September 2008

I have begun sketching table ideas. I’d like to use 3-Form’s Varia (in periwinkle!) for the main horizontal component. The fact that this material is semi-transparent gave me an idea for having a ‘floating drawer’ on the inside. The drawer would be a dark brown stain for contrast. The drawer would occupy the center and be flanked by open space on either side. The tricky part is deciding on legs, in both the material that will be used to make them as well as their configuration.

I just got back from seeing a couple of the founders of Blu Dot (John Christakos and Maurice Blanks) give a presentation at the Minnesota History Center about the company’s history, methods for designing and developing furniture as well as their branding efforts to date. A point they drove home repeatedly was that effeciency drives their design. Waste of materials is a waste of money. They make sure that each sheet of steel is used completely when cut into parts. If only they didn’t use MDF and partical board, they’d be a very green company. John said that the market will dictate their adopting of greener materials.
Flat packing for shipping and little material waste saves Blu Dot lots of money.
I need to determine an abstract market for this project to detemine the price points for each of the pieces that I’m designing. Trying to minimize waste and making furniture knock down are big factors to consider.

I had sent off another email to the 3-Form rep regarding a couple of questions that I had related to bonding and pricing.

Thanks for the information, Michael. I have a couple more questions about the material. Can two pieces of ecoresin be bonded together (e.g. In the way that acrylic can be bonded together with methylene chloride)?
Also is there a volume discount with Varia?

Yes

Weld On 55 Epoxy is a good bonding compound. There are volume discounts, but not as significant as in the extruded sheet resin world. Varia has a considerable amount of “hand-crafting” required for each sheet. Varia is also a pressed or fused product, which is a longer, smaller volume production process.

This is where the design changes to focus on cord management.

I heard back from a 3-Form representative regarding the cost of a new panel of the wood veneer Varia as well as cutting and forming services that 3-Form offers. This is what he said:

‘The Varia Wood product is a translucent real wood veneer fused inside 3form’s Ecoresin. It is purchased in 4′x8′ sheets and available in gauges ranging from 1/8″ to 1″. Sheets range in cost from $1300 to $2800. Custom fabrication and heat forming cost would depend on the design required but could be anywhere from $1000 to $5000+. There are limitations to the radii as well as the complexity of the curve that the Wood product can be formed to. A custom crate to ship the 3 dimensional formed piece would also be required at approx $500. All pricing FOB. Salt Lake City, UT.’

So assuming that I was making 4 chairs from a panel, it would cost me roughly $3000 per chair not including the legs (~$400 for the material, ~$2000 for cutting and forming and $500 for shipping).

The alternative for me would be to buy a reclaim piece for $100+, shipping costs TBD, and have it cut in town or at MCAD on the CNC router and then heat bent with a heat gun.

I have spent some time reading about, and basically drooling over, the products by a company called 3-Form. They specialize in making panels from ecoresin™, which is a co-polyester resin (PETG) with 40% post-industrial recycled content. The panels come in a myriad of colors and designs and come is the following gauges:

Many have materials sandwiched inside of them like woven cotton, grasses and woods. These materials are grown and/or created sustainably. 3-Form also has a reclaim policy whereby they take back used materials and reprocess them and sell them again. Pieces damaged during production are trimmed and sold at a discount as part of their reclaim program.

Their most versatile material is called Varia. Here is a sample of what the material can look like:

3-Form has recently added panels that have very thin wood veneers sandwiched in them. They remain somewhat translucent but look like wood panels otherwise. ecoresin™ can be thermoformed and machined. I could make a ‘bent plywood’ chair without plywood and without have to make a mold (though I might have to create something to slump the material over to give it form). I would really like to buy a panel of this stuff. They also provide fabrication services where they will cut and heat bend you material to spec. It might be outside my budget however. I am still waiting to hear back from a rep about pricing. The choices on the reclaim part of their website is fairly affordable however (a 2′x4′ panel can be had for less that $100). Perhaps I will buy a panel from there if a panel of the wood is too much.

What is great about bringing this material into my process is that any leftover material that I have I can send back to them! This makes them high on the list of possible sources for material.

3-Form’s website: http://www.3-form.com/index.php
Varia: http://www.3-form.com/materials-varia.php
Reclaim: http://www.3-form.com/about-low_impact-reclaim_program.php
Info on PETG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate

Yesterday I paid a visit to North Star Surfaces in Saint Paul to check out the green materials that they carry. They are the exclusive distributor of Plyboo Plywood Products. I was particularly interested in this product but knew they carried other promising products as well. I met with a Product Consultant named James Bluhm who was very knowledgeable about the materials and the processes required to make them. He told me about the following products:

Plyboo:

Plyboo Plywood has many virtues as a building material. Being that it is made out of bamboo, which is a grass and not a type of tree, it is an abundant resource that grows quickly and regrows quickly after being chopped down, making it highly renewable. All parts of the shoot are used to make Plyboo and Plyboo Strand plywood (the latter takes the left overs from the manufacturing process of the former), so there is little waste. It comes in an array of thicknesses from veneers up to 4″. It also comes in an assortment of stains. The thicker stuff is bonded with environmentally-friendly adhesives.

Dakota Burl, BioFiber Wheat and PaperStone:

Dakota Burl is made in Minnesota from sunflower hulls which, like bamboo, is a rapidly renewable resource. This material comes in an array of thicknesses (1/2″, 3/4″ and 1″ though there is now veneer), does not contain any off-gassing solvents like formaldehyde and releases no VOC’s (Volatile organic compounds) like MDF does. It can be machined, stained and varnished.

BioFiber Wheat is also made in Minnesota and is made from wheat-straw which, you guessed it, is a rapidly renewable resource. Its virtues then are the same as Dakota Burl.

PaperStone is made from recycled post-consumer paper and cashew nut oil resin. It felt like a really dense plastic. It is made by layering numerous sheets of paper with cashew nut oil resin as a bonding element and applying a frightening amount of pressure on it so that the sheets basically fuse together. It is formaldehyde-free and does not release VOC’s either. It comes in thicknesses of 3/4″, 1″ and 1.25″ and is highly machineable (though you’d probably blow through a few router bits).