Products made from marine litter

Manufacture of two specific products from recycled polypropylene plastic and fishing nets recovered by fishermen from the coast of Spain. Learn more about creation and manufacture of boards or panels using this material here https://community.preciousplastic.com/how-to/boards-made-from-marine-litter

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1 Explanation

On this guide we have two products made from panels or boards of recycled polypropylene plastic and fishing nets recovered from the sea: • Urban bench. • Dumbbells. You can find the creation of panels with a sheetpress in a expanded guide on other how-to called 'Boards made from marine litter'. On this guide we will go deeper into creating and manufacturing of products.

2 Cutting and machining of boards

We usually use CAD and 3D modeling software to design the products and define cutting lines to take it to CNC machine. Solidworks, Rhinoceros for 3D modeling and Autocad and Illustrator as CAD software to define cutting lines on 2D. Having a predefined design, we take the material to be machined on CNC cutting machine. • Tips • Always be careful to make the most of the material you spend, always try to manage the cutting space to avoid wasting the boards. Plastic boards are a little softer than wood in general, so you could cut in one stroke using the same drill you would use to cut wood. This optimises production time and gives a cleaner finish to plastic parts. Remember always make a test at first. You can save the shaving after cut to use it again as raw material on sheetpress or extrusion machine.

3 Manufacturing and assembly of Urban bench.

Once we have the cut parts we continue with assembly of the bench and its structure. In this case, as it is urban furniture, we have designed a metal structure that allows to complement the object and give it stability and durability. • Tips • For the connection of the plastic elements and the metal structure you can use galvanized or stainless steel screws and nuts. Stainless steel are a little expensive than galvanized ones, but are more resistant to oxidation. To screw plastic parts we always recommend to do a drill with the size of the screw you want to install, this prevents the plastic from breaking or deforming when screwing with much pressure.

4 Manufacturing of Dumbbells.

To make dumbbells weights (round pieces) we use the same marine litter boards than bench in previous steps and we also cut them on CNC machine. For manufacturing handless of dumbbells we use a colorful mix recycled plastic from bottles caps. We use an extrusion machine to make plastic rods 3 meters long and diferent shapes and thicknesses, rounded or square.

5 Assembly of dumbbells

To assemble the pieces, we used stainless steel screws. So, as we recommended before, the first thing we do is a drill bit the size of the screw we will use, in this case we did 3mm drill to 4mm screws. • Tip • To assemble different types of plastic parts, we have decided to use torx head screws to give security to the products and that they are not so easy to disassemble.

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