Dinacon 2022: Upcycling Plastics and building a DIY Hydraulic Press
 Project Date |
|
|---|---|
 Collaborators |
Digital Naturalism LaboratoriesDreamspace CollectiveTrash For Trade |
 Location |
Batticaloa, Sri Lanka |
Creating tools and experimenting with processes to upcycle various plastics.
Dreamspace Collective: Jerushan Sritharan, Jathujan Mahendran, Sajeev Punithakaran, Gabishka Mohanalingam, Kiritharan Mahendran.
Trash For Trade: Abitharani Jeyachandran, Jayanthan Amalanathan.
With help & inspiration from fellow Dinasaurs Andy Quitmeyer, Michael Ang, and William Kennedy at Dinacon 2022
See also: Bendy the plastic heat bender, built by Brian Huang
Guides:
Documentation:
References:
How-to: Build a hydraulic press
This press was built specifically for pressing heated acrylic scrap together for acrylic upcycling. The design was based around the materials at hand; it’s a modification of pre-existing designs like this one by petercd and this from Precious Plastics.
Safety precautions: This build involves creating a strong frame that can withstand up to 16,000 pounds of force, which can be very dangerous if improperly built. Welding and working with metal also requires appropriate safety knowledge and gear.
Safety:
- Safety goggles
- Welding gloves & protective clothing
- Welding mask
Tools:
- Welding equipment & protective gear
- Angle grinder
- Metal cut-off saw
- Square ruler
- Chalk or scribing tool
- Measuring tape
- Welding magnet clamps, or right angle jigs
- 0.5” diameter drill, drill press
Materials:
- [Qty: 1] 8 Ton Car Jack
- [Qty: 1] 2” x 2” x 0.1875” Steel angle bar, 20ft length
- [Qty: 2] 1.5” x 2” x 0.1875” Steel rectangular tube, 2ft length
- [Qty: 1] 1.5” x 1.5” x 0.12” steel square tube (sized to fit around head/top of car jack), 1” long
- [Qty: 2] 0.75” x0.75” x 0.12” Steel angle bar, 1” length
- [Qty: 20] 0.375” dia bolts, 2.5” length
- [Qty: 20] nuts that fit the bolts :)
- [Qty: 20] .0375” inner dia washers, 1” outer dia
- [Qty: 2] 9” springs, ~1” coil diameter
- [Qty: 1] Valve release arm, laser cut
Designs:
Download PDFs of blueprints:
General order of fabrication:
- Cut material to length. Drill holes for the base, top, and vertical supports. Bolt the pieces for the base together, and bolt the pieces for the top together. Weld edges.
- Drill holes for the spring hooks and the jack base. Weld jack base together and grind so that the bottom of the base is even.
- Weld the jack sleeve and the spring hooks to the top of the frame.
- Bolt the vertical supports to the base and top. Check the frame is square. Weld edges.
- Weld the legs to the base of the frame.
- Insert the car jack into the jack base, with the top of the jack sitting inside the sleeve. Press the valve release arm over the valve.
How-to: Upcycle plastics into sheets for laser cutting & more
Often people think of plastics shredding as the first part of this process, but it’s not a requirement - you can do this all without a shredder! The basic process is to apply heat to a pile of plastic, then apply pressure to turn them into flat sheets. Plastics like HDPE require minimal pressure, so they do not necessarily need a 8-ton hydraulic press (generally, the pressure supplied by a T-Shirt press will work fine). Acrylic, on the other hand, relies on high pressure after being heated in order to fuse together.
Safety precaution: This requires using a heat press at up to 200C (392F)! Please wear heat protection and safety goggles. Also, check out Precious Plastic’s page on Safety and Fumes.
Safety:
- Safety goggles
- Silicone oven mitts
- Mask or outdoors environment to vent fumes
Tools:
- The cool press you just made from the How-to: Build a hydraulic press section
- 16” x 24” T-Shirt heat press
- [Qty: 2] 16” x 24” Teflon sheet
- [Qty: 2] 12” x 24” x 0.375” Aluminum plates
- [Qty: 2] 12” x 24” 24ga thick Galvanized steel sheets
Making HDPE plastic forms
Materials: HDPE! This is ♴. Many soda bottle and water bottle caps are HDPE. (Sometimes they are ♷, which is PP, which will make for inconsistent melts.)
- Set the t-shirt press to 130°C.
- Place an aluminum plate on the t-shirt press. Place a teflon sheet on the aluminum plate.
- Dump your bottle caps onto the teflon sheet. It’s best to arrange them in a hill-like pile in the
center of the sheet to concentrate the heating power; as it melts, the plastic will slowly flow into
a flat sheet.
- Place another teflon sheet on top. Place the aluminum sheet on top of the teflon.
- Clamp down the t-shirt press!
- Check the press in 5-10 minutes, tightening the press if needed.
- Once the plastic has melted to your satisfaction, turn off your heat press and leave the sheet in the press to cool. Or, migrate the teflon-plastic-teflon sandwich to the hydraulic press, which can help to keep the sheet flat as it cools (it will warp otherwise).
- Once it’s cooled, you’re done! Ta-da!
- You can migrate the melty plastic in between two steel bowls and use the hydraulic press to form the plastic into bowls.
Making acrylic plastic sheets
Materials: Scrap acrylic!
Step-by-step instructions are in this zine!
Download the zine and poster for print (A4)
Documentation
Acrylic, also known as plexiglass, perspex, or PMMA, is a kind of plastic that cuts wonderfully in the laser cutter. However, most recycling centers do not handle acrylic, so most offcuts (the material left over after cutting) sit around next to the laser cutter in case that sliver of scrap acrylic is the right width for your next project. Piles and piles of scrap acrylic accumulate or eventually end up in the trash.
Consulting at a laser cutting company, this was a first-hand experience for me. When I saw Digital Naturalism Lab’s recycled acrylic keychains, I knew that I had to try out the process they used myself — and that urge, along with meeting Trash for Trade, the social enterprise we’d be getting to work with, was the seed for the acrylic recycling press project at Dinacon 2022 in Sri Lanka.
What follows are bits of documentation into each section of the process, from building the press on the ground to then experimenting with the output. This could not have been done without the amazing folks at Dreamspace Collective and the friends and collaborators at Dinacon!
Building Acryl-Squish, the DIY acrylic-recycling hydraulic press
- Pre-planning: packing sheets of acrylic, thick aluminum heating plates, steel tubes, and a car jack, totalling 50lbs, into my checked bags.
- Jerushan helped us find springs, bolts, and angle bar for the project in Kattan Kudy. We finally found springs at a scrap motorbike parts store, found after relentless hunting and stopping at used parts/metals stores along the way.
- Sharing and trading welding skills with Sajeev and Abi and building the press. I’m grateful for their badass welding suits, square ruler, and C clamps. Note to self: bring speed square/carpenter’s square, welding magnet clamps next time.
- A quick to-do list helped me keep track of the tasks and also helped communicate the next steps to others.
- Always bring a toolbelt for international trips.
- Laser cutting a lever to open the hydraulic release
valve
- The CAD drawings shared of the hydraulic press frame have extra reinforcement for the top strut of the frame; this is because at high pressures, the top beam bows up. The welded corners are very secure (proper welds are much stronger than the beam itself!), and the beam is only deforming elastically, but the drawings reflect a second iteration of the frame that would make the top beam stronger.
Huge thanks to Dreamspace Collective, Sajeev, Jerushan, Jathujan, Kiri, Gabi for their collaboration on this project!
Turning scrap plastic into new sheets
HDPE:
- Andy & Trash for Trade turned shredded HDPE into sheets! The HDPE sheets warp when cooling, so it’s best to keep them compressed either in the t-shirt press or in the hydraulic press to maintain their flat-sheet quality.
- With one of our attempts at melting bottle caps, we didn’t use teflon sheets, and what resulted was a bunch of melty putty-like plastic stuck to the aluminum sheet.
Acrylic:
- Finding a source of acrylic scrap with Jathujan: Art Focus in Kattan Kudy! This was a wonderful find, since, to be honest, there’s not a lot of acrylic around and I was starting to wonder if it was actually productive to create a recycled acrylic process in Batticaloa. Acrylic is expensive, and it cost us 2000rp for a bag of scrap from the local sign shop. Nevertheless, we made good connections with the shop team and got to work trying to create new sheets!
- The first attempt to squish acrylic didn’t turn out super great. The t-shirt press only heats the top plate, and we didn’t leave it in the press to melt for long enough. On top of that, the scraps were kind of large and needed more time to fully melt.
- So we cut the scrap into smaller strips in the laser cutter, and then returned to our recycling process for round two.
- Iteration two turned out much better; we could pile on the smaller scraps in more of a heap, and they melted together better. We also flipped the aluminum plate sandwich halfway in between the melting process to ensure both top and bottom heated up.
- Mang used the acrylic fusing process in a totally novel way - intentionally placing the scrap on top of a larger acrylic base to create a rad new fused creation.
- The third attempt used even smaller scraps with a muted pallette (though some of the acrylic had a glittery sheen). I would have loved to see another iteration with a higher volume of small scraps to see if the gaps could get filled in.
Laser cutting and forming plastics
- My first day at Dreamspace, I worked with the
Collective team to build tools for the laser cutter and fine tuning its power
settings.
Clips to keep material flat on the laser bed
- Laser cutting keychains: HDPE can be laser cut! It is a little melty; the cuts may have a cleaner edge at higher speeds and lower power settings.
- Cutting and re-forming the HDPE into bowls and lanterns
- Laser cutting the upcycled acrylic sheets: I left before we could get to this! Very curious to see what Trash for Trade makes with the sheets.
Side projects:
Teaching Engineering Drawing & Laser Cutting Workshop
Bike Cue Sheets
- With the help of Story Lab, we quickly put together a “cue sheet” for the Dinacon bikes that gave people quick access to the information and maps they needed.
A (failed) shade structure
- The roof of the Dreamspace Hive building gets very hot. So we tried to put up a black mesh tarp across the entire roof and it… didn’t stay up very long. But Andy’s later attempts seemed more successful!
