What to do with all those AOL CD's

I wanted to do something with plastic CD's besides adding them to the land fill - My solution was to use them build 3-D geometric constructions. I describe here how I used 12 CD's to build a Dodecahedron. I also built a 32 CD trucated Icosahedron, 12 of the CD's must be cut smaller an that takes a lathe,.

Step 1 Materials and methods

1. CDROMs are made of Lucite (acrylic)plastic
2. I connect them by gluing 1/2" sections of flexible lucite hinges purchased from Tap Plastics - $1 for a 12" hinge. 25 joints are needed so you need at least 2 hinges.
3. The glue I used is "WELDON #16 clear, thickened cement for acrylic" Also purchsed at Tap.
4. A single dodecahedron "ball" is constructed in 2 halve of 6 CD's each using a layout jig I will describe.

Comments

[thepelton]

A castaway sailor during World War 2 used a dime lashed to a fishhook to catch fish. The shininess of the dime made it look like a sardine to a larger fish. You could do the same with a chunk of a DVD.

[xuchilan]

reminds me of a disco ball :D i wanna try to make one =P

[ilpug]

you could totally make a disco ball out of these!!!

[gurtek]

Nice piece of information for converting useless cd's to some cool stuff, i really like it and it tell me what to do with my old cd's. :^{) thanks.}

[CDSBigsby]

Nice one! I never could make myself throw away crap CD's either, so I always had a nice little stack lying around. Eventually, I thought to shatter them all into small-ish pieces, then I made a few bowls and a lampshade out of them, which turned out pretty rad, though fragile.

[Timofly]

i really wanna say pointless, unless u like doing it, then its not pointless ahha, make it like a solar panel thingy or something...there must be more than cd's than geometric shapes

[Grey_Wolfe]

Art doesn't have to have a point, that's why it's art... ...kinda like candy. lol

[jak06]

i never get any cds in the mail

[dogseat]

I'm gathering AOL cds as part of the accumulation project!-->
http://www.accumulationproject.org/brown/index.html
Until September, 2006, I'm collecting them and building 'Pillars of Decency"
If you have any more, I'd love to get them!

93 Bright St.
Jersey City, NJ 07302

eric

[!Andrew_Modder!]

do you still need more?? ( i might have a few!)

[!Andrew_Modder!]

wtf!?

[thinker]

hey just a thought for ya CD thing if u cut triangles central around the centre(LOL!) ud be able to glue em in at the joins between CD's.Then all ud need to do was attach a lightbulb and BOOM! instant retro discoball courtesy of AOL :D

[offlogic]

As Jehova-1 is my witness, R.Bucky Full'o'----, I feel your pain, really, but TRY THE DECAF! Genocide must be reserved for SPECIAL occasions.
We strung up a bunch of the AOL CDs we'd been "gifted" with as open air mobiles, just to disturb the starlings. They seemed to work on the birds, but drove the neighbors nuts, since their cats kept trying to catch the reflections, so... we didn't use nerve gas on the neighbors. We took the "art" down.
Yes, the CDs did look stunning in the sunlight and did us more good than signing up for AOL would do for anyone with a single intact neuronal connection, but these were/are neighbors worth keeping (they beat the meth-heads with the pit-bulls that were tearing through the fence to get at us).
Art sacrificed for the greater (our own) good.

[R. Buckminster F_cker]

I appreciate that you seem to keep a cool head. I could stand to be more like you in that regard. (And I respect that you appreciate Hunter S. I think the last thing he wrote was an article for Playboy's 50th anniversary edition - a great rant, if you happen to have missed it.) Respectfully, I don't see the correspondence between your experience with your neighbors (I'd have taken the CD's down myself) and my own situation here. Are you saying that the three dudes I criticized are "neighbors worth keeping?" If so, who are the web equivalents of the "meth-heads with the pit-bulls"? Which art is to be sacrificed to the three unappreciative dullards above? Why should anything of value be sacrificed to them - shouldn't the opposite be the case? Doesn't it serve the greater good to chastise them? It sounds like your neighbors had a legitimate problem, or at least, a problem which they could clearly identify: their cats were tear-assing around. I doubt your neighbors knocked on your door and said, derisively,insipidly, and to no particular end, "What's the point of your mobiles? Somebody sure had a lot of time/CD's...". Now imagine a whole neighborhood teeming with idiots like that - all knocking on your door. "That's a stupid car you bought." "Your wife's vegetable garden - somebody has a lot of Prozac and free time." Your neighborhood would cease to be a neighborhood. You'd be in high school again! Why don't we just hand the whole earth over to the Beast Lord SATAN? I say nip this B.S. in the bud - with extreme prejudice - before the whole website is overrun by dumb savages, ie, teens. I was especially irked at these three because the dodecahedron - and the rest of the Platonic and Archimedean solids - have fascinated men of genius for hundreds of years. Besides the two Greeks for whom they are named, these polyhedral forms have, over the centuries, fascinated the likes of Leonardo DaVinci, Johannes Kepler, Albrecht Durer, as well as countless other mathematicians, physicists, engineers and artists - oh - and Bucky Fuller. These forms are enduringly relevant. Just recently, scientists interpreted data from NASA's anisotropy probe satellite to indicate that the shape of the universe may be that of a Poincarre dodecahedron. (The poincarre Dodecahedron is sort of a 4-D analog to the 3D dodecahedron, and it has special and rather amazing properties. Search Science News and Nature for more on this.) So Plato may have been remarkably prescient to write of the dodecahedron in his Timaeus, "..and there remained a fifth element with which the gods embroidered the constellations upon the heavens." These forms are paradigmatically elegant - perfect, even, in a "Platonic" sort of way. Their contemplation is its own reward. They're beautiful. But anyway, I guess I just flip out when teenagers act like... teenagers. No, sir, I don't like 'em. I say, if we're gonna teach 'em to read, then we shouldn't allow them to congregate. Divide and conquer. Keep 'em in their place, y'see? Sure, you gotcher good ones, but the rest of 'em's just... (by the content of their character). Teens - AAARRGH!!! Learn some respect!!! I mean for substantive, meaningful stuff!!!

[Mepain]

like i said before, you make me sick. you spent all that time to type something that is obviously overdone. you could have saved about 15 minutes of your life if you said something a lot simpler like "i hate teenagers" or "i think that (insert comment her) was an unnecesary addition to this instructable," but noooooo, you have to go on and make the rest of us waste our time reading your useless comments by writing a book. give it a rest, and i, too, suggest using decaf.

[R. Buckminster F_cker]

The point was less that I hate teenagers (I don't really hate them at all - but I may still have issues with the ones who hated me when I was a teen!) - and more that polyhedra are very worthy of one's attention. I'm sorry I couldn't get you more interested in polyhedra, mepain - I tried my best to "sell" them. It was probably the severity of my previous critical language that turned you off to my more substantive message about these beautiful(and not entirely useless) forms. In retrospect, I was pretty unhappy back when I pounced on those three guys. These days, I'd simply ignore comments if I felt they were worthless or discouraging of somebody's contribution effort. However, I'd like to add that I don't think there is anything wrong with reasonably intelligent "trolling" when a "troll" defends something of value, or assails something meaningless or stultifying. People these days seem to be so down on passionate, smart, individualistic negativity! And going "over the top" in a rant is fun if you've never tried it! I am far more troubled by the widespread disapproval for trolls than by the odd troll's disapproval. I wish I could say that I understood you and your response more fully, mepain. The truth is, I'm not sure where you're coming from, or how you choose what to pay attention to. I suggest you try caffeinated coffee and additive-free cigarettes and just see what those do for you. You might find yourself stimulated!

[katz]

Hey R.Buckminster! This place is for creative ideas, not for random expression of your thoughts and hates - this particular istructable and everything beneath it shows how to reuse CD. This is what you supposed to post comments on. If you want to chat on random subjects and hate people - go create your own blog, or find an appropriate forum !

[Chris Bilton]

I am currently converting a room completely lined with disused CDs. This is the ceiling; Im working my way down. I plan to cover everything, furniture fixtures and fittings with CDs and wear silver foil garments when inside the room. I will be an art installation called, The Oven Ready Kid Is Foiled Again. Na, only kidding, but the ceiling is real, it looks like an explosion in a computer shop. I think it is a shame to dump shiny stuff, must be the magpie in me, bloody painful having a magpie inside you, pecking away.

[Dog_Man]

Wow! I like it! All I came up with was gluing the printed sided together to make silver on both sides. Then I hung them in the trees in my backyard as sun catchers. As the wind blew them, they created running rainbows on the back yard. I'd like to see what your design would cast if I just hung it from a branch...

[frogbutt8]

i put pictures on one side and hang them up. the light catches them and you have rainbows and a new way to show your pictures.

[Ursell]

you know what would be pretty cool...it to make it in to a lamp shade...just a thought

[gamemasterbm]

if you want something to do and you have a LOT of cds.....

http://websites.quincy.edu/~matskvi/qball.html

[ninja kitty]

holy fing shiz thats alot of cds

[James (pseudo-geek)]

wow

[The Muffin Man]

Woah, someone had alot of cds and time

[R. Buckminster F_cker]

(removed by author or community request)

[CameronSS]

So, none of them posted a single instructable and that makes them unimaginative...you've only posted one. That's creative. I've only posted one too, but I just got here a week ago. Quit dissing people who did nothing to you or anyone else and shut your pie hole.

[Mepain]

alright, listen. where in the world do you have the right to be saying such inapropiate, inatiquate, unnecesarry, and just all-arond wrong comments to people who are just trying to contribute to the community. The Muffin Man says "woah, someone had a lot of cds and time." so what? it doesnt give you the right to mouth off to them just because they spelled one friggin' word wrong. also, why would you perposely spell other's names differently just becaused your mad at what they would say? go take anger management classes. and in case you havent noticed, when you post a comment, the bottom of the comment box says "'we have a "be nice" comment policy.' please be positive and constructive with your comments or risk being banned from our site." this means that if you dont have anything good to say, dont bother. furthermore, what accomplishment do you make for yourself by saying that someone should go die, calling them an ass (which is a donkey), saying that they have no intelligence, calling them names, and offending them in other varios ways that i feel would be innapropriate for the rest of the internet to see. frankly, your name deosnt seem very apropriate for the net, but thats your fault. you make me sick.

[mechaninja]

self-confidence and bragging rights.

[Danny]

and you took the time to write this? it doesnt make sence

[The Muffin Man]

hey sorry i dont want any trouble my god im not saying the instructable is crap or anything, So back off

[markuss5]

hehehe. i like what you wrote..

[heav]

cool thing, probably hidden from the inside the glue in some way (some tape with the glue) could enhance the external appearance

[magganrchy]

Aol CD's are surprisingly durable...use them as Ice scrapers that's what I do

[marc92]

not a bad idea CD's are great multi-taskers

[James (pseudo-geek)]

especialy when they only contain junk like...AOL (they call it America Online, I call it Always on Lag)

[marc92]

True... True...

[James (pseudo-geek)]

lol

[marc92]

Maybe you could put a light bulb inside it and hang it from the ceiling for a cool light fixture.

[Eddbot]

what's with allthe really long comments nice idea by the way