We partnered up with the Green Umbrella Learning Lab, a sandbox course on campus that has an aim of making the Phillips Exeter campus more eco-friendly. The aim of this course is to find a problem we would like to address with the hope that our solution making campus more eco friendly and then develop that solution. Our team partnered with team EXcyle from GULL. Our goal is to take old school newspapers and make them into new paper products. We decided to help by using our STEM skills to design a heated press which speeds up the pulp drying process. We built the heated press, and now, one of our products, postcards, are even being sold in the campus bookstore!
We have also since the original heated press decided to expand the project to building a full scale conveyor belt with extrusion, flattening, and heating modules so that the whole process will speed up and become automated. Automation will allow for more paper to be made, for the paper to be made more efficiently, and will make it so the paper can keep being made after the original engineers and visionaries behind the process graduate.