6. BioFabricating Materials¶
What and how?¶
| Bioplastic | a biobased polymer desived from a biomass. It is comprised of a biopolymer, plasticizer, and a solvent. |
| Polymer | assemblies of identical chemical subunits, called monomers, that are linked together in the form of a chain. |
| Biobased | Made of bacteria, fungi, mineral, vegetal, biosyntehtic, and animal. |
| Biodegradable | Degrades in specific conditions like pH sensitive environments, thermo sensitive, and enzymes. |
| Biocompostable | composted in 90 days like bacteria, mycelium, animals, etc. |
| Crafted | Casted, extruded, and/or assembled. |
| Grown | from scratch like fingii, microbial, and lab grown leathers. |
| Plastics | Bioplastics | |
| Polymer | Polymer | Alginate, gelatine, starch, etc |
| Plasticizer | to create flexibility | glycerine (the more glycerine the more elastic but never exceed the 1:1 ration) |
| Filler | to avoid shrinkage | any waste like egg shells, chalk, fibers, oils, etc |
| Stiffening | agent for structure and reinforcement | fibers and natural debri, roots, plant matter |
| Expanding | agent to create foams | green soaps and emulsifiers (waste water of canned chickpeas could be used) |
Plastics are usually made by mixing polymers with:
Biomaterials design properties are divided into structure, texture, color, and transparency.
You can make it magnetic by adding anything in the mixture that is magnet or magnetite. You can make it conductive by adding charcoal in it.
It matters what the sheets are casted on because it will adopt the textures and structures from the molds.
To play with the structural color of the cast, you can use defraction sheets.
Reference Projects¶
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Tatami ReFAB | Repurposing and re-embeding tatami mats in modern life in Japan using 3D printing technology. |
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Algae Plastics | Using aquatic algae, drying them, and using them in material that can be 3D Printed. |
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Heterotopia | Screenprinting on lasercut carrot leather bag. |
Standard Recipes¶
Sodium Alginate¶
"The sodium salt from alginic acid and gum mainly extracted from the cell walls of brown algae. Brown seaweeds are usually larfe, and range from the giant kelp that is often 20m long, to thick, leather-like seaweeds from 2 - 4m long, to smaller species 30 - 60cm long." (Credit Material Archive TextileLab Amsterdam)
Special Characteristics¶
| Water Resistance | Sodium Alginate becomes water proof! Will only dissolve in alkaline water. |
| Heat Resistance | Withstands temperatures up to 150 degrees celsius. |
Alginate Recipes // Global Lecture
Top two recipes will remain transparent even with pigments and the bottom will become matte.
Gelatine¶
Animal derived ingredient made from collagen present in animal parts.
Special Characteristic:¶
| Water Resistance | Takes a couple of hours before dissolving in water. |
| Heat Resistance | Not heat resistant at all. Begins melting at 50 degrees celsius. |
Gelatine Recipes // Global Lecture
Recasting gelatine that has already cured makes more stable materials.
Agar Agar¶
A jelly-like substance obtained from red algae. "Agar is a mixture of two components: the linear polysaccharide agarose, and a heterogenous mixture of smaller molecules called agaropectin. Agar is a compoind known as a polysaccharide." (Credit Material Archive TextileLab Amsterdam)
Special Characteristic:¶
| Water Resistance | It dissolves in room temperature water in a few hours and hot water immediately. |
| Heat Resistance | Not heat resistant. Best for short term use. |
Agar Recipes // Global Lecture
Some tips, Agar can be casted in very thin films, resembling plastic foils. It can never be elastic but it is flexible. (Credit Material Archive TextileLab Amsterdam)
CoffeeLeather¶
Overview material research outcomes¶
Sodium Alginate¶
Using the syringe you can create these threads that if they are quite resistant, add pink pigment too.
In this result it looks like a cape like normal bags, I loved the similarity
Gelatine¶
In this example, I used a 3D printed mold, with honeycomb patterns. I let it dry for 2 weeks and when I removed it the PLA plastic patterns were stuck in the final piece. I don't dislike the final result because I loved the patterns and it also gave a lot of strength to the final piece.
In some examples I tried adding salt trying to create conductivity, in this example it was not successful as I oversaturated the sample with salt.
For the foam results, the colors that the plastic base had were transferred to the final piece.
Leather¶
The result using a wooden pattern mold was successful, I liked how the leather did not shrink much since the patterns helped the piece stay the same length and width as when it was poured into the mold.
In these examples I think it takes up too much Calcium Chloride
Conductive Agar Agar¶
Here add salt, a spoon very well dissolved in water before mixing with the Agar Agar.
Sometimes when you test your samples with the tester using the conductivity function it will not sound. Why? Because in each sample there are two elements. Resistance and conductivity. Sometimes the voltage that the tester occupies is not enough to overcome that resistance, in this example I used a 9 volt battery that was discharged and it gave me 7 volts but I managed to turn on the LED.
