 Welcome to Manly News number 23. This is a prototype of a shredder. We're currently developing a bigger shredder. So we can shred more plastic. Yes, YouTube, I hear you. This is not very safe yet. But instead of commenting that, maybe you should come here to help us out improving the shredder. Because it needs to be safer, but it also needs to be bigger so we can shred bigger plastics like this one. So yeah, we could use some help here. So come to our workspace here. Visit necks.preciousplastic.com if you're an engineer and want to help out. And also in the end we share the blueprints of this bigger shredder open source online so everyone can replicate it. That's it for the shredder. But we also could use some help with robotics, but Paul will show you a little bit more about that one. Hey guys, it's Paul. So over the past couple months, Bradford's been developing a robotic sorting system to help us figure out what types of different plastics we have when we can't identify them. But unfortunately, he's going to have to leave soon. And so the position is opening up on the team and we're accepting applications for people who want to help continue developing this system. So we thought we'd give you a taste of what's been going on and what we hope to accomplish in the future with it. So what have you been working on with this robotic arm since you got here? So what we've tested here initially is developing a proof of concept system that can pick up different pieces of plastic, identify their type, and then put them in buckets depending on the plastic type. And how is it able to sense what plastic is which? So we've borrowed a sensor from a small startup called Matoa that's designed a cheaper, near-infrared sensor to identify types of plastic. Near-infrared is usually what's used to identify plastic types. You send infrared beams and then you detect how much is reflected back. So Bradford, can you tell us why we're even looking into robotics in the first place? Yeah. So right now, sorting plastic is one of the most expensive parts of large-scale recycling systems. Like, even if you send all your plastic we recycle at a center, their systems are designed to sort out the PET bottles, sort out the HDPE, and most of the remaining plastic is usually sent off to be burned. And the reason it's sent off to be burned is because it's expensive to sort that remaining plastic into all the other different types, probably properly. Why is it expensive? So it takes, you can either sort it manually or there's very high-end machines that take conveyor belts of plastic and use little air pneumatics to knock out different plastics that are identified. So we're kind of working on developing maybe an in-between solution, but moving forward, the big element is integrating with robotic operating system, which is an open-source framework to work with different kind of different robots. And it allows us to kind of design a system that can work on any given robotic arm that can integrate with ROS. So we're not tied specifically to this arm in the future because this is a very expensive, fancy industrial machine and you can't find it everywhere. Sure. So if somebody had, say, a more simple robotic arm that they maybe even built at home themselves, they'd be able to use the same software we're developing to perform the same function of sorting plastics, right? Yeah. So there's options out there where people can 3D print smaller robotics arms that still have decent reach that are open-source. You can print one for maybe 400 bucks. Cool. And can you tell us a little bit about the software that you're using to program? We're working on creating scripts that will send the location of a given piece of plastic for the robotic arm to go identify. Maybe in the future the sensor will be integrated into the vacuum gripper. So it sees where a piece of plastic is, it goes to pick it up and it identifies it while it's picking it up and then it delivers it to its goal location. Cool. So moving forward we have a lot of options we need to work on. I need to develop a vision system to identify where an object is in space. I can work on that from home but we also need to develop a delivery mechanism for the plastic like say a big conveyor belt. We need to also work on integrating a real sensor solution because our proof of concept is still slow and we haven't flushed that whole idea out. So there's people over the world working on cheaper plastic identification devices and there's a lot of room to grow there. Thank you so much for sharing this with us, man. If anybody out there wants to work on a robotic arm or help out in the forums you can check out Bradford's topic in the link below. That's all for this month. Thank you. Yeah, it's Charlotte. I'm going to be talking to you about the community news from all around the world this month. To start off with I'm going to talk about Gaston from Argentina who's just set up his first workspace. He collected like a bunch of rubbish. He's built an extruder and a shredder and decided to make these amazing beams as a wood alternative. He's making benches and stairs and the quality of them is a really high standard as well and super well documented in the forums. So thank you Gaston for that. Also this mobile recycling factory that fits in a flight case is really, really cool. The case fits an injection machine and a shredder and is currently on tour and has been to New York and Spain already. It's great to see recycling on the move and reaching to people all over so well done for that guys. And it must have been pretty hard to fit it all into a flight case so pretty impressive. They also painted the machines really bright colours which is really nice. It's usually quite rare that you see the machines paint different colours. But talking of colour, thank you to EcoRec that painted their machines bright colours as well which looks super nice. Also our good friend Joey from version 3 designs some sea turtle moulds for the sea monkey project. The sea monkey project is a family run project out in Indonesia where they sail around on their boat and they build precious plastic machines and actually deliver them to islands in Indonesia and ship them to different parts of the world. Check out Sophie who is 13 years old, whying for the extruder. Pretty impressive. And as it's Christmas I thought I would show you guys this interlocking Christmas tree decoration made from plastic straws and plastic cups. Still a work in progress but nice to see that this sort of product which would usually be made from virgin plastic is being made out of recycled plastic. Okay and that is it for the community news. Please if you're using the machines to make products or your building workspaces around the world post in the forums or use the hashtag precious plastic so you can see what you guys are up to. It's super rewarding seeing you guys using the machines to make all this weird and wonderful stuff all working towards the same mission. So that's it from me for this month. Merry Christmas and I'll see you next year. Goodbye.