Our Fall Groove

Ashamaa* all!

*(English rendition of an Omoro greeting, which is the most poken language in Ethiopia, according to wikipedia)

1. Hello new members

If you’ve just joined - WELCOME to RePlastic: A Plastical Solution! There’s plenty of documentation to catch you up. I would recommend reading through the past Team Newsletters on Google Drive. Email or text me if you have trouble accessing Google Drive. Please, don’t be shy. The best way to get involved is to introduce yourself, read my emails, and attend the SCRUMs!

Ensure that you have (or any friends that may be interested have) signed up via Google forms so we have your email and other information. (PS - Our Education and Advocacy teams would benefit from some business students!)

2. Cookie Drive

We received a lot of new plastics from the Cookie Drive (see attached photo at bottom)! It was a fantastic success and I’d like to give a huge shout out to Grace who did an amazing job making the posters, advertisisng on social media, and being present to organize the event! Thank you Kaitlin for all the baking you’ve done, and thank you to Cassie and Tobin and the rest of your team for manning the booth. I hope you all had a chance to make it out as we displayed out progress!

We will likely have a plastic ‘pre-processing’ workshop coming up so look out for that!

3. Manufacturing Update

I. Shredder

We have some simple extraneous tasks: the report, Shredder mesh, and motor box mount. That aside, our current motor is 1/4 HP, and we are on the lookout for a more powerful one. This is rather essential.

II. Injector

We had a small team finish the lever handle and test the movement of the injector on Saturday. The machine shop is helping us finish the hopper. If you are interested in being involved, or would like more details on our progress, please see this task list.

Otherwise, we are ready to start creating moulds! They need to either be metal moulds or harder plastics. All moulds which can screw into a ¾” or 1” diameter pipe are being accepted! Let’s start making some funky stuff!

III. Extruder and Compression

As you may have heard, we are partnering with Project 90 on the last two machines as they work to adapt the Precious Plastic system to communities in Ethiopia! If you want to join, there is an info session on Monday, Sep 26 at 5pm in ST139.

A more in-depth introduction to the team will be on Oct 4th during the SCRUM.

4. Fall Semester Plans

There’s a lot to be done! For now, let’s rest from that hecticness of o-week and finish off those items that were on our agenda. This means finishing off the extraneous items (posters, binders of drawings, binder of newsletters), on the Shredder, and the Injector. Between now and the next SCRUM, we will be preparing a team with P90 for the next manufacturing wave.

Feel free to use the space to do work, hang out, or show-off to friends! :)

5. Mandatory SCRUM on Tuesday, Oct 4, 6:30pm in Gallery FM

With the fall semester, our pace will have slowed down significantly. Teams will be meeting on an individual basis. For a large update and reassess our goals, we will be holding a mandatory RePlastic SCRUM on Tuesday, Oct 4th at 6:30pm in Gallery FM.

Here is a link to the calendar (email us if you’d like to add this calendar to your personal account).

During this meeting, we will assess the machines as a whole and welcome Project90 during our collaboration.

Nagayattii! <3