Materials_New Materials
Finally I have all of the parts that are needed to complete this project! This past Saturday I tried to finish it off, but ran into some issues with soldering the capacitors diode to the vibrating motors metal casing.
The casing is meant to be roughened up a bit to make it suitable for soldering. I sanded the motor, but I believe that I did not make it quite rough enough. My directions mention that a Dremel would work best, but I don’t currently own one. Do we have dremels available to us in the Medialab shop?
My original objective was to attempt to make a material that is traditionally thought of as unconductive conductive. So that led me to experiment with rubber latex.
My first test was an attempt to embed metal dust into the latex to change the material properties of the rubber. So I mixed graphite with latex and let it cure.
My next test involved embedding aluminum mesh…it was both conductive and structural.
Here is a demonstration of its structural properties…
After this initial fascination I developed an interest in the skin structural aspects of the combination of latex and metal.
Then I tried to integrate small aluminum bars, where they could serve structural and service requirements.
After this I embedded piano wire…..