P.E.T MINI Recycled Eskate

Long description

PET MINI was developed based on the growing importance of creating participatory approaches to design, with the growing access to digital fabrication tools through Fab Labs and information through the internet, the Maker and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movements are booming, we must rethink how we design and manufacture the products of the future through distributed approaches and bringing the user and industry closure to the design process.

By using the potential of Open Design we can easily prototype and distribute designs at a global scale while promoting local manufacturing and problem solving. After getting the recycled plastic HDPE sheet’s from Precious Plastic, this get machined by a CNC router to obtain the skateboard deck. Mechanical parts were 3D printed to speed up prototyping phase, as the parts were manufactured at a local Fab Lab, VIVALab, so it can easily be replicated at any of the 1900 Fab Lab’s from the global network.

It all started with two problems, the plastic waste I was seeing being gathered on the beaches of my home town Porto and the increasing commute times due to the high increase of people on the city and poor public and personal transportation infrastructures.

Its open source nature seeks to encourage other Designers & Makers to learn from the process and at the same time to turn it into a organic project that will evolve from the inputs of different people.

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