I love the striations in Jankycaps's experimental 100% recycled plastic keycaps, at once beautiful and hideous. They remind me of William Gibson's descriptions of East German light fittings made in similar fashion. [via Hackaday]
We pick and mix a few different colours of plastic that we think would go well together and load them into the injector. These shreds will be heated to around 200 Celsius (just above the melting point of polypropylene) before being injected into the mould. Once all the plastic is up to temperature, we switch on the air compressor that supplies power to the pneumatic piston that will push the molten plastic into our mould. It's really important at this stage to keep an eye on the plastic. Since the recycled shreds often come from lots of different sources and manufacturers, different batches may need more or less heat to get it to a workable temperature. Too hot and you risk degrading the plastic, too cold and you won't get a nice finished product.
"Blue-ish" is the only color left in stock, they're evidently a hit. I would like them to pick colors suggestive of edibility next.
How about some wood keycaps? Or… something else, perhaps?
