A fast proof of concept of a machine that cuts plastic bags into "yarn" and spins it on a bobbin at the same time. I made this while working at a design studio that weaved plastic bags on traditional handloom and we needed a faster / low cost way to cut and spin the plastic. The idea wasn't developed any further and the studio never used it.
I am sharing this with the 'Precious Plastic' community and others. I'd be very happy if this turned out to be a machine that solved a problem for other plastic weavers or offered job opportunities to someone. Feel free to develop it further, and if you do, share with me what you've done :)
The idea is to insert the plastic bag (with the end open) onto dowels, one dowel has a blade fixed to it, another can be adjusted up and down to accommodate different plastic bag sizes. After cutting the beginning of a strip of the bag, it gets pulled onto the bobbin that rotates (here the bobbin is fixed to the rotating drill) and begins pulling the whole bag and rotating it through the blade.
At this stage, there are a lot of problems that need to be addressed, like how to fix the tension of pulling so strips of different types of plastic bags wont snap. Or how to spread the plastic strip on the whole bobbin. Or at the end, when the strip is no longer attached to the rest of the bag around the dowel, how to prevent it from spinning around the rotating part.
This concept merges two steps together, and although it still needs manual work, it uses only one worker thus significantly and speeds up the manufacturing process, on a rough mock up like in the following video it takes less than 2 minutes.
And if you can figure out a way to link or fuse the plastic strips together, you can make continuous plarn or plastic bag yarn!