Ok this would be a different thread apart from any plastic kendama threads out there, including kendama made from resins... Now if anyone is active on IG & saw terra's story, @htimSxelA is making some good looking damas out of reycled plastic like bottles,container,jugs, etc... Now i have few things in mind... Should other companies consider making damas from recycable materials? If you ever got yourself making a dama from any material (except metal & wood) what would you combine to make that dama??? Lowkey request to alex if he can make it happen *my thoughts... First of, it would be a good idea cause it will help reducing waste, especially non biodegradable trash. But since it's recycling difderent plastics, integrity would be a concern. Regadless of it, it will be a good looking one. If i could choose materials in making a recycled dama, maybe soda or water bottles, cookie packs, maybe tires as well XD
Glad you dig it! I'm gonna try and put more stories like that up. I've made 2 full recycled plastic kens before, but also had a bunch of reject pieces (like the one from yesterdays story). They are incredibly durable. One is in the Dama on the Drive shop, the other is owned by the dude who helps me make the blanks (Shawn Williams, he's a buddy that has worked on a bunch of sweet projects with me). Both of them have some voids in the material, but are nonetheless super strong. This type of plastic doesn't crack or split like some others (certain resins for example), it just dents a little if you really smash it. I'll try and post some more pics up of the finished pieces in here!
Here are the two completed kens, and a before/after shot of one of them. They weigh around 90 grams each, just fyi
Man those are sick. And from something that was gonna be thrown away anyhow. I can see how this could change things in a big way. Positively haha.
I'd love to see a kendama made of chip/particle board. I know it would be brittle AF but if you found a way to varnish/protect it that could look so rad. EDIT: I've been loving those insta stories so I'm hyped to see the finished product. SO DOPE!!
Saw these on Instagram as well! Super dope!!! @htimSxelA How is the material in terms of how easy it is to turn? Seems like a hassle from what i can gather on the IG story.
Actually you could probably make recycled kendama out of old kendama. Put them in a wood chipper and turn them into a composite like particle board.
I believe that the Bahama Kendama heavy bamboo is a wood chip composite. There are other makers with similar kendama, I have an old Sol of that style, and they weigh in around 200g+. They don't appear to be brittle; probably the base epoxy component is pretty tough.
Yeah it sucks that you ran into so many voids while trying to turn those. I wonder if there is a better process the manufacture can use to give you a better blank. Or maybe heat some plastic up and fill in the void as you come across them, let them sit until they are hard enough to continue turning.
The blanks are home-made, a friend of mine came up with the idea to try it out so he's been supplying me with material. The white/green one above is in the Dama on the Drive shop, the white/red is owned by my friend. We've been slowly figuring out the process to make good blanks easier, but sadly this batch took a turn for the worst! We met last night and came up with a modified plan that I think will drop the reject rate down a LOT. Fingers crossed it works! Yea its honestly kinda shit to work with: - Shavings often get caught on the spinning workpiece, and wrap around it like crazy. So a lot of extra time stopping the lathe and pulling all the shavings off. This might not seem like much, but when you have to stop every 1 min and spend 30 seconds removing shavings, it really starts to get annoying. Some tools and cutting techniques are worse for this than others though. - While it is very durable for kendama play, it does have more flex than wood, so its been a bit of a challenge keeping workpieces perfectly centred on the lathe the entire time. My usual kendama-making process exacerbates this issue, so I have to change up the order in which I do things, which also adds more time. On the plus side: - If there are no voids, the material is super consistent, and smooth to cut through. feelsnice.jpg - While I still wear a mask and run the dust collector while working, the majority of the plastic waste shavings are fairly large and easy to collect. Wood waste varies in size from big chips, to the finest bits of dust. So after working with the plastic I feel less covered in dusty crap, which is nice.
@htimSxelA Do you think that this material actually has potential to become an actual mainstream thing within the next couple years? Or is the process of casting those blanks without having voids too difficult as of right now? Also could different types of plastic being added into the mix be responsible for the voids? have you attempted a cast of all one material, (say all the same shampoo bottle)? Sorry just saw this on your story and I had been thinking about it the past few days XD -have a nice weekend <3
Mainstream? No, while it is cool, there are other materials that I think would get adopted first. Making the blanks takes work, even with a really streamlined process the material cost would be much higher than wood. I would also bet that non-recycled plastics are cheaper as a starting material, so if a plastic kendama really became 'mainstream', it would probably be made from delrin or something. Being able to advertise it is 'recycled plastic' is cool, but I don't think most consumers will opt to pay the extra cost, given the choice between a sweet wooden kendama, and a sweet recycled plastic kendama. The ones I've been turning will be expensive, I honestly couldn't tell you how many hours have already been invested into R&D making blanks and turning pieces that don't work out. Thats the way it goes sometimes though. That said, we're going to keep trying to get a batch done, and hopefully it'll work well. At most I could see a company doing a small production, not 100's of kendamas. Also worth mentioning: Having an inconsistent material mounted onto a CNC lathe can be quite dangerous. When I'm working by hand, the lathe will be stopped many, many times during turning, so at each stop I can do a quick visual inspection to see if I've opened up any voids. CNCs don't do this: speed is kinda the name of the game for manufacturing like that. Mount the workpiece, get it spinning, start cutting, and don't stop until the piece is done. The issue is: if you hit a void and the piece explodes while spinning at 2000+ rpm, thats a chunk of plastic that could go flying and bust a cutter head / spray nozzle / anything else it hits inside the machine. I've seen this happen before. After the first LBB production we had the shop in Edmonton we were working with try turning a couple of B&W ebony LBB tamas. The first one turned out amazing. The second one has a small crack inside than caught the cutter head wrong, blew a chunk off the blank, and caused several hundred dollars in damage to the CNC (plus a couple days of lost work). Not good! You're sorta right about the different plastics though. All of the plastic we're using is the same base chemical composition, but the pigments used to dye the plastics does have an effect on the way they melt and bond together. For the most part they all work nicely together, but we have found one or two materials that melted and shrunk considerably, leaving obvious voids inside the material.