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For today's electronics manufacturing process, the emphasis on stable functionality, durability, and fixed physical forms is designed to ensure long-term usability. However, this focus on robustness and permanence complicates the disassembly and recycling processes, leading to significant environmental repercussions. In this paper, we present three approaches that leverage easily recyclable materials-specifically, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and liquid metal (LM)-alongside accessible manufacturing techniques to produce electronic components and systems with versatile form factors. Our work centers on the development of recyclable electronics through three methods: 1) creating sheet electronics by screen printing LM traces on PVA substrates; 2) developing foam-based electronics by immersing mechanically stirred PVA foam into an LM solution; and 3) fabricating recyclable electronic tubes by injecting LM into mold cast PVA tubes, which can then be woven into various structures. To further assess the sustainability of our proposed methods, we conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impact of our recyclable electronics in comparison to their conventional counterparts.

We present Shape-Haptics, an approach for designers to rapidly design and fabricate passive force feedback mechanisms for physical interfaces. Such mechanisms are used in everyday interfaces and tools, and they are challenging to design. Shape-Haptics abstracts and broadens the haptic expression of this class of force feedback systems through 2D laser cut configurations that are simple to fabricate. They leverage the properties of polyoxymethylene plastic and comprise a compliant spring structure that engages with a sliding profile during tangible interaction. By shaping the sliding profile, designers can easily customize the haptic force feedback delivered by the mechanism. We provide a computational design sandbox to facilitate designers to explore and fabricate Shape-Haptics mechanisms. We also propose a series of applications that demonstrate the utility of Shape-Haptics in creating and customizing haptics for different physical interfaces., Comment: To appear in the conference proceedings at ACM CHI 2022