Practical 3

Practical 3

Cardboards are a cheap and versatile building materials. They are also biodegradable and recyclable as they are made up of different types of recycled paper. Compared to other materials however, they may not be as sturdy or aesthetically pleasing. 

Literature Review

Corrugated cardboard has many variations which can be seen in their grades. Written as, for example "125K/E/125T", the board grade contain information on the board's weight, paper type and flutes. In this example, the paper weight for both the outer lining and test inner lining are 125 grams per square meter, the paper type used was Kraft paper on the outer lining and test inner lining, and the cardboard uses an E flute.

The paper type can either be Kraft or Test, whereby Kraft is stronger and easier to print on while Test is recycled and cheaper.

The paper weight is the mass of one square meter of the paper which tells us the thickness and/or density of the paper.

The flutes are the corrugation between the two linings and they range from A to F according to how fine or coarse the corrugations are, with A being the coarsest and F being the finest.

Wall types of corrugated cardboard are how many layers of fitting and liner are present, for example single-walled board has 2 flutings and 3 liners while triple-walled grade has 3 flutings and 4 liners.

All these factors will decide the properties of the corrugated cardboard and hence their applications.

Building using cardboard:

Cardboards are more malleable than most building materials, it does not need heat or heavy-duty equipment to be molded into shapes. All that is needed was some cutter knives. Cardboard thus, can easily be used to make structures or designs easily, think of them as child-version of steel and concrete. However, they are not as sturdy.

Strong as Steel

Okay, they may not be made as strong as steel but they can, however, be designed to be strong without changing its materials and compromising price and recyclability. Cardboard is more malleable than steel, thus we only need cutter knives and glue to construct with them. Corrugated cardboard connection designs are connection designs that allows cardboards to have a strong structure that can support multiple times the cardboard weight.

The connection designs are the foundations when it comes to making a sturdy structure when using cardboards as a building material.

We at the Enterprise have came up with 8 cardboard connection designs:

1. Flange
2. Gusset
3. Tabs
4. Slot
5. Tabs + Slot
6. Score + Blend
7. Wire
8. Holes

Here are our constructed designs:

It took mankind around 65 years to go from the first airplane to the first moon landing. Singapore will be of that age soon in the 21st century. We believe that it is about time that Singapore competes with  other countries in Space. Thus, we have designed a truly magnificent creation indeed, The GDN-Mk1 Rocket. When it was all done, we finally revealed our magnificent creation to the eyes of the public.

Activity 2:

After we got home, we had to make the unicorn using what we learnt. We had some difficulty in not bending the cardboard pieces the wrong way. If they were bent the wrong way, the wings would not flap.

Like the unicorn, we had to be careful and patient. Those of us with younger sisters really enamoured them with our creations. The best part of this activity was when we finally were able to make the wings move using rubber bands.