Join us at 10 am on Sunday, April 15th at MakeICT for a meeting to discuss our plans for the “Blocker for ICT” project. Meeting
UPDATE: We are starting with a proof of concept by first building our own Precious Plastic machine at MakeICT. The operations have begun and we need people to help build, donate or raise money for parts, network with others, market ourselves, and simply brainstorm together/encourage each other.
With the support of some unnamed city officials, I was advised to proceed with the building process. If this is a success and we are able to put together a team of engineers & scientists to configure some sort of blueprint for our own Blocker for ICT, we will present it as well as our Precious Plastics machine to the city of Wichita in hopes of receiving funding for Blocker parts!
I will be out of town on the 15th, so I will not be able to attend your meeting. I have been in the planning stages of some of the pp type machines. Mainly the shredder to start with.
I would be happy to assist in the construction. We have discussed this a bit in the past. Where do you plan to house your pp/blocker prototype/proof of concept? That has been a sticking spot.
I had not seen the blocker (mixed plastic construction building blocks) before. That would be on a hole different scale, but interesting on its own.
It would be useful to have more some information about this here (I don’t do Facebook). By “Precisous Plastic machine” I’m guessing you are referring to their shredder machine, as opposed to their extrusion machine, injection machine, or compression machine? And the “Blocker for ICT” must be a machine to press building blocks out of recycled plastic?
This may have already been discussed somewhere else but haven’t seen anything here about it.
For the Blocker itself, we have talked with some city officials about putting it at the water waste station. For the PP machine, we will discuss where to store it at the meeting. Joel, myself, and others will be around MakeICT before this meeting date to work on things. Please let us know if you’re able to meet with us sometime to help or discuss things!
It’s being discussed on Facebook as well as Five For A Change. I’d recommend joining Five For A Change if you are a progressive who wants to stay involved in community activism or other projects. I haven’t been the one working on it, so I can’t answer with certainty. But I believe by “Precious Plastic machine”, I am referring to whatever machine designs were included in the free, downloadable PDF of how to build it.
I’m the one working on it for Five For A Change. Roni (ronilowrywoo) has already put the links up top to the event page. I’ll also be writing a blog on our progress. I just cut out some of the parts last night on the Plasma cutter and will be posting pictures/video of the progress on the blog on FFAC.
I’m not sure who has done what already…so let me know and we’ll connect. It’s easier for me to be reached at the FFAC site…as I don’t have FB on my phone and only access it when I’m by my computer.
If you’re not signed up on the Five For A Change Social Site, then you’ll only be able to see the Events, Blogs and the Shop.
Tom Bloom (fab lab area lead) and I talked some about making a PP shredder last year but we didn’t have ready access to a motor and gearbox. I started watching ebay and later found and bought a couple candidate gear boxes. I also have some motors that might work but I wasn’t sure what the horsepower needed to be. Each gear box has a certain hp limit, but they didn’t really say on the PP site what hp is needed. Anyway, Tom and I never got back to working on the project, though I think Tom has done some more planning and thinking for it.
I can forward you links to the ebay listings from when I bought the gear boxes. In fact I’ll just forward you the thread where we discussed some of this previously. If you have questions after that then maybe we can find a time to talk at MakeICT. I’m sure Tom would be interested as well.
JB mentioned you were reluctant to use stainless for the blades because of the price. I think you may regret not using stainless due to rust from mild steel. It’s something to think about.
I’ll forward the thread to you within a few minutes.
Hey Curt…yeah, I did think about the rust but at $2 a pound, it gets expensive. Right now I’m doing this with limited money that I’ve collect with Five For A Change and it can be our prototype for the first round.
As we go we can collect more funding and upgrade it as needed.
I’m looking at the specs right now and it says that we need a +/- 2kw motor that spins at +/- 70 RPM. I’m currently at MakeICT and I’m here pretty much every day working on this project.
I’d be interested to see the motors you have and what the costs are.
Right now, I’m learning from the first one and then I’ll make it better next time around
Reposting since Discourse ate the content of my last post (geez I hate
Discourse…)
From two forum posts titled “Precious Plastic” and dated 12/16/17:
Post 1:
I think Tom Bloom has been working on building a shredder as well. From
what I’ve seen online, shredders with dual counter-rotating cutting shafts
seem to do a much better job of shredding than single shaft designs. The
shredder design by Precious Plastics is only a single shaft design, but it
could probably be modified. They cut their teeth from 5-6mm thick
stainless steel, which we could do on our CNC plasma table.
I would estimate under $500 for material to build a shredder, with about
half of that for motor and gear box.
Post 2:
I recently purchased a couple gear boxes off ebay for around $125 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Boston-Gear-Reduction-Box-Gearbox-30-1-Ratio-Right-Angle-Worm-NOS-G22/112681269709
each.
These have a 20:1 or 25:1 reduction ratio. Add a good used 1725rpm 1.5hp
220v motor for $150 and you have the main drive components that can provide
1300 in-lbs of torque at 60-70rpm for $275. Allow another $225 for raw
materials, bearings, etc. and $500 seemed like a reasonable estimate. But
it all depends on how much we buy new versus scrounging.
Additional comments:
The two gear boxes I have are Dodge Tigear 2 models 26Q25R14 and 15Q20R56.
You can google those part numbers with “tigear” and find the specs. The
first one is 25-to-1 ratio and max 2.28hp input using 140TC mount motor
turning at 1750rpm gives 70rpm out. The second one is 20-to-1 ratio and
max 0.7hp input using 56C mount motor turning at 1750rpm gives 88rpm out.
I’ll be honest here and say that I’m not great with ratios, etc…but the pricing is a good start. lol
I guess my next question is: was he planning on doing a 2 motor shredder with that or just one?
Also, is he using them for anything or could we use one for this project?
So it’s been quite the project and we’ve broke many things putting this together…and by many things, I mean a hoist motor, a few cheap sockets, and (Zac’s Idea) a wobble adapter…(I told him it would snap and it only made it about 2 seconds…)
Oh and @JeremiahB…I snapped off the adapter tonight, aka the one we welded on the other night…so yeah gonna have to figure out a new plan for that one…lol
It happened after this pic was taken…That Vitamin Water Bottle was a beast…
