Week 4: Biofabricating Dyes and Materials

Status: Documented

16 Oct, 2018

Biodyes and Bioplastics has very limited application, thats what I thought before I did hands on with Biodyes and Bioplastic. Its interesting to see how I can probably fit in different shades and soft biodegradable plastic in my designs. I came across really nice work by designers who integrated these in their products, Please check reference links above. Am planning around my final outcome of this assignment to be such that I could explore different natural colours and different kinds of Bioplastics. Also, While performing these tasks I realised one of my recipes is practiced in every Indian house. That is, where we use spoiled milk for making hard material and in India its called "Home made cottage Cheese "Paneer". Another Recipe is with Mango pulp, making fruit leather, this is one I feel can be relevant for making wallets. Again, it is also commonly made in India where mango is dried and packed in thin slices with some spices to enjoy as candy. Another practice is where I made mold of Zios and poured Glycerine recipe. Bio dying is another process where we used diferent kinds of fruits, vegetables and spices for dying but I really liked the light shades which I got in the end.


Objectives | Tasks at hand

Circular

For this week, I have tasked myself of shortlisting Turmeric, Pomengerate, Coffee and Charcoal as my Bio dying ingredients and Milk and Mango as my Bio Plastic ingredients.

Nishtha:" This assignment is going to go long"
Mahavir: "Agreed, much easier to chew different colored fruits and click an image of me every time the color of my tongue changes".

Conversation between Myself and Nishtha

Reffered Links



Development Timeline


  • 1. Scouring and Mordanting

    In biodying, there are two pre-processes before dyeing, Here I took Pieces of white cotton (Vegetable fibre) and white wool (Animal fibre). In scouring process, cotton was washed in boiled water and baking soda and wool was dipped in warm water and detergent. As wool is sesnsitive to temperature so we prefer warm water over boiled. This process is to clean fibres very well. Next process is mordanting, which is important to make sure fabric is able to absorb the colour permanently therefore I used alum where I dipped the pieces of cotton and wool in mixture of water and alum. I started understanding what is Circular fashion and how can we work on making modular structure or connections that would allow the user to change the size or orient in different shapes.

  • 2. Bio Dyeing

    After the above process, I chose natural ingredients for making my dye. I chose Turmeric powder for Yellow, Charcoal for Black, Coffee waste for Brown from coffee machine and Pomengerate for Red. After grinding, boiling and filtering. I took my mordant pieces of wool and cotton and dyed them for minutes till I was sure that they are ready. The colours were really different and beautiful. The fibers also got unfiletered particles on them making them look natutal designs.

  • 3. Post-Soaking

    I kept them under sun for drying and this was an output where turmeric gave a Orangish yellow , Charcoal gave Light Grey, Coffee gave light Brown and Pomengerate was actually light pink.

  • 4. Modifying

    I took Charcoal, Turmeric for modifying colours. Where I picked Baking Soda and Vinegar as my two agents. And you can see Baking soda made turmeric lighter and Vinegar made it darker in shade. Charcoal had a very light effect not sure if eyes were able to even notice that at first.

  • 5. Bio-Plastic from Milk

    Executing a Milk bio-plastic is probably the fastest recipe to make and cast but probably one of the slowest curing recipes. I added vinegar to hot Milk. Quantity of vinegar added was very less that complete liquid became semi-transparent with the squishy particles settled below. I rinsed them, squeezed out whatever little moisture I could using a cloth and my hand. Thereafter pressed it down onto a thermoformed mould and let it sit for about 4 days. The result was a super hard fawn-white plastic which was hard and brittle.
    This happens as I read the Milk contains a protein called casein, which is negatively charged. Vinegar contains hydrogen ions, which are positively charged. Both react and this curdles the milk. Though not too fit for consumption the way cottage cheese traditionally is.

  • 6. Bio-Plastic from Mango

    This was by far the most fun part of the assignment. I simply took mangoes, made pulp from them using a Blender, squished it till I had a descent mix which was not too wattery nor too thick. Thereafter I vacuum it using a Vacuum Chamber, and baked it in an oven at 200 Degree Celsius for about 30 minutes using Convection. Once baked, I let it further dry for one day. There it is, a non recipe needed Bio-Plastic.

  • 7. Bio-Plastic from Gelatin

    This is the recipe made with Gelatin, Water and glycerin where amount of glcerine will decide the hardness or softness of the Bioplastic. There can be multiple applications of this Bioplastic but the ones where it doesnt have a contact with water as it can dissolve in water. I started by bioling gelati and water and added glcerine, then used vaccum chamber for degassing and removing bubbles, removing bubbles is an important aspect as it can make or break your bioplastic. For this recipe, I took Zios logo, Laser cut it and used thermoforming for making its mold. Next I spread a layer of photoluminescent powder and poured bioplastic, after 24 hours, my bioplastic was ready and glowing so its GLow in the dark bioplastic. ;-)

Tips and Tricks


Info Panel

Weighing helps only in the beginning. Beyond a point, it becomes similar to cooking-As per Taste

Warning Notes

1) Too much of anything is bad
2) Dont overvacuum as curing speedens up under vacuum.

Danger Panel

1) Wear gloves while handling baking soda.
2) Though recipes are food safe, better to keep lab seperate from the pantry.

Success Panel

1) Boiling helps
2) One should also understand effect on color with use of acids or basis( pH variations)

F.A.Q.

I usually ask the Global team or myself questions relevant to the week's task.I plan to use this section to help me document for our lab's next batch of students important questions and their answers discussed during Global review/Recitation.

Q1) Where is the end-result of the Bio-Plastics?

Jump to the Final Weekly Result

Q2) How did we calculate the proporations for bio-dyeing?

There wasn't really any calculation needed in the quantity of dyeing material as we as such had to darken or lighten the die by modiying the pH.

Q3) Where are the minimum of two different fabric types to dye?

In this image you will see two different categories of fibres-wool and cotton.

Q4) Where are the recipes?

Scroll down to find a file containing a table for the same.

Q5) Why are few images not displayed?

Troubleshooting tips:
1) Shift + F5 (Prefer viewing in Chrome) to load website completely again rather than relying on caches.
2) Make sure you are connected to the internet. As few GIFs are present online so would require the internet to load.

Download Section

Recipe File

This file mentions the Bio-Dyeing and Bio-Plastic recipes.