Up Cycling

Up cycling is the process of giving a new use to an item that would be normally be discarded. Anything can be up recycled. Even those old boxes you keep to store things in is considered up recycling. So we got some jars to turn them into some new products. The small jar is great because its shape can be used for many things.

The first idea we had was to design a decorative wine glass. We designed this to be the kind of design that would be difficult through any other form of manufacturing. Plus making twirly things are fun.

To begin we reversed engineered the glass. This will be used later to cut out the area we need the jar to fit. to design the wine glass we created the profile of the wine glass we wanted. We then used the spline tool to create a squiggle. We then extruded it out, mirrored it on its self and cut away the profile of the wine glass. We then revolve patterned it over its self to make the glass. We then merged the parts and cut away the cavity of the glass. the final steps were to create a lip and the make the base solid to make sure the print sticks to the bed.

For the second design we started with a loft with a guide curve. once we had the basic shape we then had some fun pulling the splines around changing the shape to create something that we were happy with. We then added some more bodies and threw in some fillets in the to shape it. We finished with a hole in the middle to save material and it looks cool. This did mean we needed loads of support when printing the planter.

When printing a part like the wine glass its best to use a material like PLA which isn’t prone to stringing. When the printer has to move from a point to another rapidly there isn’t enough time for the printer to retract the material and push it back between the points so it leaves strings of material behind which needs to be cleaned up afterwards with a sharp blade.

Once the two prints were complete we put our empty jars in and used them. This idea of up recycling can be applied to just about anything you throw in the trash. Except spoiled milk.

Check out the video for the project.

 

SOLIDWORKS
Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. offers complete 3D software tools that let you create, simulate, publish, and manage your data. SolidWorks products are easy to learn and use, and work together to help you design products better, faster, and more cost-effectively. The SolidWorks focus on ease-of-use allows more engineers, designers and other technology professionals than ever before to take advantage of 3D in bringing their designs to life.
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