Egg Gondola

Initial Sketches: I began this project by brainstorming and sketches out ideas. You know the drill.

I decided to go with my second/last design.

Prior to my decision though, I collected all of the plastic items in my house that could be potentially used. I had a lot of plastic water bottles, a creamer bottle, plastic bags, milk jugs, old mechanical pencils, some filmy plastic stuff that wasn't saran wrap. I knew I really wanted to melt some stuff and play with some fire. So, I chose my ski life/maybe gondola idea, and I wanted all of the eggs to die. Eggs can be resilient depending on the kind of pressure you apply as well as where, but were pretty easy to break. My job was to make sure there was as little padding as possible.

I cleaned out my milk jugs and went to the store and bought a cheap spatula and some pans because I wasn't about to ruin my parent's stuff. I found a really nice small one that fit the size I was going for.

I watched a lot of plastic melting videos on youtube to get a general idea of what to do. The problem was that most used clamps and some molds of which I had neither and wasn't planning on using. I went ahead anyway because the world is on fire and what's the worst that could have happened.

I heat my oven to the recommended temperature of 350 F and began to melt some plastic. Milk jugs are made of HDPE which isn't supposed to be toxic as long as it isn't burned. I opened some windows just in case, but I'm still around typing this so it was all good.

People had been using parchment paper or cooking spray. I was having issues with the parchment paper messing up the shape I wanted to I decided to use cooking spray instead to prevent sticking.

The next issue was the shape. I had to melt each individual side and then mold it together while still hot and it cooled too fast sometimes for me to get the pieces to stick together.

It was going to be a long process.

I wasn't sure if this was even going to work so in between melting and molding, I was making a back-up gondola with the intention of saving the eggs, but hopefully I wasn't going to need it.

Luckily, my plastic mold was turning out.

I added little pieces of plastic as well as smooshed it together to flatten it and fill holes while it was hot. So it was a constant loop of melting, fixing, melting, fixing.

Once it was done, I melted it one last time and took the tips of some mechanical pencils and jammed them into the side to line up with where the eggs were supposed to be. Because it was hot, this "glued" the tips into the bin. The idea behind this was that in case the eggs were in the back part of the gondola, they'd get hit with something. All things continue to go forward if you crash in a car, this is the point of a seatbelt. This would just make sure the eggs crashed into something no matter which way it was sent down and the other eggs wouldn't prevent some sort of contact.

Additionally, I added the bottoms from the egg cartons to help position them. The plastic bin was slipper (probably cooking spray) and I didn't want them to slide.

I made a little rope from plastic target bags and tied through holes I made in the side of the tub, and then began to fashion a top made of a water bottle to prevent them from falling out. I cut the top and bottom off and sliced it down the middle. I took about an inch and a half from the circumference.

My little white container reminded me of a bathtub so for flavor I added this shiny, film plastic because it looked like bubbles. There was not enough to provide any substantial padding for the eggs.

Lastly, I used plastic bags to tie the ends my plastic water bottle top to secure it. And I was done!

Total Plastic Used:

-HDPE: Milk Jug container.

-LDPE: Target bags

-Polyethylene: Film

-PETE: Water bottle and egg carton

-Polystyrene (Not foam): mechanical pencil tips

TOTAL: 5 different plastics

Did they all break? Yes.