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Mar 5, 2017

Rocking Out With Recycled Guitar Picks In Indonesia

From trash to treasure: Ramdhan Ismanto transforms old bottle caps into awesome guitar picks in his workshop in Indonesia.

Ramdhan and his team.
Ramdhan and his team.
This article is part of Precious Plastic, a One Army project tackling the plastic waste problem. You can learn more
here
.

Ramdhan @ramdhan2805 first heard about Precious Plastic when a friend asked for help finding scrap materials for a machine. With little budget and all recycled parts, they used a 1.5HP motor and built their first shredder!

Since then, Ramdhan has also built an injection machine, and brought to life several recycled plastic products. “I tend to pick the most simple yet usable products,” said Ramdhan, who’s made guitar picks, an ikea cup and has a hexagon flower vase in progress. “I’ve reversed engineered some designs from the web to make the moulds more simple for construction”.

9. Guitar Pick - Injection - PET bottle cap copy
Guitar Pick with Injection machine from PET bottle caps.

Building the injection machine was a breeze compared to working on the cup mold- it’s been one month and he’s still perfecting the design! Mold designing has been one of his biggest challenges, as well as learning about properties of the different plastic materials.

Progress on Hexagon Vase
Progress on Hexagon Vase.

His machine shop Kurnia Teknik in Indonesia gives him easy access to spare parts, so going forward Ramdhan wants to have more fun with the Precious Plastic machines. Compression and extrusion machines are on the horizon, as well as some tweaks and improvements to their designs. Ideally he’d like to experiment with making the machines simpler, cheaper and a bit more pleasing to the eye!

Current Gear for Shredder
Current Gear for Shredder.

Thanks Ramdhan for your enthusiasm and we look forward to seeing your new creations come to life! You can follow Ramdhan’s projects through his Instagram page. He has helped source parts for other shredders in Bali and Indonesia with handy kits:

Shredder Kit for Yonan Cimahi
Shredder Kit for Yonan Cimahi.

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Written by
Mattia
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