Hasta La Ideas

Plastic. As product designers the look has to be spot on. Whether it’s a rough matte finish or a glossy transparent cover, it’s just easier to get the look you need with 3D rendering software. Dries Vervoort is a mechanical designer who has honed is skills creating visuals for radiator components. It’s paid off for him, with the ability to produce plastics that look like the real thing, and he shows you how using KeyShot to make it happen. You can see how and download the resources he uses here. Below are just a few samples of his work.

Creating perfect plastics and beautiful materials in KeyShot is very easy. Dries Vervoort walks you through the development of materials and more in KeyShot. His tips and tricks help you to create the most accurate array of plastic materials possible!

• What you get to take away are lessons on how to create materials in KeyShot and what settings affect reflection and transparency.
• You also get to learn what material types are best to use for certain plastics and how light effects the look of materials.
• Dries has shared all the assets he used so you can pick them apart and see exactly the material and settings he used.

Designer: Dries Vervoort

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(Get Your Plastic On With KeyShot was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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Dutch Design Week 2013: Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Dave Hakkens has made his own machines for recycling plastic to make new products locally and plans to share the designs so others around the world can do the same.

The Precious Plastic machines by Dave Hakkens include a plastic shredder, extruder, injection moulder and rotation moulder, which are all based on industrial machines but modified to be less complex and more flexible.

“Of all the plastic thrown away, I’ve heard that we recycle just ten percent and I wondered why we recycle so little,” Hakkens told Dezeen at the Design Academy Eindhoven graduation show opening on Saturday.

One of the issues turned out to be a lack of demand for recycled material from factories, so he visited a range of firms making plastic products to ask why they weren’t using recycled plastic. He found that difficulties with sorting plastics for recycling make the resultant material less reliable than brand new plastic.

“I went to all these companies and I realised that the machines they use to build plastic products are really expensive, very precise and efficient, and [the manufacturers] don’t want to use recycled plastic because it’s not as pure so it could damage the machinery or slow down production,” he explained.

“I wanted to make my own tools so that I could use recycled plastic locally,” Hakkens continued. First he modified a shredder and collected unwanted plastic from his friends, family and neighbours. This allowed him to grind empty bottles and containers into small plastic chips in a mixture of colours.

He then built three machines for melting the plastic and manufacturing new products with it, using a combination of new custom-made components and reclaimed parts like an old oven that he found at a scrapyard.

Having perfected the systems so they could handle inconsistencies in the recycled plastic, he designed a small range of products to make and sell.

At the academy show there’s an injection-moulded spinning top, a lamp made by extruding a ribbon of plastic and wrapping it round a mould, and a rotation-moulded waste paper bin, but Hakkens stresses that the processes could be adapted to make a wide variety of different products.

“In the end you have this set of machines that can start this local recycling and production centre,” he said, explaining that while mass-manufacturers are put off recycled plastic as a material because they need optimum efficiency and accuracy, a local craftsperson making batches of products could afford to work more slowly and make allowances for material inconsistencies.

In addition to setting up his own workshop in Eindhoven, Hakkens intends to publish the blueprints online so that people around the world can create their own local recycling and manufacturing centres, and adapt his designs for their own production needs.

“The idea is that you can make whatever moulds you want for it – so I made this, but I prefer that everybody can just use them and make whatever they want and start setting up their production,” he said. “People can just make [the machines] on the other side of the world, and maybe send some feedback and say ‘maybe you can do this better.'”

He also suggested that local residents who collect plastic waste and bring it to the workshop could be paid a small fee according to the weight of raw material they donate, and predicted that his system could be put to use making filament for 3D printers.

Hakkens is also showing a mobile phone made of detachable blocks at the graduation show as part of Dutch Design Week, which continues until 27 October.

The post Precious Plastic by
Dave Hakkens appeared first on Dezeen.

Royal College of Art graduate Jeongwon Ji has made her own bioplastic from crab shells.

Aiming to make a more tactile casing for electronic products, Jeongwon Ji extracted a derivatine of glucose called chitin from crustaceans and developed her own plastic from it by trial and error in the workshop.

The resulting material, which she calls Crustic, combines the chitin with water and small amount of glycerin.

“The Chinese mitten crab from Asia is one of the most invasive species and they are taking over the rivers in the UK,” Jeongwon Ji told Dezeen. “The crabs are unwanted here so I wanted to work out what we can do with them as a resource instead.”

The water-based mixture takes much longer to cure than conventional plastics but the ingredients are completely non-toxic, she explained. “Although production time is longer, this nontoxic process can improve the work life of those who manufacture our electronics.”

In the Design Products department of the Royal College of Art graduate show last week, the designer presented her material samples and experiments alongside conceptual electronic projects with casings made of Crustic, including an alarm clock, humidifier, computer trackpad, torch and WiFi router.

Although they were all made in accurate geometric wooden moulds, the material becomes rough and distorts as it cures, resulting in tactile and organic forms.

“I wanted to challenge the archetypes of electronic products by using tactile surfaces and making forms that look like they are made of something different, something natural,” she said.

A couple of months ago we featured a pavilion based on the structure of chitin in a lobster’s shell and in 2011 Italian designers Formafantasma presented a range of vessels made from natural polymers they’d cooked up themselves.

Other projects presented at Show RCA included paper-pulp helmets for cycle-hire schemes and living food that wriggles around on the plate.

See more stories about plastics »
See more projects at Show RCA 2013 »

Here’s some more information from Jeongwon Ji:

BioElectric

BioElectric challenges the archetypes of electronics through material exploration. Industrial processes have streamlined manufactured products, but what if we allow new materials to be expressive and tactile? Like many of today’s electronic components, the Chinese Mitten Crab comes from Asia. This species invades our rivers, and is an unwanted, local resource.

I extracted Chitin polymers from crushed crab shells, and perfecting chemical-free “slow production” methods to make bio-plastics for the casings of electronic products. Although production time is longer, this nontoxic process can improve the work life of those who manufacture our electronics.

Crustic

Crustic is a crustacean-based biocompatible plastic that Jeongwon Ji developed for her BioElectric project to enhance tactile pleasure.

The production time of Crustic is longer because the use of water instead of artificial chemicals. Crustic is made out of chitin derived from crab shells and water, combining with a small amount of red agile and glycerin.

The post BioElectric by
Jeongwon Ji appeared first on Dezeen.

This conceptual see-through bike by German studio Designaffairs would be made from the same strong and lightweight plastic used in fighter jet canopies.

The frame of the Clarity Bike would be made from a polymer called Trivex, according to Designaffairs. First developed for helicopter windscreens and fighter jet canopies, Trivex is extremely lightweight but can also withstand high impacts.

The polymer is resistant to very hot and cold temperatures and can also be injection moulded, which would enable mass production at an affordable price and in a variety of shapes and colours.

Trivex is one of more than 2000 material samples collected by Designaffairs to provide a resource for manufacturers, designers and engineers. “What sets our library apart from the other material libraries is the fact that all materials and technologies presented are tailored to meet production-processes’ needs,” explained Designaffairs’ Stefan Ulrich.

Lots of bicycles have been published on Dezeen, most recently a bike with a cardboard frame and wheels and a bike that carries heavy loads front and back.

We’ve also featured a couple of other projects by Designaffairs – a conceptual hearing aid that forms a flesh tunnel through the wearer’s earlobe and an inhaler designed for a future scenario where oxygen is scarce.

The images are visualisations by Designaffairs.

Here’s some more information from the designers:

No, this bike is not made out of glass. The Clarity Bike is the next project within the material focus of designaffairs studio projects which focus on using amazing materials of our library in new contexts. We believe that the Clarity Bike could be a giant leap forward in bicycle frame engineering and production. The design takes advantage of an advanced polymer which combines high impact resistance, lightweight properties and a gentle flexibility that usually would only be expected on an old Italian steel frame.

The polymer is injection moulded, which allows affordable and precise mass production while enabling unique form factors and a multitude of possible colour combinations. Initially the polymer was used in military applications. Even though the compound has a lower density than polycarbonate & acrylic its advanced performance includes exceptional impact resistance and ultra-lightweight performance. It also offers outstanding chemical resistance and thermal stability as it is virtually unaffected by most organic and inorganic chemicals and withstands very hot and cold temperatures.

In our understanding the perfect material match for creating a low cost bicycle characterised by convenience and an unmatched unique style.

The post Clarity Bike
by Designaffairs appeared first on Dezeen.

Designed in Hackney: here’s another design classic from the London borough of Hackney – Paul Cocksedge‘s pendant lamp made from heat-shrunk plastic cups.

Cocksedge first created the Styrene lamp for his graduation from the Royal College of Art in 2002. Ten years on, he’s now reissuing the design for his brand new online shop.

Everything in the shop is made at his studio on Brenthouse Road near London Fields.

See all our stories about Paul Cocksedge here.

Key:

Blue = designers
Red = architects
Yellow = brands

See a larger version of this map

Designed in Hackney is a Dezeen initiative to showcase world-class architecture and design created in the borough, which is one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices. We’ll publish buildings, interiors and objects that have been designed in Hackney each day until the games this summer.

More information and details of how to get involved can be found at www.designedinhackney.com.

Photography is by Mark Cocksedge.