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1. Principles and practices

About my final project

In our first week at FabLab Academy, our task was to get acquainted with Git and brainstorm ideas for my final project, and to do some research. During the brainstorm I was suggested to look into the existing problems or challenges I had faced personally and to base my project on that. Considering the widespread issue of environmental pollution and its serious impacts, I decided to explore it.

I live in Vanadzor, where we have three lakes which are at risk of swamping and plastic pollution, and the cleaning process is quite a challenge.

Research

I have been conducting a research in order to understand what kind of robots and automated systems exist which clean lakes from pollutions and prevent swamping, and what kind of technologies they use. I do a comparative analysis to understand the advantages and disadvantages of the available options. This will aid me to understand the important factors that I need to pay a special attention to. Here there are some additional factors for consideration while choosing a type of lake cleaning robot:

  1. Size of the lake or pond: The size of the robot will need to be in accordance with the size of the body of water.
  2. Type of debris: The robot should be able to collect the type of debris that is the most common in the lake or pond.
  3. Budget: Lake cleaning robots can range in price from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars.
  4. Environmental impact: The robot should be designed to minimize its harmful impact on the environment. Here are some examples of lake cleaning robots and links for detailed information.

PET bottle recycling machine

My first idea was to create a lake cleaning robot. But I changed my mind and decided to create PET bottle recycling machine that would make filament from bottle. Because I work with students from “Armath” engineering laboratories, and for me it is also important to reduce environmental pollution using recycled plastic bottles for 3D printing, it is not just a creative endeavor but a vital step towards environmental conservation as well. Transforming discarded plastic into useful and visually appealing products serves a dual purpose: it reduces plastic waste while encouraging the message of reusing plastic waste and it also helps to create something new from used plastic. I found a lot of similar projects. Here are some of them.

-FILAMENT FROM BOTTLE

-PET Filament Machine

-PET Bottle Recycling: Waste to 3D Printing Filament

Here is link to my Final project page for more details.