Frustrated With Finding Certain Material..

[Guest Duylam]

Hello all,

**note I am not up to date with any technical jargon, so forgive me if I sound like a noob

 

I'm an amateur that's really into design, and I have been messing around with some materials to make a pyramid tea bag, but without the synthetic material.

 

I'm looking for a material that is water-permeable, but has rigidity when submersed; also it is non-toxic, possibly biodegradable, and safe to mix with food/drinks. So basically it is like cheese-cloth (maybe not that thick or as fine), but rigid like the nylon tea bags.

 

However, I'm not looking for any thermoplastic material, but I am looking for that rigidity. I've been looking at filter papers for tea bags and trying to find some sort of fiber that can keep shape under water.

 

Do you guys have any idea? I have thought about making actual structural changes to this design like adding paperboard to all the vertices, but I'm really looking for a substitute material instead.

[Guest Ceri]

Does heat sealed paper not keep it's shape when submerged? From what I understand of the infusion process it only has to keep a loose shape. By increasing the size of the sealed area, maybe doubling them back on themselves you could make stronger supporting vertices.

 

If that doesn't work you could try using bamboo fibre but I doubt there is a cloth that you could buy off the shelf that has the same properties as tea bag paper so you would have to be able to weave your own fabric if you wanted to try and get it perfect.

 

Most heat sealing also includes some form of synthetic to act as the bonding agent so you will also have to work out a natural replacement for this if you want to have a fully biodegradable bag. You could always stitch the bag which could also ad stiffness to the supporting vertices but this would most likely contribute to quite a hefty manufacturing cost for something that will be used once and binned.