Greetings!
I need to find more time for tinkeringā¦ last week was a bit of a bust, between work and various doctor appointments for me and my partners.
But I played around with the thermal blanket material that was included in the box Avery sent. I had a lot of trouble keeping the edges fused. It seemed that every time I thought I had it sealed, inflating it blew a new hole. I do love that mini-iron! Much easier to use than the big iron or the wood burning tool I had.
We had a family maker night this weekend and tried a basic design. While we had good success with the doritos and Annieās snack bags, we couldnāt get the cheetos, bubble yum or granola bar mylar to seal. Has anyone else had this problem? I was able to get the emergency blanket mylar to seal mostly. The Doritos bag creature was made with paper inside and the emergency blanket hand was made using the parchment paper shaping.
These starfish are very cool! Iām inspired to keep tryingā¦
Iāve been working my way through the materials. I also had issues getting seals with the mylar blanket and some other material. I found success with the chip and gummies bags. My breakthrough was making the seams in a single layer fold of aluminum foil on high heat. I had to move swiftly to not burn the bag but it did give a good seal. I found if I double up the edge of the chip bag and sealed it again it gave me a stronger seal that I couldnāt blow through. I also found mending the bags possible but a little risky.
Here is the successful mend:
I found doubling up on the seams made a strong seal:
I donāt know how I feel about releasing this into the wild but here is my attempt at an inflatable āinstrumentā. It is the most annoying thing Iāve made in a long time: IMG_1998.MOV - Google Drive
-hopefully, the video is accessible, I have limited access to google products via my work laptop.
Yes, I also encountered difficulties getting the BubbleYum mylar to seal. The Doritos bag with googly eyes made me smile because I wasnāt expecting that! Fun surprise! The hand is very coolā¦I havenāt tried out that emergency blanket yet.
Hi I am Laurie
I work at The Hive in at CPL in Cambridge MA. I am excited by the PLIX possibilities and collaborations.
I am trying to create a dog head with ears that flap up and down. I was encouraged by the seahorse . I am using that seahorse
to help me figure out a way to attach ears to a head or try to make them all from one piece.
An update on where I am after some guided PLIX lit tinkering. Nothing shattering the design molds yet. But, the journal noted below may help the PLIX team make Inflatables fly within the public library world (hahaha)
Here is my Inflatable Beta Testing Google Doc journal. Tips and Troubleshooting ideas for PLIX lit as well as pics of my work are included in the doc.
As the PLIX team is looking for specifics about the need to improve any of instructional materials, I am sharing my PLIX Inflatable Zine Feedback. Not much improving needed, but thereās a few takeaways and lots of deserved celebrations of getting it right.
Hello everyone! My name is Carolanne and I am the Technology Trainer at the Cuyahoga Falls Library in Ohio. I am here based on the Guiding Ohio Online grant to work on their Makerspace programming and resources.
I am super excited to be one of the Beta Testers because we have been getting more and more into simple robotics and thought this could be a great low-fi way to get people thinking about movement and function.
Problem solving has always been one of my best inspirations for making. That followed closely by materials on hand and fun cool tools.
So this seemed kinda simple but I was surprised to find a giant jumping pillow at a campground inflated all the time, and it was huge, and fun! Far more durable than I would have expected.
Hey all. Iāve been looking over the Inflatables activity writeup to see if Iāve got any ideas for feedback.
First of all, I love that it follows the same easy-to-read, well-organized layout of the other PLIX activity writeups.
The photo of the activity supplies shows that this program can be run relatively inexpensively. Links to purchase the iron and other not-so-usual items are very helpful. Our afterschool programs always includes snacks, so double bonus points 
for this activity because it solves the perennial problem of empty chip bags left strewn about the libraryās meeting room after the kiddosā ride picks them up!
Anyway, back to the feedbackā¦
Looking closely at the How To Make Examples document, item #8 mentions the need to check for air leaks. In my limited inflatable experience, the air leak issue has come up every single time. So I think perhaps that could be its own numbered step in the process.
Iāll stop there for now so this post doesnāt get too long. Will take a look at the alternative methods next.
Hey again beta testers 
Just wanted to follow up with some (partial) documentation from those of us here in Phoenix! Given that many of our customers are younger AND weāre doing our programming virtually these days, weāve been trying to explore non-heat-source-reliant ways to have fun with inflatables. In terms of materials, weāve played around with newspaper, old grocery bags, ziplocs, snack bags, etcā¦ for binding methods, weāve used masking tape, duct tape, double sided tape, glue sticks, tacky glue, staples, and more! The results have been mixed, and few designs have been totally wowing. Two things, though, have been clear:
Ok ā¦ for now, hereās a few snapshots to give you an idea of our most recent experiments:
Okā¦thatās all for now! Hope that some of these ideas can be useful for those of you doing kid-focused programming in your libraries!!
,
Ryan
So the forum was giving me a little bit of a run around with posting media so I created a Google photo Album. [https://photos.app.goo.gl/Tz6a84yJmddYueEG8] (Comments for directions)
When creating with paper and tape if you cut out the triangles (instead of tape on the inside of your object.) Then seal the hole (triangle cutout) on both sides with tape your get a better motion. Check out the last video in the album.
I did try just removing triangles on one side of the grabber but the double cut out and tape motion was SO MUCH BETTER!
Had an amazing open-hour-playtest session today with @lauriebee , @Tracy, @CTkach, @rygreene, and @Chris_Dorman! Finally had the opportunity to take on paperflatables, as pioneered by Ry and the amazing folks in Phoenix (shoutout to Shams, Jeff, and Lori!).
@Chris_Dorman had the idea of cutting shapes directly into the paper, which worked excellently! (See her above post which details this method in more detail.) Here are some of my first protoypes using tape and (origami) paper only:
2) diamond ii ā
I was delighted to see that the pleats worked using these materials, and that the range of motion was so dramatic. Initially, I was worried that some of the more complex shapes (seams/folds/seals) wouldnāt be achievable with paper, but that doesnāt seem to be the case. These paper prototypes were also larger scale than those I typically make with mylar, so there is a ton of potential for exploring human-scale creations in this setup (though, further exploration is needed!).
Importantly, I donāt envision the heat-free variant of creation as a total replacement for the mylar+iron versionāitās rather both a supplement and method for rapidly prototyping how a mylar version might behave. @Tracy pointed out that, in some previous workshops sheās run, patrons are excited to use new tools, and that could be the case with the mini iron. @Chris_Dorman additionally noted that the ironing version might exist as the high-ceiling counterpart to the low floors offered by the paper iteration, and I agree! Excited to explore both configurations moving forward 
Update to add some additional views of the paperflatables:
Wow! Very cool to see this new taping method, @Chris_Dorman !! Will definitely be trying this out Also, @averymsnormandin ā¦ definitely agree that paperflatables are just another avenue, not at all a replacement! I hope that we are able to do heat-source-reliant mylar inflatable stuff in our programs soon ā for now, weāll keep tinkering away with the heatless stuff! Canāt wait to see the āhigh-ceilingsā people are able to float toward as they continue exploring this wild world
By the way, while doing some research for paperflatables precedents today, I came across this course on inflatables and soft sculptures offered by Carnegie Mellon University. I highly recommend taking a look through the site for some cool inspirations and templates! I was VERY excited to stumble upon the āimprovised inflatablesā assignment, which resulted in some amazing student work. Here are some examples from Rachel Lee:
I also loved the pieces created by Eliza Pratt and Joseph Paetz. Does anyone know what material theyāre using? (@binka, maybe?) It seems great to work withābut perhaps incongruous to the idea of upcycling or reusing materials The student that used leftover bread bags for an improvised inflatable was also a highlight! It reminded me about @lauriebee finding and experimenting with new materials leftover from food packaging to prototype some designs!
Update: I found the material! Colorful plastic bags from uline (paired with washi tape!).
Dramatic movement! These are fantastic, @averymsnormandin I especially love the pleated paperflatable. But I also love your color choice for the diamond with blue printed paper and orange tape. It reminds me of an inflatable life jacket a sailor might wear out on the ocean.
I continued my experiment using clear plastic shrink-wrap, an idea that @lauriebee had suggested. What makes the clear inflatable interesting is that you can see whatās going on inside it, so I put some silver and white confetti inside before sealing it up.
This inflatable features the pleat fold inspired by @averymsnormandinās paperflatable.
I discovered that the shrink-wrap requires a rolled edge in order to make a good seal with the mini iron. And that kind of an edge is not easy to do on the pleated areas, so I used some clear tape around those areas to make sure it was air-tight.
@Tracy THIS IS SO AWESOME. Great call on the rolled edges. I think weāll definitely include that as a point on the trouble-shooting patron handout we are planning to develop. So glad that you were able to make such an elegant creation with plastic shrink wrapāthis discovery definitely expands our material repertoire 
Iām inspired to test out using transparent materials nowāand dying to try out your visualized chemical reaction idea!
Some more experiments from open hours yesterday! I tried making a twist, but I think that paper was too thick so it just inflated. I took @rygreene 's suggestion and used wrapping paper which was the perfect thickness and they started to twist. With @Chris_Dorman 's tape technique I was able to get really good volume!
@Tracy & @caratarmey ā so cool to see these invisiflatables (with confetti 
) and the wriggling wrapping paper experiments, too! amazing !! also ā¦ if people are looking for ways to source more mylar, my supervisor wrote to her local ābuy nothingā group to see if anyone had old balloons ā¦ the answer was YES! exciting to see how just asking for what we need is allowing us to have lots of free material for our experiments 
