I also bought a pellet extruder kit, which can use shredded PLA waste, but haven't gotten around to putting it on a printer. (https://greenboy3d.de/)
I've had pretty good luck taking waste and melting it into silicone molds. Doable with a cheap toaster oven and purge waste and other scraps (though you need to break down larger waste)
For those who want to recycle filament without doing the work themselves, this person has such a project (and maybe there are others out there): https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/
bdcravens
So the author recycled 10 pounds of plastic, but used 8.5 pounds of glue to do so (184 sticks at 0.74 oz which seems to be average for glue sticks).
Cool project, but that ratio seems very ineffective. Especially since there is a realistic chance this ends up in landfill within some decades anyway.
esquire_900
For most people, waste -> filament recycling is a red herring (cost and time). Happy to see people thinking more laterally. I use an old toaster oven ($5 used) to fabricate round stock (fill old aluminum drink cans with waste, melt it down) and sheet stock (crush the melt between flat surfaces). I then use this material for all sorts of things (it makes beautiful marbled vases on the lathe, for example). There's almost zero net waste in this process (I recycle the cans).
More uses I have in mind:
- PLA drift sleeves for go karts (they're typically ABS, which, if you care about plastic in the environment, is a laughably bad choice for something which is intended to be ground to a fine powder in use)
- Stool (melt plastic into shallow cylindrical mold, push legs into melt)
- Decorative trim/picture frames (need a profiled router bit)
etc etc
Check Brothers Make on YT, they are the source of my inspiration.
gia_ferrari
A couple of years ago I listened to a Lex Fridman podcast with a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. I don't know the status of it, but the researcher spoke about how people in developing countries were experimenting with using local resources as 3D printer feedstock - things like ground-up sea shells - as a way of using local supply lines.
One of the most interesting things he said was that the current waste from 3D printing (and other technology) is really a sign of technical immaturity; nature repurposes everything - there is no trash in an ecosystem, only food for something else. Maybe we'll eventually learn to build infrastructure like that.
joshmarlow
I guess this is meaningful recycling also because it occupied the author.
Otherwise the author would have started a different project and likely would have consumed more material.
Sibling comments focus on the end result and that it might end up in trash - but that was always the plan.
thih9
Using the prints themselves as glue rather than buying glue for them would make this a more interesting form of recycling.
I wonder if you could make a large hand-driven low-resolution 3d printer which, rather than running on filament, had a hopper that you fill with failed prints. Really just a giant hot glue gun.
__MatrixMan__
Is this just delayed trash? At some point someone will throw it out.
It would be great to be able to create "art" and add something that degrades it.
is_true
It's really annoying to me that shredders and filament makers are so expensive. I probably generate less waste than average from my printer, but it still pains me to have to just throw it away because I can't do anything productive with it
voidUpdate
The only comforting thing to me about the waste (apart from the fact that our personal 3d printer waste is a margin of error compared to industrial waste so honestly, just don’t worry about it), is that at least PLA is biodegradable.
comments (10)
I did back the Creality shredder and filament maker that hasn't shipped yet, but I'm optimistic. (https://crowdfunding.creality.com/)
I also bought a pellet extruder kit, which can use shredded PLA waste, but haven't gotten around to putting it on a printer. (https://greenboy3d.de/)
I've had pretty good luck taking waste and melting it into silicone molds. Doable with a cheap toaster oven and purge waste and other scraps (though you need to break down larger waste)
For those who want to recycle filament without doing the work themselves, this person has such a project (and maybe there are others out there): https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/
bdcravens
Cool project, but that ratio seems very ineffective. Especially since there is a realistic chance this ends up in landfill within some decades anyway.
esquire_900
More uses I have in mind:
- PLA drift sleeves for go karts (they're typically ABS, which, if you care about plastic in the environment, is a laughably bad choice for something which is intended to be ground to a fine powder in use)
- Stool (melt plastic into shallow cylindrical mold, push legs into melt)
- Decorative trim/picture frames (need a profiled router bit)
etc etc
Check Brothers Make on YT, they are the source of my inspiration.
gia_ferrari
One of the most interesting things he said was that the current waste from 3D printing (and other technology) is really a sign of technical immaturity; nature repurposes everything - there is no trash in an ecosystem, only food for something else. Maybe we'll eventually learn to build infrastructure like that.
joshmarlow
Otherwise the author would have started a different project and likely would have consumed more material.
Sibling comments focus on the end result and that it might end up in trash - but that was always the plan.
thih9
I wonder if you could make a large hand-driven low-resolution 3d printer which, rather than running on filament, had a hopper that you fill with failed prints. Really just a giant hot glue gun.
__MatrixMan__
It would be great to be able to create "art" and add something that degrades it.
is_true
voidUpdate
atonse
barf
vomit even.
lardosaurusrex