OPENworkshop

This Summer OPENSOURCE Art will hold a weekly evening workshop for making home products out of reclaimed materials from the Champaign-Urbana community. OPENSOURCE will have a basic wood shop set up with experienced people in shop to assist with using the tools and a wide range of waste materials in stock. Participants are also invited to bring in their own reclaimed material and tools. Let's get together and make some beautiful products out of waste from our area!

OPENworkshop will take place Wednesday nights from 7-10pm. Additional meetings will be added as needed.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Modules

I made some diagrams in an attempt to explain the system we developed last year for turning waste in to modules for products.
The concept is: determine the two the main sources of waste we would have in constant supply: pallets and drywall. Then estimate the average amount of material we could get out of the waste and based off of this develop modules for making products. These drawings show the system for making a modular shelf.

This is mostly just a concept, a process for turning lots of waste into lots of products quickly. This concept is pretty hard to explain visually and all the details of the process aren't here, but this should give a general idea of what we were trying to do and maybe it can help inspire some product ideas or better yet inspire ideas for other systems of (sort of) mass producing products out of waste.

Using x-Acto, cut drywall into 12" x 12" sections













Using circular saw and crowbar, strip pallet town, ideally preserving three 2 x 4's and x number of cross boards (these vary from pallet to pallet)



















Using the table saw, rip the 2 x 4's in half then cross cut these, resulting in several 12" x 2" x 1" sections (these will be used to frame the drywall for the sides of the shelf). Next, cross cut the cross boards into 12" long sections and plane one side (these will be used for the wide shelf planks)













Next, using the table saw, route out 1/2" grooves in the 12" x 2" x 1" sections. Fit these sections around the drywall sections that were cut down earlier to create the sides of the shelf. Laminate the planed cross boards together (this can be done many ways, we found the best method was to use a biscuit jointer), and using the table saw, rip off any excess to create 12" x 24" shelf planks.













Use these modules and a few more cuts with the table saw to create a shelf! Or use the modules to make something else!



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