 Hello, my name is Vicente and welcome to a new Precious Plastic video. Today I'm going to talk to you about how to use recycled plastic when designing products, as well as how to use precious plastic machines in your production. So stick around. So recycled plastic is a very versatile and valuable material. Depending on the material you use, it can fit several types of purposes. For instance, HDP and PP are really tough, but depending on the thickness, it can be really flexible too. On the other hand, PS, it's much more rigid, but can be brittle sometimes. Also, let's not forget that all these plastics are thermoplastics, and with the right temperature you can form it and shape it into a new sort of form, like we did in this U shape. But we are not going to dive much into material properties in this video, so if you want to learn more about this topic, please go into the Academy section and you'll find much more videos about that. So when talking about plastic processes and in a specific recycled plastic processes, we will differentiate between two main worlds, compression processes and injection and extrusion on the other side. So let's explain each of it a little bit. Compression processes heats up a mold and crushes all the plastic inside, while keeping pressure, and what that creates is that you can see in the surface the original shape of the plastic, whether if it's a pellet or if it's something bigger. Extrusion and injection, on the other hand, hits the plastic on the barrel, making it completely molten before flashing it into a mold. Once that happens, you can really see the aggressive flow in it, and you can even see the different types of plastic that you put in the order where you put it in the barrel. But we are going to dive a little bit more in depth into its process later. But as you can see, already each process is completely different and treats the plastic in a completely different way. So you really want to focus in one first and practice a lot till you masterise it and you have an understanding of how the technique works before jumping into the next one. This will make sure that all the time that you spend in one technique creates an expertise on that machine. And moving forward, now we are going to talk a little bit more about how plastic is so valuable. So yes, recycled plastic, it's a really exciting material to work with, but yet the process of getting to actually recycle it, it's really cost and energy consuming. That's why you really want to think through your design and make sure to use the right amount in it. For instance, making your piece hollow can save a lot of material, as well as keeping the properties of the object overall. But also, you want to be mindful of all the steps involved in your production. You want to try to reduce the timing in each step in order to be more productive. Last but not least, you really want to treat the offcuts of your process as another outcome of it. Not only the product, but also in each step, you will generate a lot of plastic dust and offcuts that if you are mindful, you can collect it and classify it by material and colour again so you can directly put it back into your process. But there is something else than taking the most out of the material and aiming for efficiency during job production because there is also the responsibility that comes with designing products that are going to be made out of plastic. Plastic takes ages to degrade, so you really want to make your products to last long. Making durable products is a first good step, but also consider to design with the end-of-life cycle in mind in order to extend the usable life of your products. Let me illustrate this. Let's take this stool as an example. This stool has been designed with this assembly in mind. No glues or screws needed, which makes it easy to isolate the broken parts and easy to replace. On top of that, this stool has been made entirely out of HDP and has been appropriately stamped, which makes no struggle trying to trace back which materials have been used. And what do we do with the broken parts? We can just recycle them again. In one go, just like that, at once. So you have brand new thread to start again with and turn back into its original shape. We have tried to incorporate principles of circular economy in the design of this stool. This is a simple but effective way of trying to improve the sustainability of your products. Next time that you are creating something, think of using similar techniques in order to improve the life cycle of your products and take it as a creative challenge. So these are the basics, how to design good. You first need to know what these machines are capable of and what these techniques can offer to you as a creative person. So that's what I'm going to do right now. With the sheet press, a whole new range of possibilities has been opened. This machine crunches plastic into surfaces and you can really play with the patterns and with the colors that you put into it. The creative possibilities of this machine are kind of endless. You can change the thickness of the sheet by replacing the frame, going from 6 mm up to 30 mm. As well as you can not only restrict yourself to go this big, you can make tailor-sized frames in order to create the smaller sizes if you want to. The most exciting part is that you can play with different types of material and each material provides different properties. HDP and PP are kind of soft material to work with when you're cutting, but at the same time they're really tough and sturdy. This tool, for instance, has been made only with woodworking techniques, which makes it really easy to replicate since it only uses really accessible tools. PS is another material that we have been working with and it offers an amazing property that other materials are not that good at, which is the capability to be formed really easily. This property enables you to shape the sheets into new forms. Just by applying the right heat, you can even with your hands turn it and create a new shape. Or if you want to be a little bit more precise, you can use line benders in order to make different types of angles all at once, even. But if you really want to guarantee stability through repetition, you can use a mold with a bottom and a top part that creates the shape that you really want to. And this is how we made this chair. This is an injection machine. It's the perfect machine for workshops. In a couple of minutes, it can turn waste into final products. In this case, we are able to make six carabiners in the same mold, which is really exciting for people to touch and see what recycled plastic can turn into. As well as involving them in the process by selecting the type of material and colors that they want, it brings a lot of joy. Another interesting thing is trying to reduce the steps and the amount of tools needed during the workshop. In this case, this mold has been using easy quick release clamps. And instead of having holes, it has rails in which you can slide the clamps in, which makes it really easy to use. This machine, apart from simple, is really versatile because just by interchanging the mold, you can have a completely different shape. You can weld your mold, you can play with the lathe and have rounded shapes. You can also make it laser cut and interchange the middle part in order to achieve a completely new shape. Or you can go with CNC milling, which is the one that can achieve the most detailed objects. It doesn't matter what technique you use to make your mold, what it matters at the end is the type of product that you make. In this case, we have the light switch and the socket, which is a really easy and common product in our houses, but yet really functional. And if you think about it, all these products are made entirely out of virgin plastic. Imagine if all these products would be made out of recycled plastic. That would be a huge step. But there is one thing to take into account when designing for an injection machine, and that's the amount of material that fits in the barrel, which often ends up being into small products. But don't limit yourself and try to be creative in order to make big things. This is the extrusion machine. With it, you can create all sorts of products by rolling filament around the shape. And it's a technique that requires a little bit of craftsmanship, but once you get the level, you can really achieve beautiful patterns. And it's kind of a good one because if you, just by changing the nozzle, you can change the shape of the plastic so you can have it round or more square or even flat. But this machine is also capable to create solid beams. And this is a technique that offers a lot of possibilities. You can play with the texture as well as trying to capture the inside of the beam, which often has a lot of beauty in it. You can play with translucency of certain materials as well as creating gradients from one color to another. And you can be creative with the shape of it and the size and try to go simpler or more integrate. And you can also create straight beams or angled beams. And with a bigger machine, you can create also bigger things like a fast production brick, a heavy IPN beam, and skateboards. So if you're a maker or a designer who likes to make products out of a cycled plastic and wants to learn more about this material and certain techniques, you can go to the Howto's webpage where you will find a bunch of techniques as well as a lot of products open source. And the best thing about it is that you can also contribute to this platform and share your knowledge. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next Precious Plastic video. Hey, just before you leave, I wanted to remind you that Precious Plastic runs on the help and support of people just like you. We design and develop everything open source online for free so that everyone around the world can start tackling the plastic problem. So if you want to help us, go on support.preciousplastic.com Make a small donation or find out ways in which you can help us.