Mold Your Own Plastic

Molding is the process of manufacturing by shaping pliable raw material using a rigid frame or model called a pattern.

A mold or mould is a hollowed-out block that is filled with a liquid like plastic, glass, metal, or ceramic raw materials. The liquid hardens or sets inside the mold, adopting its shape. A mold is the opposite of a cast. A release agent is typically used to make removal of the hardened/set substance from the mold easier.

Particulate Materials
Big name for an easy process

While the PM industry tends to focus on this application in powdered metallurgy and powdered ceramics, this technology can also be applied to plastics.

It is well known that the integrity of chemically dissolved plastics is much weaker than virgin material, but just like the fusion of a powdered metal forms a better bond as opposed to pour molding, so does powdered plastic, resulting in stronger parts.

Many parts in gear reduction and combustion engines are now formed from particulate materials.

How can you use this to your home advantage?

For one, there is no chemical smell from the reactants, or the release of many toxins like the mercide compounds associated with heat meltingplastic for reforming.

For another, it would be fairly simple to implement a simple grinding mechanism to create plastic powders from basic recyclable products, to reform into your products.

Once powdered you would compact the product into your mold and heat to just under the plastics melting point making this process less toxic than even welding theplastic with a bonding agent or especially heat bonding.

Picture this: Recycling your own pop and water bottles? Broken toys? Old computer cases? Old electronics, such as alarm clocks and microwave doors? How about making a living by stripping down a wrecked car that you buy for a few hundred dollars. Lots of plastic parts in the new cars!

Kinda helps you to realize why I hated the cash for clunkers program so deeply huh?

What can you do with this new recycling stream? Form up sculptures, like the resin cast statues, to sell on Etsy or Ebay. Of course, polystyrene and the like aren’t very UV light friendly so I wouldn’t recommend any out door products unless you could buy the inhibitors.

For More: Be sure to check out my page at Squidoo with this full article!

What Can We Do About Used Carpet?

Some of you might know about my Squidoo page dedicated to recycling used carpet and keeping the 5 million tons of carpet out of the landfills each year.

But I thought I would throw some of the information here just to let those who don’t know have a chance to see it too.

A Quote from my page says this:

“As the most recent statistics say we piled 5 billion pounds of carpet in the landfills in 2005. That’s ridiculous when we are complaining about putting plastic bottles in the landfills because they don’t decompose. It’s virtually the same thing, carpet is nylon or latex or even in the case of PET poly-It IS recycled pop bottles!

So what can we do?

Well, there are several leaders in the industry that have gotten off their rumps and decided to start recollecting carpet for recycling or up-cycling.”

These companies and their descriptions are listed on my Squidoo lens for you to take a look at. Maybe you know of more things I can add! Let me know either here or at the lens it’s self.

Go here to chime in!

How to Start a Band

I have been asked several times, because of my experience in music and bands and performing live, about teaching people how to do what I have done. My experience about bands is now even double fold as I have entered into an agreement to play in a second band now.

I have to admit that I DO NOT know everything, but I have made enough mistakes that I can tell you how to avoid them. And I also have accumulated enough brilliance in my friends that I can confidently say now, that I can tell you how to succeed at starting a band.

I will be going in depth here over the next few episodes about many different aspects of creating a band, or joining a band that already has some circuit experience.

Much of what I will be drawing from is research I have conducted and have already started writing about over at squidoo.com. My latest installment is an ever-changing lens on how to use twitter for your band, which of course is located here.

Of course the Twitter installment is just the tip of the iceburg. I am currently working on a master lens that will be the hub showing you a current 35 links to places that are for PR, distro, advertising, merch, even helping to fund your band.

For now jump into the links above and follow along with me here at the blog as I go even further in depth. Don’t forget my RSS feed!

-aric