Thursday 17 January 2008

Playing with Plastics

a few pics from my experiment with melting recycled plastics:

first a margarine tub with a couple of milk bottle tops chopped up:

took quite a high temperature - the max the oven will do is 250C but it still took a long time.



but it stuck to the greaseproof paper too.


then i tried to flatten it and ruined it completely!! why can't i just leave things alone.

so then i tried the marg tub on its own and i love this!! i kind of turned out in the shape of an A too! i might try this again because i love the way the plastic curls.

then i tried the mesh and labels from the clementines. the mesh melted well but the label seemed to be more of a paper than a plastic.

so i took out the bits that didn't melt, but the rest in a bottle cap and put it on the electric hob to melt down into the cap:

then i tried clear plastic but put some acrylic paint in to give it some colour. plastic works well, goes white but i need to rethink the colouring

then i tried a mix of white, yellow and red mesh with limited success:

then i tried to flatten that on the hob between 2 heat proof cooking dishes - but the yellow burnt and it stuck to the foil.....






Overall Verdict: Oven not hot enough and fumes cause headaches - don't try this at home folks!

1 comment:

Wedge said...

Amazing experimentation - very brave!

I don't have a 'proper' over otherwise I might join you in plastic melting shenanigans.