Hi I'm Yun Choi, PhD student at Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Lab
I'm so happy to present our work, Therms-Up,
which introduces a DIY method of fabricating
interactive materials and inflatables by upcycling wasted thermoplastic bags
So while we were lock-down at home and doing a remote work,
especially as a creator, crafter and maker of any hardware,
I was really interested in how to utilizing a wasted household object and materials
and repurposing them to turn into interactive and inflatable materials.
So, and yes
and very easily at home.
While I was eating a chip at home,
I got a so exciting and interesting idea.
So what we did was we've collected different types of thermoplastic bags
consumed by a 4-person family over 3 weeks
and this is the kind of thermoplastic bags we have been collecting
It's like a bubble wrap,
cookie bag,
shipping envelope
food delivery plastic bag
so many different types of plastics we've been collecting.
We explored how to utilize these thermoplastics
using an inexpensive 3D printer at home
to create inflatables and fun materials such like
these ones
Repurposing wasted materials has been explored in HCI community
using plastic bottle (Kovacs et al.), or tree branches (Yoshida et al.)
and so on and on
and also fashion industry and other more like a 3D printer industry
have been exploring and put much of efforts on upcycling the plastic materials.
To be more specific about fabricating the inflatables,
Sticky Actuator (Niiyama et al.), aeroMorph (Ou et al.)
and milliMorph (Lu et al.)
utilized CNC tools
or robotic manipulative machines,
however, those kinds of methods require a specific CNC tools or customization of the machine.
Also, one study (Mitchell et al.) introduced a method utilizing
an inexpensive 3D printer to create different pattern
on the thermoplastic bags,
but that study focused only on one specific material
and here we wanted to expand this scope of the work
by introducing a variety of different types of thermoplastic bag
that can be easily found at home
and using an inexpensive 3D printer.
If we look into the details of the plastic bag,
It is a multilayered composite.
Inside, there is a sealing material
which normally is a polypropylene (PP) or polyethylene (PE)
and we used that material for heat-sealing the two different plastic bags
an to create an inflatable, or air or fluid channels
next layer has a printed layer
which contains color or any other images to be shown as a product,
also some plastic bag has an aluminum layer
which could be used as a sensing layer.
By using these wasted thermoplastic bags and a 3D printer
especially the nozzle, the temperature,
we were able to create different patterns and
fun textures on a thermoplastic bag as you can see on this slide.
So we explored this new design space,
by controlling the temperature, and travel speed of the extruder,
we were able to create embossing, like writing a letter on a plastic bag,
creating a Origami crease patterns
and also,
heat-sealing the two layers of the plastic bags
and lastly, by increasing the temperature,
we were also able to create texture patterns
which looks like a knitted pattern on the plastic bags
To create these patterns and inflatable structures,
first we transferred images that we want to print on the plastic bags into G-code using Inkscape software,
and then used any slicer software that are compatible with FFF-type 3d printer.
To setup the printer,
we put a cardboard under the plastic sheet to create a damper and enough force to heat-seal layers,
and put a aluminum foil on top of the plastic if it's needed
We found that different plastic bags requires different printer setup
like adjusting the travel speed, temperature, use of aluminum foil etc.,
So we summarized the printer setup for the each categorized material in this table.
We also tested the air endurance of each heat-sealed materials and you can find more details in the Appendix
As I mentioned earlier,
we explored to create a inflatable sensor by using the retort food package
which contains an aluminum layer.
We think that the introduced method could be applied for quick and cost effective prototyping,
developing a educational toolkit,
and could guide people to upcycle thermoplastic bags in a fun and easy way.
For the future work, we hope to explore to apply various functions of 3D printer
such as heat from the print bed, controlling the nozzle diameter.
and we hope to develop a UI that allows people to design patterns and G-codes
that are optimized for different types of plastics materials
and lastly,
we hope to share our case study result of deploying the Therms-Up! material
and kit to children soon.
So, that was it!
Thank you for paying attention to our presentation Today,
I'd like to answer any questions and have a further discussion
Thank you so much :)