The Twenty foot Equivalent Unit model

Hello all,

I've just read about Plastic Bank on here in the news, and thought, this is great, I'm not the only person to have the idea of recycling plastics for the benefits of local communities, providing jobs, money, and reducing waste. Of course, getting the design made up in the first place for the 3D printer to use the recycled plastics processed into filament is a stumbling block, but 3D scanners are becoming much more available - I plan on getting a Matterform 3D scanner in the not too distant future.

However, how could one house these 3D printers and 3D scanners and filament processing robots? And using a lead I had from the Filabot people, who were going to stuff these robots into a shipping container, I suggest that is a good idea - the Twenty foot Equivalent Unit (or TEU as its known in the business).

A TEU can easily be strapped to a truck, a train or a ship. Heck, they even put them in planes. So instead of shipping the output of a centralised factory recycling these plastics constantly, why not ship the TEU with the equipment to a local area, and set up a "plastic merchant" (or Plastic Bank) there with the TEU(s)? "Ship once, recycle many."

Additionally, with lower power 3D printers coming out (I'm thinking the Peachy Printer which doesn't use recycled plastics, I know, but theres the OneUp), and low CPU power needed for these printers to operate, one could potentially run such a facility off a solar array, and perhaps a cooking oil turbocharged generator (see: http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cg...&context=cpesp - it uses diesel, but could easily use refined waste cooking oil) for backup power charging of the batteries. For cooling and air con in the TEUs, one can use solar powered absorption refrigeration to keep the air temperature in the container to a manageable level.

For mounting the solar panels, a facility of two TEUs could have a "shed" (see: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Shipping-...d3b31be&_uhb=1), and of course, since this is off grid, this facility could be placed anywhere, under any conditions.

For internet connectivity, a wifi mesh network will be used (see: http://store.villagetelco.com/mesh-potatoes.html) which has a wide input range, plenty of survivability options (ESD, lightning strike) as they are designed to "just work" in the Third World. A head end can be made from a Ubiquiti wifi radio (I think a NanoBridge) flashed with an open source firmware. That can be connected to wireless internet, be it be a WISP or 3G/ 4G.

For computing CPU power, I suggest using HP thin clients (see: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HP-T5630W...fa34528&_uhb=1) as they are rather tolerant of more or less than exactly 12VDC (unlike many embedded boards) - plenty of blokes on the app_rpt mailing list use them on the tops of mountains on solar arrays connected to radios and RoIP networks - they work off the smell of an oily rag in terms of power consumption (something like 900mA) and they provide x86 compatibility. Running Debian from a 32GB flash stick is not a stretch of the imagination, and it has six USB ports, VGA and DVI, GigE LAN, and 1GB RAM as well as a 1GHz VIA processor.

I am looking to submit this basic plan to the Plastic Bank people, as it would be easy to just ship these TEUs in to coastal areas and set them up, independent of mains grid power, but where plastic pollution is a problem. Other places they can be set up are Third World countries where plastics in landfill are at crisis point. But don't discount the First World applications - I would like to be a "plastics merchant" and know I'm doing my bit for the environment, and doing it at a low overhead to me (in terms of electricity).

I just thought I'd garner some opinions from the community about all this, see if there is any holes in my plan.

Many thanks!

Shane.