Criteria

The table of criteria was created by the plastics team, with input from the Arroyo Norte community, and is used to make decisions for the project. There are constraints that must be met for every decision but the weight next to the criteria shows its importance to the team on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most important. This criterium help the main goals of the project be considered for every project decision.

Cleaning/Cutting Process

Step 1. Cut the pre-washed plastic waste

Step 2. Clean as many times as possible

Step 3. Cut and Clean some more

The smaller the pieces (preferably<1mm) better for extrusion.

Making a Rose

Overview of the Innovation with Plastics

• https://vimeo.com/133844469

28th May, 2015, Thursday

Built the plastic innovation team.

29th May, 2015

Researched and worked on Literature Review. Main topics include plastic, plastic extrusion, weaving, community economic development, and similar project examples.

1st June, 2015

Met with the plastics innovation team. Created project criteria and added to appropedia page. Discussed project ideas and goals.

3rd June, 2015

Met with Arroyo Norte community members.

Made list of materials needed to both purchase and obtain from the community.

Made a project schedule and itinerary for the next meeting

8th June, 2015

Researched and learned to make a basic woven bag.

9th June, 2015

Created a small woven bag and pocket purse using practice paper.

10th June, 2015

Received the Filastruder. Built the plastic extruder and completed the wiring. Basic test of the extruder using provided ABS plastic pelts.

11th June, 2015

Searched for someone to customize extruder nozzles to create plastic ribbons. Had many failed attempts, new nozzles were needed.

12th June, 2015

• Continued search for new nozzles, which ended with finding similar ones and purchasing them.
• After searching found new machine experts and made the appropriate customization for the nozzles.
• Set up the extruder with the new customize nozzle and made the first ribbon strip.
• Met with the community at Arroyo Norte
• Made a future tentative schedule for time spent in Arroyo Norte (Thursdays and Sundays).
• Made early diagnostics on the broken extruder (not well mounted to the board).

13th June, 2015

Went to Arroyo Norte in the morning to pick up plastic however plans changed because of lack of shredded HDPE plastic at dump. Collected and cleaned HDPE plastic bottles. Found a local disposal site that shredded the cleaned bottles for free. Picked up supplies to repair the extruder. Cut some of the HDPE plastic into smaller pieces using scissors.

14th June, 2015

Finished repairing the extruder. Went to go work with the extruder at Arroyo Norte but had issues of electrical wiring, mechanic assembly or power intake. Washed more plastic bottles.

17th June, 2015

Group meeting to recollected, reorganize, refocus on our priorities given the project time frame.

18th June, 2015

Continued to make strips, Cut different sized holes out of extra nozzles to see which size of slit would create the best strips.

19th June, 2015

Went to Arroyo Norte to shred more plastic. Looked for a company that shreds plastic. Shredded more plastic,

20th June, 2015

BEACH DAY- Mandatory day off.

21st June, 2015

Went to Arroyo Norte, Made color plastic strips by experimenting experimenting with adding cut up colored hdpe plastic bottle caps (found on soda and water bottles).

22nd June, 2015

Bought color plastic pellets and began to extrude large amounts of colored strips. Experimented with using a water bath to cool down the plastic to get the desire thickness and consistency of the plastic strips.

23rd June, 2015

Went to Arroyo Norte and a community member began to produce a small woven bag using a wooden mould. Continued to experiment with the water bath. Test were interesting but best method continued to be to let the strips fall to the floor from the extruder without any pulling, most consistent method.

24th June, 2015

Visited a maker-space Santo Domingo.

25th June, 2015

Went to Arroyo Norte to produce strips but ended up having to leave early because of the electricity went out. Made more strips at Luis' house. Finished the small woven bag. Tried to make plastic roses using hot extruded plastic, not very successful.

26th June, 2015

Spent day making strips. More work on roses, came up with a good process to make small plastic roses.

27th June, 2015

Went to Arroyo Norte, presented the finish bag and continued making strips. Electricity went out at 2:30pm, which ended work in Arroyo Norte. Went to Luis' house and made a new mould for a bigger bag and produced a large amount of strips of varying colors. Worked on making basic bracelets to sell. Created by cutting extra strips to the correct length, heating the ends of the strips with a hot air blower and then clamping the two ends together using pliers.

28th June, 2015

Spent all day making strips and starting a large woven beach bag.

29th June, 2015

Finished making strips for and building the Sunset beach bag. More bracelets and roses made.

30th June, 2015

Last visit to Arroyo Norte, showed finished prototypes and said goodbyes. Presented the project to a near bye teacher. Began to work on final presentation.

1st July, 2015

Continued to work on final presentation and the project Appropedia page.

2nd July, 2015

Completed a simple presentation, and presented at Las Malvinas.

3rd July, 2015

Finished final presentation and presented at UNIBE. Sold bracelets for 50RD each and made 800RD to be used for the project. End of project and program.

Cost

Extruder Building Instructions

Below is the building instructions for the Filisruder kit. These step by step instructions should be used with the Filistruder instructions and the wiring is not included. The link to the instructions is included here.

1

Receive kit

2

Lay out parts

3

Find shaft collar (looks like a vary large washer about 2in wide) and take out its screw.

4

Find the feed screw. You will need to insert a flat head screw driver into the shaft collar and gently hit it with a hammer until it expands so you can slide it onto the screw so that the edge of the collar is 95mm from the flat end of the screw.

5

It should look like this. Once in the correct possession replace the screw and tighten but not to much because you may need to adjust it later.

6

Now find the barrel and one of the nipples. Screw the barrel into the nipple gently and tighten with a wrench on the cut out section. Be careful not to deform the nipple.

7

Slide the printed hopper onto the barrel so it matches up with the cut out. You may need to sand the hopper down a bit to be able to slide it on.

8

Find the two races and the cage(all located in individual great bags and one box). Lubricate with light oil or grease.

9

Put them in order of race, cage, and race and slide onto the end of the feed screw so they are closest to the flat end and up against the shaft collar.

10

Add the nylon bushing(the white, large looking washer) on to the feed screw after the last race. It should look like this.

11

Find the piece of wood with five holes cut into it, four main bolts, eight washers, four nuts, four spacers, and the second nipple.

12

Put the feed screw into the barrel. Place the wood so that the end of the feed screw comes out of the hole. Take the four bolts add a washer to each and put them through the small holes in the nipple connected to the barrel and the small holes in the wood so that the washer is flush with the nipple and the extra is coming out of the wood holes. You may need to people for this step one person to hold the bolts in place and the other to add components. Now add a spacer to each bolt. Add the second nipple so that the flat side is facing the wood. Finish by adding a washer and nut to each bolt and tightening by hand. Check to see if about 1/4in of the feed screw sticks out of the barrel, if not you need to take it apart and adjust the location of the shaft collar.

13

Find your motor and add some electrical tape around the motor shaft. About 2-3 wraps is good.

14

Find the hex socket and place it on the motor shaft so it is snug.

15

Find the coupling(looks like a small cylinder with threading on the inside) and thread it onto the end of the barrel.

16

Find the heating band and take off the outside by taking out the screw.

17

Slide the heating band onto the coupling still it is almost to the back of the coupling. Once it is in possession put the outside piece back on and tighten with the screw.

18

Place on the insulation very loosely because it will need to come off later.

19

Use screws to connect the motor to the flat piece of wood with the four small holes.

20

Put the flat end of the feed screw into the hex socket. It should look like this.

21

Find the stall protector board and get a very small flat head screw driver or a knife.

22

Look for the two blue boxes on the top of the board with two little screws on top. Look carefully under the boxes to see which is CV and which is CC. Rotate the CV screw counter-clockwise till you hear a click (a few dozen rotations). Once it clicks rotate it clockwise for 15 rotations. Do the same with the CC screw but only rotate it clockwise for 6 rotations.

23

Attach the whole extruder to a board using the provided screws. Make sure to predrill the holes in the board and the wood. Leave about 6in of board in front of the barrel.

24

Attach the fan to the small piece of wood and then screw that the board as well right under the end of the barrel.

25

Follow the kit instructions for wiring. Your finished extruder should look like this. Enjoy your new extruder.

Final prototypes

• 
  Lamp shade prototypes
• 
  Plastic roses
• 
  Bracelets
• 
  Small woven bag
• 
  Large beach bag

Testing results

Describe the testing results.

Discussion

Discuss the testing results.

Lessons learned

• When weaving with thick plastic a mould is need
• The plastic pieces need to be cleaned very well before being put into the extruder
• The smaller the plastic pieced are the faster the extruder extrudes the strips
• Arroyo Norte only has power from 11-4 pm during the day and still sometimes goes out during that time

Next steps

• Buy a larger extruder to increase plastic strip production
• Find a better process for cleaning the waste plastic
• Build a shredder so the community can shred their own plastic
• Have thinner strips either from pulling by hand or a hand-crack winder
• Use solar panels to power the extruder
• More community involvement
• Testing prototypes for durability

Troubleshooting

For small issues with the extruder please look at the table below for the solutions. If your problem is not listed or the solution does not solve the problem please contact Luis Gonzalez at gonzgarcia.luis@gmail.com, Rebecca Stark at rds334@humboldt.edu, or Fernando Flores at faf34@humboldt.edu.

Peer reviewed journal article

This work could be a followup to the previous year's project (2014) which became a peer reviewed journal article (in 2018):

• Title: An Analysis of Recycling High Density Polyethylene with Limited Resources
• Authors: Isabel Noemi Contreras, Jenna Bader, Patricia DuRant, Lonny Grafman
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.24908/ijsle.v13i2.11621
• Published: Oct 29, 2018

References

See Arroyo Norte waste plastic innovation/Literature Review for references.