It turned out to be burned. The fire was too strong, even the beans were all melted.

The heat gun is a stable thermal source. After the testing, beans were able to melt in steady process and not burned, but there were a lot of bubbles on the surface. They were making the result not good looking.

It seemed not affirmative to make beans stick together becoming a cube. They were not completely melted. We've try to cut it, but the blade just broke it into pieces.

We've try Turpentine, Lacquer Thinner, Acetone, Toluene. Only Acetone can make beans melt completely. 

We know the characteritic of Copper, good thermal conductivity, to try to melt the beans. The result showed, it seemed the container or platform was problem. The fire was still too strong to make it steady. So after this time, we gave up using blowtourch.

We used back the heat gun because of its stable heat. It seemed the process went well, but after the beans stopped melting, it was difficult to peel off from the copper plate. In result, we still peeled it down successfully, but just needed to be very careful.

It can make the beans melt quicker, but the result showed copper plate was too small to create big piece. The fire even turned green because of the burning of copper plate. It looked cool, but not useful.

This time, we backed to pan again. It seemed that the pan is the perfect container to hold and melt beans.

Second Try：After choosing some good looking beans, we attempted to control the fire while melting them. It seemed worked at the end. And we made some great work here.

Third Try：It can melt. We started wonder about if it can be like liquid flowing around. We dicovered it flowed easily with stable heat. Just like glue or colloid.

Fourth Try：During the pour out process, we found out if the colloid left heat, it dehumidified quicker than we realized. So there were some result stuck on the edge of pan. Only be peeled off after becoming solid.

Fifth Try：Because the pan was put on the stove, we truned out to use blowtourch again to keep the heat of the pan. After few attempts, we made it in large scale and just like liquid flow.

Sixth Try：The beans were stuck together in one piece, but it can be melt into liquid. We thought maybe it is able to become a thin membrane. So after using chopsticks, it seemed not as same as thin membrane looking.

Seventh Try：It showed chopsticks were not working, but we were wondering, is it able to pour out and use hand to squeeze it into flat ? But still, after few attempts, beacuse lefting heat can make the liquid dry out quickly. It is even not able to flatten it without heat.

This is the result that we done for the best in the process.

Finally, we learned how to use gas stove to "cook" the acrylic beads the best way. 

We made it melt steady and safely in the pan. 

Acrylic melted easily by stable thermal with the surface not bubbling and bad looking. Beads can be put in with a large amount to make the piece bigger.

In the production process, it can be made into nails, pendants. 

Even coasters are great to use this material. 

Bob:

We love this class so much. This is not just trying some different ways to make design or product. This is much like a process of discovering beauty and balance of feeling. To make much more different product, it is totally neccesery to know more about the characteristic of different materials. 

Sincerely, thanks to Teacher Kevin giving us this open-minded and satifying lesson to try any methods without judging. I do enjoy in a lot.

Anyway, this is a great lesson to attend. I learned a lot about material characteristic.

Shania:

This class gave us the creative freedom to really explore materials of our own choices, which for our group was beads. I learned to enjoy the open-minded process of experimenting with different methods to bring out the best characteristics of the acrylic beads that we used. In the end, it proved to be a personally satisfying project, and I intend to keep this mindset as I work on future projects.

Bob Lin & Shania Chen 

Junior Students of Industrial Design Department 

Tunghai University, Taiwan