Percussion instruments are likely the first kind that humanity invented, because they’re quite simple: hit a thing and a noise happens. Different things produce different frequencies with different timbres, and glass bottles have a nice xylophonic sound to them. Because glass bottles are easy to find among discarded garbage, Jens of the Jens Maker Adventures YouTube channel took advantage of them to build this awesome robotic instrument.
Jens started by collecting a bunch of different bottles. He tapped each to while searching to get a sense of the notes they produced, which he could then lower by adding some water to fine tune the pitch. Once he had enough bottles to cover a range of notes, he set out to construct a robot to play them.
Solenoid actuators tap each bottle and an Arduino UNO Rev3 board controls that tapping. It does so according to MIDI files created in the popular Ableton software. Jens matched the available notes in Ableton to those produced by the glass bottles, so he could simply compose melodies using those notes knowing that the robot could play them. The Arduino reads the MIDI files output by Ableton and strikes the corresponding bottles.
Finally, Jens laser-cut a plywood frame and enclosure that holds the bottles, the Arduino, and the solenoids. It works with seven bottles, which is the number of notes this machine can play.
Jens demonstrated that by playing a guitar along with the robotic instrument and the result sounds very pleasant — especially for something made with garbage.
Although a large percentage of our trash can be recycled, only a small percentage actually makes it to the proper facility due, in part, to being improperly sorted. So as an effort to help keep more of our trash out of landfills without the need for extra work, Samuel Alexander built a smart recycling bin that relies on machine learning to automatically classify the waste being thrown in and sort it into separate internal compartments.
Because the bin must know what trash is being tossed in, Alexander began this project by first constructing a minimal rig with an Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense to capture sounds and send them to an Edge Impulse project. From here, the samples were split into 60 one-second samples for each rubbish type, including cans, paper, bottles, and random background noise. The model, once trained, was then deployed to the Nano as a custom Arduino library.
With the board now able to determine what type of garbage has been thrown in, Alexander got to work on the remaining portions of the smart bin. The base received a stepper motor which spins the four compartments to line up with a servo-actuated trap door while a LiPo battery pack provides power to everything for fully wireless operation.
This bin will sort your trash and recyclables automatically
Arduino Team — February 18th, 2021
Often you might see a recycling bin next to a trash can, and notice that someone else has thrown their waste into the wrong container. To help with this conundrum, the team of Shalin Jain, Viraj Singh, Edward Chen, and Joshua Kim created a double-sided container that sorts things automatically.
Their device, dubbed “Splash,” takes a webcam image of the item presented to it, analyzes this with a Python script and the Azure Custom Vision API, and reports back to an Arduino Uno controller with its findings. Depending on the results, the Arduino then uses a driver board and motor to properly position a flap, directing refuse into in the correct bin.
Homemade recycling rig turns plastic waste into new products
Arduino Team — November 24th, 2020
While that plastic cup, bag, dish, or other item may have served its purpose, more than likely it could be formed into something new. With this in mind, the SOTOP-Recycling team of Manuel Maeder, Benjamin Krause, and Nadina Maeder developed an automated injection molding machine that can be built at home and is small enough to allow you to run your own recycling operation!
The “Smart Injector” receives shredded pieces of plastic in a small hopper, then transports them down an extrusion pipe where heat is applied. This material is clamped together via a pair of stepper motors, with screws and timing belts implemented to apply sufficient pressure. Everything is controlled by an Arduino Mega.
As shown in the video, the plastic waste is converted into phone covers in just minutes, though other things could also be made depending on the form tooling used.
Maker Jen Fox took to hackster.io to share a Raspberry Pi–powered trash classifier that tells you whether the trash in your hand is recyclable, compostable, or just straight-up garbage.
Jen reckons this project is beginner-friendly, as you don’t need any code to train the machine learning model, just a little to load it on Raspberry Pi. It’s also a pretty affordable build, costing less than $70 including a Raspberry Pi 4.
The code-free machine learning model is created using Lobe, a desktop tool that automatically trains a custom image classifier based on what objects you’ve shown it.
The image classifier correctly guessing it has been shown a bottle cap
Training the image classifier
Basically, you upload a tonne of photos and tell Lobe what object each of them shows. Jen told the empty classification model which photos were of compostable waste, which were of recyclable and items, and which were of garbage or bio-hazardous waste. Of course, as Jen says, “the more photos you have, the more accurate your model is.”
Loading up Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi Camera Module attached to Raspberry Pi 4
As promised, you only need a little bit of code to load the image classifier onto your Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi Camera Module acts as the image classifier’s “eyes” so Raspberry Pi can find out what kind of trash you hold up for it.
The push button and LEDs are wired up to the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins, and they work together with the camera and light up according to what the image classifier “sees”.
Here’s the fritzing diagram showing how to wire the push button and LEDS to the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins
You’ll want to create a snazzy case so your trash classifier looks good mounted on the wall. Kate cut holes in a cardboard box to make sure that the camera could “see” out, the user can see the LEDs, and the push button is accessible. Remember to leave room for Raspberry Pi’s power supply to plug in.
Jen’s hand-painted case mounted to the wall, having a look at a plastic bag
In what could be a major ecological breakthrough, scientists have accidentally invented a mutant enzyme that likes to feast on PET plastic.
We love 3D printing, but it’s sometimes hard to reconcile the joy of fabricating a 3D object with the plastic waste that is generated. Trial and error is the nature of the hobby — at least in the early stages — and the bin soon fills up with broken bits of ABS, PLA and PET.
Take heart then, in a new study published in the Proceedings of of the National Academy of Sciences. A team of international scientists announce they have accidentally created a new type of enzyme capable of breaking down plastic bottles.
The team of scientists originally began tests to see how the bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis, managed to produce an enzyme capable of degrading PET. But then an unexpected surprise took place; those tests inadvertently made the enzymeeven more effective at degrading PET.
The resulting mutant enzyme, called PETase, now takes just a few days to break down PET, compared to the 450 years it requires for it to degrade naturally.
Electron microscope photos of enzyme/substrate interactions. Bryon Donohoe, Nic Rorrer and Gregg Beckham are co-authors of a paper on plastic (PET) eating enzymes, “Characterization and Engineering of a Plastic-Degrading Aromatic Polyesterase” being published PNAS. (Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)
Mutant Enzyme to Augment Plastic Recycling Efforts
This new development could finally allow us to fully recycle plastic bottles for the first time; it won’t put a stop to plastic pollution, but it should certainly slow down the rate at which it’s piling up in our landfills and oceans.
“Serendipity often plays a significant role in fundamental scientific research and our discovery here is no exception,” said Professor John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who led the research.
“Although the improvement is modest, this unanticipated discovery suggests that there is room to further improve these enzymes, moving us closer to a recycling solution for the ever-growing mountain of discarded plastics.”
The researchers are now working on improving the enzyme further to allow it to be used industrially to break down plastics in a fraction of the time.
“The engineering process is much the same as for enzymes currently being used in bio-washing detergents and in the manufacture of biofuels,” explains Professor McGeehan.
“Rhe technology exists and it’s well within the possibility that in the coming years we will see an industrially viable process to turn PET and potentially other substrates like PEF, PLA, and PBS, back into their original building blocks so that they can be sustainably recycled.”
And with this exciting development, 3D printing enthusiasts have one more reason to feel good about their hobby.
The US Army is exploring ways to convert discarded plastic bottles into recycled PET filament. Soldiers will become even more self-sufficient in the battlefield by 3D printing useful spare parts from waste material.
A collaboration between the US Army Research Laboratory and the US Marine Corps has resulted in the discovery of using waste plastics — such as water bottles, milk jugs and yogurt containers — for 3D printing parts that soldiers may need on the battlefield.
Recycled plastics could be a valuable source of material for additive manufacturing in the US Army. Not only would it improve the self-reliance of service members on forward operating bases, it would also cut costs and reduce demand for the resupply of parts.
“The potential applications for additive manufacturing technologies are extensive,” says ARL researcher Dr. Nicole Zander. “Everything from pre-production models and temporary parts to end-use aircraft parts and medical implants.”
Additive manufacturing offers many advantages over traditional manufacturing, including increased part complexity and reduced time and cost to produce one-off items, such as a bracket for a radio.
The research by Zander and Captain Anthony Molnar from the U.S. Marine Corps generated filament from 100 percent recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from bottles and plastics without any chemical modifications or additives. This filament can then be used in fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers.
Work is also underway to generate filament from other recycled plastics and reinforced filaments. Zander says that while PET is widely used in many applications, it is not widely used as a “feedstock” for FDM because of difficulties like high melting temperature, moisture absorption, and issues with crystallization.
US Army Developing Mobile Recycling Facility for Battlefield 3D Printing
Molnar, project officer with the mobility and counter mobility team in Quantico, Virginia, argues that PET plastics such as water bottles and packaging are one of the most prolific wastes found on the battlefield.
Both US and coalition forces produce large volumes of this waste, and being able to repurpose this on location will reduce the logistic burden of transporting parts to forward operating bases. Not to mention the additional costs of disposing of the recyclable material.
To this end, Zander and Molnar are in the process of building a mobile recycling facility so that soldiers will be able to repurpose plastics into feedstocks for 3D printing.
“The MRF will be a plastic processing laboratory housed in a 20-foot ISO container, with all equipment and tools needed to fabricate 3D printing filament from plastic waste,” Zander says.
The researchers have determined that recycled plastics have shown to be suitable material for 3D printing, provided the material is properly cleaned and dried. The tensile strength of printed parts from recycled PET was equivalent to printed parts made from commercial off the shelf PET pellets and commercial filaments. But the work will not stop here.
Zander said blending with other plastics, or the addition of fillers such as reinforcing or toughening agents, may further improve the mechanical properties of the recycled plastic filament and expand the realm of applications in how it may be used.
“Ultimately, we’d like to produce the best possible feedstock we can from recycled plastics and waste materials,” Zander explains.
“Future work will involve testing select 3D printed long-lead parts against original parts to determine if they can be a suitable long-term or at least a temporary replacement.”
Hi, in this tutorial I show you how I made a fairy house lamp recycling some cardboard from an old box, egg cartons, pizza boxes, toilet paper tubes and two plastic bottles.
The only bought materials I used are the acrylic colors, the hot glue and the P.V.A. glue (less than 3$ in total). It took me about ten days to finish, including the drying time. Let me know what you think!
Few things are more thrilling than ripping open a Christmas present, but the shiny wrapping paper that gets thrown away afterward usually goes straight to the landfill. North Carolinian costume designer Olivia Mears, known on social media as avantgeek, has come up with a brilliant way to reuse those picked-over packages – by turning them into majestic dresses.
The ingenious idea came to Mears back in late December of 2013, and after going viral with her first design, it became clear that the eco-conscious dresses would have to become a yearly tradition. “I’m continuously inspired to find unconventional or recyclable things to make dresses/art out of,” she wrote about the concept. Each dress is composed of recycled wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, and plenty of glitter. If you’ve ever imagined what a Disney princess might wear to a Christmas party, this is undeniably it.
Scroll down to see what the same woman who made an incredible pizza dress earlier this year gets up to around the holidays, and let us know if you’d dare to try putting one of these together with your leftover Christmas chaos.
My name is Gabriel Dishaw, my passion for working with metal and mechanical objects has been essential in the evolution of my art. It provides me an avenue to express myself in a way that brings new life to materials such as typewriters, adding machines and old computers – technology that would normally end up in a landfill. My mission is to create dialogue and help find creative, environmentally sound ways of re-purposing e-waste.
This project was all about upcycling old Louis Vuitton bags into Star Wars sculptures. I used different pieces for some of them – mainly Louis Vuitton luggage and other upcycled materials, such as cables, computer chips, wire, gears, wire, and adding machine parts.
I’ve been working with old rusty tools for a couple of years now and love giving these discarded items a new life.
I use a plasma torch and hand cut custom designs into old tools. Some items will have other parts welded on as well.
Most of my work involves saws, but I also work with shovels, rakes, masonry trowels – and well, pretty much anything else metal that I can find at a yard sale!
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