Multi Processing Machine (MPM)#

The multi processing machine is a versatile machine for growing and drying different materials.



It is possible to grow: - Kombucha. - Mycelium. - Bacteria.



It is possible to ferment: - Tempeh. - Yoghurt. - Kimchi.



It is possible to dry: - Bioplastics. - Fruit leather.

The assigment#



The group assignment for this week was to construct/hack/customise a machine that would be useful in a textile lab and easily reproducible. We started with brainstorming around our first ideas by having a meeting with the team and discussing everything.

The main ideas were: - Shaking machine for making fish skin leather. - Plastic/paper melting/recycle bot. - Linoleum pattern machine. - A system for re-using fluff from washing/drying machine. - Hacking embroidery machine to make it open source. - (Bacteria) incubator machine. - Pixel printer. - Felt machine. - Offset printer for embossing. - 3D printer for bioplastics.



Winner: Everything incubator!!!!!

The chosen one#



The reason why we’ve chosen this project is because it is versatile and multifunctional, and fits best our interests and needs.

Here some of the reasons why each of us was happy to make it: - Scarlett: the bioplastic she made for a previous week’s assignment was mouldy, so she wanted something to help bioplastic dry in a faster and safer way. - Teresa: she likes the fermentation process like yogurt. - Irene: she wanted something to grow bacteria and mycelium in. - Stephanie: she was interested into growing mycelium and kombucha. - Wendy: she wanted something to grow tempeh. - Jessica: she likes the aspects of multifunctionality and having better control over the different processes.

Next step was to figure out what functions we wanted the machine to have. Also, we needed to point out the different requirements and circumstances of every individual material/process.

Each of us developed a different part of the machine. Here we’ve documented step-by-step instructions for how to make the Multi Processing Machine, as well as suggestions for different ways you can build on it, adapt it, and hack it. If you’re interested in learning more about the research and development of the different aspects of the machine, you can click on the links to our individual documentation above to find out more about what each of us worked on.



You can find here below the different information we gathered together:focusmaterial

What you need#



Structure - Cooler box. - Shelves. - External structure. - 3 mm thickness sheet of acrylic. - Plywood sheets.



Electronics - Arduino Uno. - Relay Module - USB A to B cable for the Arduino. - Heating element (exact specs tbc). - 12V computer fan. - 2 x 12V power supply. - Humidity & temperature sensor - we used a DHT11 sensor. - Piezo buzzer - 220 Ohm resistor - 3 x 10k potentiometer. - Small LCD screen



Tools - Solderless breadboard and jumper cables for prototyping. - Soldering iron and solder for assembling the circuit. - Wire cutters. - Wire strippers - An adjustable power supply is nice to have for testing components - Multimeter (your best friend for electronics projects!)

Assembly steps#

  1. Clean your box and all your used elements.
  2. Mill the plug of your box to create a hole to see inside the box.
  3. Mill the plug of your box to create space for the sliding door.
  4. Laser cut the sliding door on acrylic.
  5. Assembly the sliding door on the box.

Phase1#

phase2#

what we achieve, what we want still to do#

Arduino Code#

Use the three backticks to separate code.

// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
  // initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output.
  pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(1000);                       // wait for a second
}

Video#

From Youtube#

3D Models#

Acknowledgements#

the Multi Processing Machine was made at TextileLab Amsterdam by (in Alphabetical order), Irene Caretti, Jessica Stanley, Scarlett Yang, Stéphanie Santos da Costa, Teresa van Twuijver, and Wendy Neale. But we had a lot of help, advice and encouragement from many different people at Waag.

Particularly: Emma Pareschi, Cecilia Raspanti, Henk Buursen, Nicolas Schiefelbein, Conor (whose surname we need to find out), Rutger Oomkes, Ruud, Špela Petrič, Roland van Dierendonck, and the delivery guy from Albert Heijn who donated to us the cool box that we used for this project :)