ORBITA

ORBITA is a Project which creates a modular piece made out of plastic waste by using a manual plastic injection machine, to make home furniture. Empowering a workshop in collaboration with Taller Esfèrica. Which its aim is to cause a new mental change in to the youngest generations, approaching them to a responsible consume, making understand the new position of the consumer as a maker of the products itself, breaking with the classic industry, and understanding the value of his waste products.

First of all 3D model the mold.

CNC mill the mold in beech wood or in harder woods. Make it in aluminium if you have enough money. If you do not have CNC you can access the services of FABLABs or CNC milling companies.

Once the mold has been completely milled, we will sand it gently with 1000 or 2000 sandpaper getting it ready for injection avoiding rough surfaces.

In parallel we will have cut our plank of wood that will make us of on of the table, stool or chair that we want to make. We will also have cut the square profile slats that will be the legs and we will have made some cavities to let the melted plastic go in when injecting and be well joined.

With all the components ready, we will proceed to assemble the mold. We will use the metric screws that will join all the parts and enclosing the leg inside of the mold to let the plastic wrap it.

Before closing the mold completely and making it airtight for the injection of plastic, we will apply the whole interior with a thin layer of dish soap to avoid the adherence of the plastic to wood pores.

Once properly soaped, we will close it tightly with the metric screws. You will be ready for the injection.

Now it is time to shredd the bottle caps or reusable party glasses (made out of Polypropylene) and get the plastic grain ready to inject as our raw material.

Once obtained the plastic chips, we will introduce it in the plastic injection machine. We will have to heat it up at 180ºC for 20 minutes. It is at this time where we can mix different colors of plastics to give to the final piece a cool aesthetics to our final piece. i have choosen transparent with a big load of red resulting in a unsaturated red.

Having already the plastic at the right temperature, after 20 minutes, you are ready for the injection. We will put the mold that we had previously assembled and inject by pressing the lever until we notice that the mold is filled to the maximum and doen't allow us to fill it anymore.

Once injected, wait for the plastic inside to cool.

Once cold, we will proceed to the extraction of the piece, which will have been embedded in the leg.

Repeat the process as many times as needed to obtain the desired number of legs with their respective pieces.

Before finishing we will proceed to the assembly of the legs using some self-tapping wood screws and the drill.

Finally we will have our piece. In this case a stool.

Ready to be used whenever you want! :)