Modeling Hemp – Tray

At this point in the project I had ascertained that making a flat surface material at home was going to be difficult to get a good result.

Making a molded tray was my next iteration.

The images below show how I took the hemp fibre given to me by Nick Voase at the Hemp farm in Driffield into the first prototype trays.

These trays were very rough, but I thought showed potential. The tray prototypes also showed a need to shorten the hemp fibre so that the appearance was smoother and what consumers expect from food packaging. The grinding of the hemp fibre seemed initially impossible in my home blender, because the fibre just wrapped around the blades.

I tried grinding in my coffee bean grinder, this worked once before blunting the blades.

These initial models did come back as useful when considering my living wall. I needed matting to be a backing for the polymer and the encapsulated for the seeds.

Below images showing the hemp i used and the home blender that failed to chop the hemp in to shorter lengths. the resulting tray prototype with and without cardboard pulp ( the one on the right is with cardboard pulp)