Anyways the material is really cool (for not being wood), in all seriousness I thought I would hate due to its lack of cellulose, that wasn't the case. It was amazing stuff. It can be heat formed, printed on (in a process called dye sublimation), glued with special glue, cut with a CNC etc. Signmakers use rather extensively I've noticed. Our task was to work with it and find new uses for the counter top material. Because of its properties I knew I wanted to do something with food. I also knew that heat forming it was a process I was going to love.
I had about a zillion ideas, but didn't hit my stride until I chose a food culture to work with. I chose sushi, it had a lot of positive things going for it, sushi is about plating, it has tradition, it tastes awesome. Here is what I came up with after about 4 months in the design process...
Okay that is just the rough mock-up out of foam-core, with foam stand-ins for actual sushi. I'm liking it so I went ahead and built molds in CAD then cut them out on a CNC routing machine. Then I threw some Corian blanks into the oven and got the hydraulic press ready and SQUISH, here's the final thing...complete with freshly dead fish.
I have mileage left to go on my ideas for this process, and I'll be posting about those products as I get them ready for production. Also check out this great write-up about our installation on the Surface&Panel blog.
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