It’s been about 6 months since we first started working on the plastic project for Haiti. A great deal has gotten done in that time, many challenges overcome, others, not. Our original goal was to make all four machines for the foster home, as well as a set for Guelph. Top priority was the shredder, since without that, the other machines wouldn’t get far. We also put a great deal of importance on building something that could be maintained, repaired and modified in a place like Haiti, where the hardware stores are quite as well stocked as they are here.<\/p>\n
So now, 2 days before we leave, I wanted to give a quick update. The shredder, as planned, is fully functional. We’ve broken it down for transport, and will need to rebuild the bulkier parts of it down there. The biggest issue we had with the shredder was finding a beefy enough motor to get the torque we needed. Scavenging is not th art form it once was, and we ended up purchasing a 1.5 HP motor and building what we needed to to gear it down.<\/p>\n
The Extruder is largely built, bit the finishing touches will happen in Haiti. Eva, Brennan, and Andrew pulled out all the stops to get us there, and without them, I don’t think we’d be making filament any time soon. We settled on using a wood auger bit for the extruder screw, since that was the only thing really available. We are hoping to machine a better screw after the trip, and ship it down once it’s done.<\/p>\n
The compression oven will largely be built down there, although we feel confident we have solved most of the big problems, and have everything we need to get it up and running.<\/p>\n
The only bit we decided to back off on was the injection moulder. After much research, we decided that with the power issues in Jacmel, and the bulk of the moulds, perhaps the injection moulder would be best to wait.<\/p>\n
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be posting more of the story, photos of the builds down there, and the machines up and working. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s been about 6 months since we first started working on the plastic project for Haiti. A great deal has gotten done in that time, many challenges overcome, others, not. Our original goal was to make all four machines for the foster home, as well as a set for Guelph. Top priority was the shredder, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogposts"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/diyode.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/almost-haiti.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Simon Clark","author_link":"https:\/\/diyode.com\/blog\/author\/simon-clark\/"},"yoast_head":"\n