Fabricademy : Bio Plastics

Posted in Textiles

Main post details here about the Fabricademy project assignment


Cornstarch & glycerine Bioplastic

  1. After mixing & poured into the tray
    • I used a pizza tray for most of my experiments as these seemed to be the largest trays I could find for free.
  2. Bottle of ClassiKool Vegetable Glycerine (Glycerol)
  3. When the bioplastic, it dried and cracked leaveing small piece of bioplastic

Other Bioplastic/Slime tests

  1. Cornstarch & Fairy washing-up liquid
    • This past year has shown a strange trend for  making fun slime to play with
    • It is used by kids for activities of temporary modelling as well as Instagrammers
  2. The second image is the same Cornstarch Washing up liquid mixture
    • I used the lid of a Tupperware for a mould as it was flat and round and the size was manageable
    • I . chose to let it sit for a few hours in the fridge so it turned hard.
    • It also lightened in colour and  cracked up.
  3. Cornstarch, vinegar & water
    • I made a small amount of the mixture and then poured it onto some foil.
    • It cracked and was such a thin amount that I could even peel or crack it off of the foil
  4. Cornstarch, vinegar & water
    • This time I made much more of the mixture.
    • It felt more like a floury dough.
  5. Cornstarch, vinegar & water
    • It still started to crack and was also a more see-through.

I’d like to try some of these again, maybe mixing and combining a few different ingredients to see how bioplastic changes.


Agar experiment 1

  1. Agar: The first time I made the agar bioplastic, it just fluffed and clumped together into really a really tough gel-like mix.
  2. So I decided to add a little more water and reheat it, but on a much lower temperature and really stir and mash it.
  3. I also added in a teaspoon full of vegetable glycerine
  4. Here is the Agar Agar which was purchased from Quimics Dalmau – a shop that many of us visited throughout the course!
  5. Here you can see the remixed bioplastic in the pizza tray (which as you can see now, has a patterned base)
    • Agar seems to set almost instantly. And you can see from the image that the upper surface was not flat
    • Even topping it up and touching the surface disturbed it.
  6. Here is the same Agar bioplastic 2 weeks later
    • You can see how it has significantly shrunk!
    • (which the cornstarch did not do in the same way, instead the cornstarch cracked and suck to the outer circumference of the plastic tray)
    • One theory why the agar did this is that when placing the agar tray down, the bioplastic mixture was slightly moved away from the edges of the tray
    • This meant that it had nothing to grip onto to pull it flat, but instead just shrunk towards the centre
  7. This image shows the agar bioplastic after 1 month
    • As you can see it has shrunk to over half the size
    • (This image shows the piece upside down in the tray)
    • It has also retained that pretty pattern imprint of the pizza tray, which is something I’d like to look into further.
    • The bioplastic is also ver very hard.
    • I wont make a test with this piece, but if I were to do the test again, I’d make several of the same samples so that I could do different tests on them like strength, weight and even water solubility,

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