Process¶
Ideation¶
For the final project in Fabricademy, I decided to continue the exploration of these plant-based fibers and explore the possibilities of creating a basic fabrication element such as a board. While thinking about the future and its ecologies, my goal is to create an affordable, low-tech material, and try to achieve its implementation in our environment today, for the purpose the project was developed in the first place.
Why a board?
After designing an alternative packagaing to transport or sell fruits, vegetables or other foods before, the project done at FabLab Barcelona this year aims to create a basic fabrication element, a board, that would be an affordable alternative to existing synthetic and fiber boards or even MDF boards. A strong, low-tech material used for different applications such as furniture, interior, isolations (audio and temperature), contruction, rapid prototyping, planting etc. The goal here is also to try to offer an alternative cellulose board and by doing so, helping to reduce deforestation and dependence on wood resources, used for variety of everday materials, objects.
The ongoing project has the objective of creating various biomaterials and biocomposites from discarded jute bags that are typically used for transporting coffee beans, different grains and seeds, maize, rice, fruits and vegetables… which menas that we could source this thrown-away bags in multiple distributions ends. The project adheres to the cradle-to-cradle principles of material design, focusing on the entire life cycle of materials and their related product outcomes from the re-used natural material.
The topic at its core focuses on the issue of waste and the disposal of resources. By reimagining the current systems of production, my project starts at the end of a linear consumption path, where jute bags are discarded. The starting point for this project was a coffee company, that annually burns 90 tons of these bags. My goal is to try to transform the discarded resource into a variety of different materials to retrieve its value and try to close a part of the gap between anthropogenic and biomass. The most interesting thing about this resource is that, jute can act in both operating systems, the biosphere where jute is presented as natural material and the technospehere, where it becomes a technical one. Using jute as a new resource for creating ecological materials has many benefits, i am not goinig to go through all of them, but an important thing to mention is, that jute as a material can act in both operating systems, in biosphere as natural one and in technoshere as technical one. With multiple advantages such as high tensile strenght, good isolating properties and biodegradability ...
Project's plan¶
Perfect ingredients¶
Doing more with simple ingredients.
I chose starch as the binder because it is an abundant biopolymer that could potentially be sourced from different types of food or food industries. Due to its abundance and various sources, the solutions that projects offer could not only come to life locally but also in parts of the world where different starch-based foods grow. This could have a wider positive impact on the environment. Starch was also chosen because of its material properties, such as being rigid and a strong natural glue, making it perfect for creating strong materials that can be easily manipulated.
Throughout the project's development, there were only 4 ingredients used to create biomaterials:
-
Water
-
Jute fibers
-
Starch
-
Natural colours and pigments
Coloring¶
A great addition to the project was coloring the biomaterials. The idea was to shift the raw, rustic appearance of jute fibers and material outcomes to a finer, more playful, and aesthetically appealing outcome. The coloring also adds a broader dimension to creativity in the process of making materials and also making them more widely applicable.
Colors used for experiments and final outcomes were:
-
mica powders
-
curcuma powder
-
active charcoal powder
-
spirulina powder
-
natural earth pigment powder
Using mica powder not only colors the biomaterials but also has a reinforcment role of the materials and a level of water repellence.
The visual development for the final outcome¶
The coloring and making a pattern for the final outcome, was meant to be delivered by lamination of before made bioboards, gluing them together and try to CNC a desired form. While the similar outcome was designed differently in the end, this was a navigation plan.
In the preparation phase, the plan was to embed various types of seeds into designed materials that would later sprout. With a goal to achieve a level of regeneration through materiality, this small details just tries to portrait how we, as a society, could plan our built environment.
Vist to Syra Coffee company in Barcelona¶
Here in Barcelona I was able to visit Syra Coffee company and got an insight into handling and disposal of jute bags. This company is not the only one that has a huge amount of jute bags being shipped to them from all over the world. Being without a proper solution to the waste they gather on weekly basis, this project has an opportunity to help to reduce the waste on many levels, beginning with jute bags but also reducing the level of waste thorugh designing a biocompatible materials out of this all-natural resource.
From discarded bags to new fibers¶
After collecting jute bags, they are shredded witha help of mechanical shredder. While doing that we can get at least 3 different fiber lenghts, longer, thicker, shorter finner, powder or mixture of both. This step, allows us to use this fibers and create with the same source different material outcomes. The shredded bags mixture, allows us to have different fiber lenghts by dividing them in the next step of the process.
Design - Experimental phase I¶
The initial phase of the experiment focused on basic crafting principles, which would be further improved in the exploratory process. This phase was conducted to test the strength of the starch binder. The coloring phase was also essential, as I wanted to determine whether mica powder could provide additional benefits to the material. After making the first samples, seeds were also being placed on top of them, to test, if crafted jute biomaterials can act as a comfortable growing bed for plants. The samples were prepared in the Biolab.
TOOLS USED:
-
Stove to cook starch binder
-
Big bowl for mixing the wet material
-
Dryer
-
Thick plastic foil to place the wet material onto
-
Spoon or flattening tool
INGREDIENTS:
-
Water
-
Starch
-
Colors
-
Jute fibers
FIRST RECIPE:
-
100 mL water
-
15 g starch
-
3 g mica powder or other natural colors, pigments
-
20 g jute fibers
-
Seeds to cover the material
PROCESS:
-
MIX THE WET ADD THE DRY – that's the rule to get nice results, such as homogenous biomass you can shape into whatever form you desire
-
Placing the wet material onto plastic foil
-
Placing the foil in the dryer for 8 h and 70 C
Design - Experimental phase II¶
In the second phase of explorative prototyping, I created six thin boards using different colorants: curcuma powder, spirulina powder, charcoal powder, and food colorings. My plan was to make each board separately and then glue them together using a lamination process.
After drying each of the boards, I made a nanocellulose glue using the following recipe:
-
100 mL water
-
3 g nanocellulose powder
Gluing the boards together resulted in a wider board with a rainbow effect. I used a hydraulic press to press them together, but the pressure was too much and they ended up merging into one big colorful pancake instead of creating a striped effect. Although this process formed a really strong board, I temporarily forgot about it and moved on to other experiments.
After a few weeks, I revisited the board and decided to do something with it. I cut it into small pieces and attempted to sand it, as the structure was very hard, and I believed there might be something interesting underneath the layers. The subsequent image demonstrates how these 'failed' experiments might lead to something interesting and previously unexperienced. This experiment gave me the idea for sanding jute boards, which I ended up making.
During this phase, I was experimenting with felted jute fibers and jute biomaterials created in the previous phase to create a seeding bed for plants. It was fascinating to see the seeds sprout. I tested three different seed types.
Additionally, I was comparing the use of corn and tapioca starch with the equipment available in the lab.
Is there a difference between tapioca and corn starch when making a jute biomaterials?
Here are my observations:
TAPIOCA STARCH:
-
More slimy and harder to knead into the material
-
May result in a better finish and softer structure when the material is dried
-
Slightly more expensive
CORN STARCH:
-
Easier to prepare and cooks faster
-
Less slimy but hardens more quickly
-
Inexpensive and more readily available
-
The dried texture of the material is a bit rougher
In the following experiments I decided to use corn starch as a binder for jute fibers.
Design - Experimental phase III¶
In phase three, I focused on creating the final outcome. I experimented with various combinations of binder thickness, jute fiber lengths, and colors to see how they would affect the final product. Additionally, I designed different board thicknesses to explore potential outcomes. I also investigated different techniques for seed placement to determine if they were impacted by the process of crafting biomaterials.
FIBER LENGHTS:
One of my favourite aspects of this project is working with jute fibers to create a variety of material outcomes from a single source. It's exciting to transform this waste material into a valuable resource. I can design both rough, breathable, and porous boards as well as finer, smoother ones.
SEEDING TECHNIQUES:
I also tested different seeding techniques to see if other biomaterial preparation and processing steps affected seed health. I used three techniques:
-
Placing the seeds on top of the wet material and then drying it afterwards
-
Placing the seeds on the dried material
-
Embedding seeds into the material while it's still wet
SEEDING RESULTS:
After watering the materials for a week and a half and keeping them in the sunlight, the results began to spring. It was really nice to see, that these materials could actually again become a plant.
The thing about these jute materials is, that fibers can form little voids inside the board, making it porous one and breathable, able to hold the moist and by that, making it a perfect home for plants.
First time cutting and sanding jute boards¶
The crucial step for this project was to test whether these material samples could be used with basic fabrication tools, such as a circular saw or sanding belt. The potential issue with cutting these materials is that their long fibers might get caught inside the tools.
It was exciting to discover that the biomaterials were strong enough to withstand circular forces of the saw and could be easily sanded, making them a potential alternative to other synthetic boards.
Design - Experimental phase IV - going bigger, creating final materials¶
The final outcome was created on three levels, corresponding to the conceptual part of the project:
-
CREATING A BIOMATERIAL IN THE BIOLAB - from waste to new materiality
-
PRESSING THE BIOMATERIAL INTO A BOARD USING HYDRAULLIC PRESS - creating a semi-finished product, board
-
DRYING THE BOARDS
-
POST-PROCESSING BOARDS USING CNC MACHINE AND WOOD SANDER - making an object with a certain level of value
Fabrication tool - Hydraullic press machine¶
I was wondering how much biomaterial we can produce from one jute bag. I used the mold available at the FabLab, which had dimensions of 40 cm x 40 cm, and prepared the biomaterial mixture using one jute bag. After that, I pressed the mixture in a hydraulic press to create the board. The width of the boards depended on the amount of wet biomass, but the thickness was uneven due to a slight calibration issue. However, since these materials don't need to be visually perfect, the uneven thickness was not a major concern from a visual standpoint. It did, however, affect the post-processing, where the boards were cut with CNC equipment in the further steps.
-
mold dimensions: 40 cm x 40 cm x 2 cm
-
mold material: aluminium
-
max. hydraullic press force: 5 mt
After preparing the bio-mixture, I prepared the aluminum mold in which the material will be pressed. To prevent the wet mixture from sticking to the mold, I covered it with baking paper. This is an important step to achieve beautiful results.
FROM ONE DISCARDED JUTE BAG TO ONE BIG BIOBOARD
Board No.1 and 2¶
The entire process of making bigger boards was physically intense because each dry bag weighs around 500 g. Nevertheless, when that amount of fibers is soaked in starch binder, the weight of this mixture can increase to up to 3 kg. It takes quite a lot of the wet part of the mixture to achieve good results. At FabLab Barcelona, these boards were made by hand, which meant that mixing the wet and dry ingredients resembled a kneading process. For further fabrication of this boards, a different tools would be needed to mix that amount of matter.
The first two boards were made using only fibers, water and starch.
After placing the matter into a modl and pressing it, the boards were dried in the oven. For the drying purposes this jute boards whitstand quite hugh temperature due to the fiber resiliance properties. According to the temperatures used, the time for drying is adjusted. The higher the temperature, the lower the time.
OVEN TEMPERATURE - from 70 C - 140 C
OVEN TIME - 12 h - 24 h
Board No.3¶
For the third board I created a colorful mixture using bronze mica powder that was added to the binder. Other preparation of board was followed by the previos ones.
Board No.4¶
The fourth board was created using two differently colored mixtures. I wanted to experiment with textures and patterns that were created during the pressing process. Playfulness was a key element as I explored the creative possibilities of designing materials and crafting new textures. The black part of this board was made using activated charcoal. This board was in the end also sanded, revealing a marble effect underneath the top layer.
Board No.5¶
The fifth board was made using three separately created mixtures of jute matter, using the same recipe. For coloring I used activated charcoal and two different mica powders. Additionally, seeds were embedded in the material mixture. The board followed the preparation steps mentioned earlier.
Board No.6¶
The final board was created using two different fiber lengths and colors. This board represents the culmination of all the experiments conducted previously, combining various fiber length combinations, colors, crafting techniques, post-processing techniques, and overall enthusiasm for this project.
I created the top part using shorter fiber lengths to achieve a smoother surface, and the lower part using longer fiber lengths to create a strong, reinforced bottom.
By preparing a mixture of three colors and wrapping it inot one roll, I created the potential for this board to be more than just a product of the hydraulic press. The pressure embedded the different colored mixtures into each other, resulting in an uneven pattern. Recalling a "failed" experiment, I decided to use the mixed surface of this board, which created a colorful marble effect. I used activated charcoal for the black color and natural earth pigment for red one.
Post-processing tool - CNC¶
For the first test different cutting samples were made in Rhino. The main thing was to test if this material can even be cut thorugh, if the fibers won't get onto the cutting bit, if we can create different types of textures and how strong the joinery would be. So there was many questions before the CNC process, because that kind of material was never cut on the machine. It was really exciting to see, that the material was properly cut and that it withstanded the forces of the machine.
TEXTURES:
-
texture with soft transitions
-
rounded
-
sharp-edged
I had little time to work on the final design due to the time it took to prepare the boards and let them dry. Doing everything by hand is quite time-consuming, so the design phase was short. However, I was able to achieve my goals and confirmed that jute boards can be successfully cut with a CNC machine.
For the final presentation of these materials, I designed a basic joinery for each of the boards, creating a coffee table or a stool that can be assembled in different ways.
Post-processing tool - HAND SANDER¶
The final post-processing technique involved hand-sanding the top surface of two boards made by combining different colors in the preparation process. The layers that were pressed together revealed an uneven pattern, resembling a marble effect. This technique enhances the aesthetics of these materials, making them prominent in the new era of ecological materiality. I also enjoyed that the finish of these materials is done by a human hand in the end. I believe that this is still an important part of our common world, where traces of hand-made and artisanal work are being replaced by ones of automation and rapid fabrication.
