Don’t waste money buying different bags with different weaves and patterns when you can have a single one that you can change depending on your mood or style.
Woven bags, especially those made from sustainable and natural materials, are a delight to the eyes. Some just can’t get enough of them, so they buy and buy until they realize they have one too many. It’s really a waste of space, of money, and of materials, not to mention these could eventually end up getting thrown out in the end. What if you could have just one “woven” bag that can have all the patterns and designs that you want? That’s sort of the idea behind this prototype bag, which is more like the seed of an idea that could actually be turned into an actual product.
This “color-changing tubing bag” is actually more like a container for an actual bag, or at least some flexible material to actually hold objects inside. The “bag” is made from 1/4′ OD, 1/8′ ID silicone tubing that was woven, heated, and then cooled to retain that shape. While it can be worn like a tote bag, the gaps in between don’t make it an effective bag on its own, not unless you’re always carrying large objects.
The magic of the bag is that you can have colored patterns thanks to colored water pumped inside the tubing. You can just fill the entire bag with a single color, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, you can alternate colored water and air to create gaps in order to create different patterns, like dots and dashes. One can even use different colors to create more complicated designs.
The prototype uses a microcontroller to alternate pumping liquid and pumping air, and it seems that everything has to be done manually. Computers, however, are wonderful things, especially when paired with brilliant and creative minds. It is entirely possible, for example, to develop software that will automate all of these so that a bag owner can simply give it a pattern they want to be “painted” on the bag and come back an hour later to a finished product.
It’s definitely a lot of work compared to just buying a new bag, but the benefits could outweigh the prep time. You won’t be limited to a single design, for example, and only by the colors of water you have available. Except for the silicone tubing, which could probably be substituted for something more sustainable, the bag has a lower impact on the environment in the long run. Durability is still debatable, however, but the idea is definitely interesting enough to deserve more research.
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