and become brittle.
Water will make it more gooey.
Freezing doesnt do much.
After heating, time constant is small, with hardening happening quickly.
Trying to use it as an adhesive doesnt work, but google “marshmallow adhesive” and see that something similar to ‘mallows are used for an edible adhesive for cereal bars

Future work for the curious
-Try different methods of melting marshmallows, i.e. old-school camp fire, steam, baking.
-Add corn starch or flour to reduce stickiness.
-Make your own marshmallow and vary the ingredients

Informational links
How cereal is made
How marshmallows are made
Make your own marshmallows (more…)