On making stovetop bioplastics

Joris Peels from the 3D printing startup Shapeways has been experimenting with making stovetop bioplastics, with mixed (but promising) results:

Overall making bioplastic at home was a fun activity. It had a certain magical, "oh my, I made plastic" quality to it. Bioplastic in thin sheet form does seem to be a fun and practical application as a build material. However right now the results, as far as I have found with molds, are not promising enough for one to be able to use it to make your own things or to produce plastic for your DIY projects. I need to qualify this by saying that any of the problems with the bioplastic could of course be my fault for not cooking it long enough, cooking it too high/low, measuring out the proportions incorrectly, using the wrong starch,drying the bioplastic in too hot/too humid/too dry a room etc.
Taking that into account, at the moment shrinkage, warping and the long drying times, as I have found them, make it unpractical. As for using it as a 3D printing material, I am not comfortable enough with this material at the moment to even properly test it in a 3D printer. The "gunky" quality and long drying times seem to currently make it impractical for use as a 3D printing material. Someone could possibly tweak the recipe and make it more practical both for 3D printing and molding and I hope this happens. Perhaps you could with some careful experimentation be the one to make bioplastic a practical reality for molding and 3d printing?

Cooking & molding bioplastics at home: recipes, results & tips

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I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Snig

I’ve made gluten/starch based plastics in my kitchen. Sheets and strands, and once pouches to encapsulate cheese and spinach. Not too functional as a building material. Disposal is generally performed by coating with red sauce and ingesting.
Pantograph

Cool post. Better than the BS interview.

Maybe a plastics engineer could weigh in on this, but I’d think you would have to make granules, dry those and then melt and extrude them into filament?

I don’t really see this happening in kitchens but small factories for locally sourced bioplastic popping up worldwide to supply a growing number of 3D printers in homes everywhere is an exciting prospect.
Zan

@Snig Actually, such plastics can be functional as a building material. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_bridge