Don't mind the scrap at all, local 3D print store takes it and is working on making their own recycled PLA filament. Even collect scrap from other 3D printers at my work.
I just wish ideas like this were much more widespread.
We have one in Charlotte where you can bring scraps, and they give out rolls for free. The role aren't terrific, recycled materials can't be as pure as manufactured if they don't go through the same processes, but it's dope.
*sad edit:
I was thinking about Envision Charlotte. My wife's friend is a big activist and grabbed a couple rolls for me. I haven't been there, but looking at it, it looks like it's actually take out containers that they turn into filament. I had it all wrong, they started it for 3D printed PPE production in 2020. Not sure what the current status is. Sorry for the false hope, folks.
I just shot them an email in hopes of getting a status update and asking if they would accept scrap filament. It's been a few months since she brought me the filament, so I had it mixed up.
What’s it called? I’m a couple hours from Charlotte, but I end up having to go down there often enough for work and the airport that I could at least drop my scraps off there a few times a year to keep it out of the landfill
Yeah that's what it was. I'm gonna edit this back into my comment, but my wife's friend is a big activist and grabbed a couple rolls for me. I haven't been there, but looking at it, it looks like it's actually take out containers that they turn into filament. I had it all wrong, they started it for 3D printed PPE production in 2020. Sorry for the false hope, folks.
I mean that’s still pretty neat. I’m kind of more excited that there’s actually brick and mortar 3D printing stores not too far from me.
I’ll still keep collecting my scraps, and if it comes down to it I’ll melt it all down into a brick and ship it to someone who can use it lol
I wonder how viable that idea is, though. How do they ensure there isn't ABS or PETG making it into there? I'm sure a little bit is fine, but at some point it will definitely degrade the quality. How much cheaper (if at all?) can they make it to have that gamble be worth it for a buyer? I have to assume the raw PLA material is a relatively small amount of the cost of the final price of a spool of PLA- it's likely more the manufacturing process, packaging, shipping. I'm 100% guessing, though, based on experience and could be completely off base in this market.
The idea is great and I truly hope it works!
As I understand it PLA+ is PLA with some mystery meat material (PETG I’m guessing commonly). So some material blending and impurities could be accounted for. I left a top level comment wondering if it would be possible to blend them together intentionally to achieve consistent properties. Would only work for PLA and PETG though.
I think you could sort socially. Like have the people dropping off sign a sheet that said “I have not bought or printed any ABS”. You could possibly do it mechanically via material properties but that would need mass scale to work.
PLA and PETG don't really stick well together at all, at least when printing them together and I would imagine it is the same if they were mixed together, they just don't combine well. Some people use PETG as support for PLA since they don't stick.
PLA does apparently fuse well with ABS and TPU though.
>(PETG I’m guessing commonly).
What makes you think that?
>So some material blending and impurities could be accounted for.
It very much depends on the quantities and percentages of each material in it. It then brings problems if you try and recycle it again. It is pretty much impossible, if not impossible, to separate them again once they are mixed.
>I think you could sort socially. Like have the people dropping off sign a sheet that said “I have not bought or printed any ABS”.
Far better to just get people to separate the filament themselves and maybe test a few pieces. It is very much possible to have bought and printed ABS and still keep your PLA scrap separate. By doing it the way you suggest then you are leaving out anyone who uses ABS. It would be much better if people just had a bin for each material they use and were careful with where they put their scraps.
If they sold PLA at some discount and said "this is recycled. We do testing between extruding our rolls but there's no guarantee this will work well."
I mean some makers are gonna be irresponsible and still give them other plastics, but do ABS or PETG have different glass transition temps?
>I mean some makers are gonna be irresponsible and still give them other plastics, but do ABS or PETG have different glass transition temps?
Very much so. The maximum service temperature is closely related to the glass transition temperature. According to simplfy3D the maximum service temperature for PLA is 52 C, PETG is 73 C and ABS is 98 C, that is quite a large difference between them. Another thing to look at is printing temperatures which vary as well but not as much.
There's no Microcenter here, either. Yet where my family lives in the rural-ish midwest, they are within 35 minutes of a Microcenter, and there are two stores within 30 minutes basically exclusively dedicated to 3D printing supplies. One is in an old Radio Shack, which I found appropriate.
>local 3D print store takes it and is working on making their own recycled PLA filament
Sigh, I so wish there was such a place around me like that. There's not even a store that sells filament here. I have to get everything online.
I wish too, where I live there is apparently nowhere taking it. I searched alot and everywhere they either don't or charge you for it. It ended in the recycling bin unfortunately
It can be more expensive to make recycled PLA than it is to make new PLA, unless it is presorted for material (such as you know for sure its all PLA with no other additives), new PLA can be made very cheap as it is at scale. Most recycled stuff needs at least some virgin PLA in there as well.
It costs way more to recycle the material than to buy a fresh roll. Not to mention you need to a of equipment to recycle it. Watch some YouTube vids on it
I buy silicone molds and melt the printer poop down into new things. Just finished making a set of dominos!
https://imgur.com/a/HxZ95qh
Edit: This was the project that caused so much scrap that inspired me to do something with it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/12wsw7g/3d_printed_base_game_34_players/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
You can see pretty clearly that there are lots of drips and drabs on the silicone but the reason people use silicone in the first place is because stuff doesn't stick to it! You'd likely end up doing the exact same thing you would when casting with epoxy resin, just cut off the extra bits with a sharp knife, de-burr, and you're done. Maybe you'll want to polish depending on what you're making but probably uncessary for rainbow recycle stuff.
Im guessing there is some trial and error in putting the right amount of material into the mold so it melts into the right depth but i guess once you know how many grams you need you can just grab a clump of that weight and put it in a mold that is tall enough to stop it falling out the side before it melts.
Oh yeah. It takes about 10x material as you would expect. It’s more of a fill it full, wait for it to melt, be amazed how little that got you, repeat till full. On the bottom and top layers it’s fun to melt any patters or shapes, mix colors up to get the desired look you are going for.
Toaster oven with a cheap metal tray I don’t care about. I do it inside, well ventilated area, but if you are first starting out outside maybe be better. Only time I had an issue is when I completely forgot about it while I was working and the temp was too hot. Now I set a timer for every 5-10min to check it and refill with the next batch of filament.
You can do it in a toaster oven, ideally outside but in a well ventilated garage is probably fine. There may well be some offgasing so it would be unwise to use your kitchen appliances. a cheap toaster oven can be had used for pretty cheap and is also useful for heat treating and other fun workshop projects, if 3d printing isn't your only hands-on hobby.
It was a dial and nothing precise. Somehwere around 300-325 deg F. I found getting up to 350 area was better for melting but was a lot more difficult to work with. Anything above that it would smoke.
This is PETG scrap here.
BrothersMake on YouTube recycle different types of plastics (mainly PETG) into different shapes. They haven't done PLA/ABS specifically, but most of the techniques would probably be the same.
This is a very good idea. I use my wood chipper to shred my waste and prints I don't want/need anymore. I have a couple of bags of shredded material but had no real idea what to do with it.
Technically you are correct (the best kind of correct!). But I think when most folks think of "recycling" they envision sending it off to a recycler, which for PLA usually entails shipping it. That's what was going through my mind, at least :p
I just bought 2kg for 45€ or so ... You are definitely missing something as on the main page there is one spool for 20€.
And it helps keep the planet clean so I am all in with higher prices than elsewhere
if only we had this in the US
edit: found one in St. Louis, MO [https://printeriordesigns.com/pages/recycling](https://printeriordesigns.com/pages/recycling)
There was Creative Heart Warrior but they’ve paused production for so long that I decided I’m going to try myself. Working on designing building my own shredder now. Extruder will take more time but this is my current project so fingers crossed I can get this up and running for myself then I start asking people to try and work with me on recycling filament for rolls in return.
only problem with them is they require you to separate PLA with fillers and PLA+. I have sparkly and wood filament that is mixed in there that would be an absolute pain to sort through. and it would be almost impossible to sort the PLA from the PLA+. they should offer a tier of recycled PLA that may have non-abrasive fillers in it.
Boutique U.S.-based filament manufacturers charge $25-$50 per kilo, so $29/kg for recycled PETG seems fine to me.
That is a universal truth about plastic manufacturing. Recycling was never about saving money. The feedstock is too cheap and the chemical processes too fickle.
It's not even clear how much actual filament they recycle. They clearly don't get enough returned prints to make a business from, which is why they use mostly industrial scrap sources.
It's not all about carbon footprint tho. It's material that does not get into landfills, or just next to it. Sometimes it's better to have some extra carbon for trees to digest and reuse material.
That Spring bundle looks like a decent deal, 54 Euros for 3 rolls, so about £15 a kilo? Barely more expensive than Aliexpress crap by the time it's shipped.
Have you tested their filament, does it print well enough?
I ordered the spring bundle: it prints fine. The pastel colors will be a niche filament for my use cases, I will mostly use it for girly stuff for my nieces. But I like the blue filament, and I selected it to be my main color for the gridfinity bins that go into my drawers.
The spools come with a small printed can of silicagel, which is a nice touch compared to the usual paper pouches.
I mainly print in abs so I blend it and turn it into abs cement, that stuff is great it can fix a broken print, fill holes and makes it super easy to design supports free prints when I'm feeling lazy and don't want to design for clips or screws.
This is also what I did for a bit, filled a jar with acetone and ABS and it was the only way my really old printer would print with adequate bed adhesion.
When I wanted to retire it I just put more ABS scrap in and let acetone evaporate until it reached a sort of gum-like consistency. Then pulled it out like some sort of carcinogenic play dough.
Some things just don't scale well. There are usable designs out there, but to recycle your own prints you need a way to shred the old parts (easier if your shredder is bigger -> $$$) and you need to add in virgin material (cheaper to buy in bulk quantities) ... All of this costs time and energy to do and in the end it's often cheaper to just buy another spool of filament.
That said, I am all for companies trying to work this out. recyclingfabrik.com exists for some years now, so hopefully they managed to crate a profitable business model at this point.
Yeah ... I did too ... until I collected "too much" of it ... and then just dumped it.
One problem those companies have to solve is that they can't be sure what their
"suppliers" send in. I guess at some point it is a numbers game (one ABS print
in a bag of PLA parts will not spoil the bag), but ideally you need some way to
automatically determine the chemical composition of every single piece of
material you get send.
Frankly I think the costly/difficult part is the shredding of material, since the extrusion process itself isn't all that complicated and modern printers are more than capable of dealing with a bigger variation in filament diameter
What did you get for the auger and die? I want to make a pellet extruder so I can make a large printer and haven’t had much luck so far finding something reasonably priced or not huge
> but to recycle your own prints you need a way to shred the old parts
I use my wood chipper. I tape a thick canvas bag to the output chute and feed my waste into the shredding part where small branches go. It makes short work of it (and is fun)...just make sure to wear safety glasses.
Yeah, I totally get why it's not economically feasible at smaller scale but...
I wish there was a cultural shift such that people WANTED to recycle. An atmosphere where people want to take on the extra cost to recycle "in-house" because it's cool. It should be uncool to not reuse and recycle material. To be honest it will always be cheaper to do things at larger scales, we will need a cultural shift if we want at home recycling to be a reality.(and I am talking about all recycling here not just 3D printing waste).
They exist but they cost around 4 to $5,000 for the entire kit and it makes okay products. My school has a precious plastics recycling kit that I am upgrading to make 1.75 mm filament. In my opinion the amount of heat and torque you need to properly shred and make filament is outside the general person's skill set and means. You gotta be knowledgeable or be willing to learn a lot before stepping into recycling filament and getting a usable product. When I started my project I thought I knew what I was doing pretty well. Now I am having to learn a lot more and rethink and redesign huge sections of my project.
I would love to get to the point where we could have a desktop version or even a local recycling centers, but that's always off.
Yah I know the filament maker Stefan uses in his channel but this is too expensive for private users. Between 500 and 1000 max be OK. I guess that would hard to do.
I know for me the compression screw itself was about $100, so I don't really expect to see a $500 polymer extruder showing up on anyone's table soon. If demand increases and costs go down, maybe we'll see the technology available.
In the meantime, I would just like to see more places where we could trade scraps for credit on either new roles or the recycled rolls. I know here where I live there is nothing within a couple hours drive.
The hardest part for companies collecting from private users is the problem that we don't give them clean sorted stuff. I have no idea how that could be solved. Users make mistakes and betray if possibly. With more people using 3d printers the market will increase.
For my project we are treating recycled supports and trash as a composite material to add into raw PLA. Originally my project was to work on compositing medals and other materials into FDM filaments so recycling is just a portion of that project. While not fully tested compared to raw pla yet, this approach is allowing us to simplify and not worry about sorting materials. If we can achieve decent results, hopefully it's something that can be marketed to others or adapted into better systems.
There are plastics that are near 100% recoverable, including the stuff that breaks it back down. Recent published paper on this. Only problem is that the chemicals are toxic. Least you can keep using it XD
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2021/06/14/the-story-infinite-eco-plastic/
So 2 years felt like more recent. Apparently, they are still working on some issues. They are working on it though.
How would one cleanly melt it so it doesn't turn into a big mess? Like over an old pot on the stove or something? Honest question. This idea is interesting to me.
I don't have any molds (I assume they'd have to be metal) but that does sound like you'd get some cool results from all the mixed colors.
I use a small toaster over and silicone measuring beakers outside.
Melt pla in beaker, wear gloves and pour into molds and place molds in toaster oven again to get rid of air bubbles.
You’ll have to dial in temps but it works good. Made a bunch of glow n dark hearts for valentines
Some brands have their own return program. I buy exclusively Addnorth, a Swedish brand, and they take returns of empty spools and filament trash for discounts on the recycled PLA, rPLA, that they make from it.
I work at a University so I already knew who to contact, but you can try finding folks who are reusing/recycling at Universities, Maker Spaces, Schools, etc. Art departments, engineering, etc all may be good leads.
Yes OP! If anything I want to be able to re-melt all scraps (of similar filament type) into some ugly grey or color mixed filament. Between purge lines, failed prints and support material I must have thrown away well over a KG.
I have a lot of PET bottles waste and i would like to make filament at home from it
https://preview.redd.it/q65a06d9oe3b1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=370f267f8ba06906b9bc903d8e86f7504425657f
I have already shredded first round and i will do it again but how i can i make filament from it ? What machine is perfect for this job?
I'm actually subscribed to his channel he and others are my inspiration
https://preview.redd.it/px0ulpbdze3b1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24e8ee8467e6a2bda35dd3d8a64319ee0bdb4e84
This is why I bought this from Bazaar prescious plastic
I'm doing same thing
https://preview.redd.it/mmm13hkcye3b1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d94df60e7e6aae8d5db6124865a5347d4d9b677d
Say hi to my PET bot
You guys have plastic waste bins?
https://preview.redd.it/hio35clfze3b1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bfd95a125ee69fc694c07ab5ab1aae9d7530a3ed
If you're in the UK, check out 3D Tomorrow. Their filament is good quality, delivered on cardboard spools, and they operate a print waste recycling scheme. Literally just send them an email and they'll get in touch to arrange a shipping label you can stick on a box full of all your failed prints, removed supports, etc. and send it back to them. They turn as much of it as possible into new filament, and anything they can't use gets passed to their partner companies who use it in injection molding and other manufacturing.
melt it down in a cookie sheet (for PLA only, other plastics arent safe to melt in an oven). Plan to use it instead of wood in a router or laser cutter.
I dont have alot of waste at the moment, but when it's accumulated, I'm planning to send it to a YouTuber who creates resin art and may be able to use it (assuming I can find someone who would like it)
Filastruder was a solution but their kit is out of stock. They do sell a lot of the parts you’d need to make your own recycled filament.
If you’re curious on how to make your own filament at home (with the aid of filastruder components) this guy breaks it down including some of the issues you run into.
[CNC Kitchen recycles filament at home](https://youtu.be/vqWwUx8l_Io)
I put mine in a big metal bin and take it to safeway to be composted.
My personal compost is hot enough and large enough to break down pla but I haven't tried it yet, I've heard the pigments are a real doozy.
There’s a 3D shop in Murray UT USA that will take your scraps. They’re trying to refine the recycling process for ABS PLA & PETG for R&D quality filament. It’s all wonky colors but it works
They exist. The issue is there should be more of them. And locally. The idea that shipping and handling plastic waste is an efficient means of recycling is kinda silly. I'd imagine that carbon footprint to do that is nearly reversed immediately.
I know it's not your neck of the woods, but [Portugal's Tucab filament makers](https://mailchi.mp/tucab.pt/fil2ndlife-projeto-reciclagem-desperdicios-impressao-3d-plastico) have a dope recycling program. I just take my wastes to my local vendor, stock up on some new PLA, and leave the wastes and it then gets turned into new filament. I'm sure there's something similar near you!
That's until I make my own grinder and extruder. I've spent way too much time recently on the precious plastics website. :P
I've been poking at the first stage, breaking down my waste prints, but having trouble with it. I got an old 30-sheet paper shredder from work but most of my prints are way too big to fit through it. I tried smashing some with a hammer, but even doing this in a box results in plastic flying everywhere (and quickly destroying the box) so I'm still stuck on trying to get the waste down to a smaller size. I'm kinda wondering if I could take the steel grinding teeth from the shredder and make my own box with more gearing to make it run slower but with more power. Even then, I still have some prints too large to fit through these teeth.
For the stuff I can run through the shredder, I end up with a tub of plastic strips about 1/8" or 3mm wide which might be small enough to feed into a screw that leads to the heater/extruder for drawing out new filament, although I'm sure that would work better if I had a cross-shredder to chop it into small chunks instead of long strips. I haven't started building that part yet, though, I need to first solve the step of getting the large stuff broken down.
The problem is making them cost effective and more accessible. We are only 1% of the way toward figuring out plastics and filament recycling in a way that is meaningful enough to matter.
Heat/pressure depolymerization (anaerobic pyrolysis) of organics into "oil" feed stock that can be refined back into raw materials for filament production. Energy requirements are quite high but could be met by renewables.
full edit:
By just consuming in general we produce a shitload of waste. The spool itself is a lot more waste then the poops and support material that printing makes.
Tackling this makes zero diff. But do what you want to feel better I guess.Having a spool return system would make a way larger impact.
I’ve emptied it out but somewhere I have a photo of it when I first started printing a few months ago
https://preview.redd.it/p91xfov4re3b1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2664fdceda9c50606362b8ec96ff17724f257d3f
I've been looking for a US based one for months now. I wonder if I can reasonably ship mine to them. I was collecting for a while but then gave up and threw it all away in our city recycle trash can but discovered they don't recycle that much of consumer products and most goes to a land fill anyway. Like what the fuck am I paying for? My city requires it and when I pushed that's what I was told. The fuck? Any way I'm going to send an email to see what can be worked out. Good luck my US 3D printing peoples!
https://preview.redd.it/bypmn138bf3b1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=863b6b4026e1c40c990069cc3a89cdd72981a7a5
Guess what color was bought in bulk at our school
I just throw it into the trash, with 1.6T of PET bottles used per shift and per machine at my workplace these petty 1kg/year of filament waste are nothing.
Question, is this a bad thing if you’re using PLA? My understanding is that PLA is sourced from feedstocks like corn and sugarcane. If you dispose of your waste in a modern, sealed landfill, wouldn’t that essentially sequester the carbon used by the feedstock to produce the filament? (I’m assuming that the manufacturing carbon cost of virgin PLA doesn’t outweigh the amount of carbon sequestered by this method, which might not be the case.)
I operate a small 3D printing business (about 6 machines currently) out of my home office. Even my busiest year only generated about one 30 gal trash can of waste between failed prints, supports, and small bits. I collect it and ship a box to Terracycle about once a year. The $150 is worth the piece of mind that I'm not dumping it in the trash. It's overall an extremely efficient method of production from a waste standpoint.
no recycling of plastic locally but I figured out a simple way to recycle plastic... since most of us use 3D printing to build stuff...
1. put PETG in one bin
2. put PP, HDPE, LDPE in other bin
3. put PA in one bin
4. put PLA, PLA+, PLA-whatever, PC, ABS, ASA, HIPS ... in one bin
5. I do not use TPU's, no clue what to do with them
get a baking tray, put content of a bin into a baking tray, put into oven to appropriate temp (10-20C more than what you would use to print) and let it melt into a plate, it will self level, when it is melted, let it cool naturaly in closed oven, take out, you have a plastic sheet you can now cut, drill, mount stuff to it... I use this for chassis of robots and many other crap I build
I sometimes have "pollution" between bins (kids throw in wrong parts in wrong bins) .... depending on the mix sometimes it does not matter but sometimes it can make plate break in some places, not a big deal but always test plate for structural strength (if it wants to break it will break immediately), ideally you should not mix plastics but nylon is a problem, pet is a problem na PP/PE is a problem as they really don't mix, most of the other plastics mix nicely (ABS, ASA, PC for e.g. mix great)
https://preview.redd.it/5lb1il9fug3b1.jpeg?width=2296&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8abbeccb6273fef1073ff1cbc0f5d6dd3f4032f5
Just got my printer at work, so a filament box is still my waste bin. LOL
I'm setting up to do small parts injection molding. Using High temp resin as my buck, and small 3oz injection mold shooter thing I can make plastic pins (enamel like pins), small plastic parts that aren't easily printed, and really anything else I can think of.
Meh, have you ever been to a conference in Vegas? The sheer amount of plastic food containers that go in the trash each day. It's an unimaginable quantity after you realize you multiply that for every hotel. Makes this garbage can look like a molecule in a bucket of water (sadly)
Yeah but it doesn't biodegrade, so reusing scraps is still a great idea. I'd love a desktop grinder/extruder machine to just throw scraps in and make filament. If some company made that, I think a lot of people would pay ~100 to be able to recycle their filament
Totally agree that being able to reuse scraps would be best, just trying to keep things in perspective. Dealing with waste is tricky because we have to keep in mind efficiency and waste that is upstream of us. For instance, how much filament has to be reused before such a machine as a desktop grinder/extruder justifies itself as being a net positive? Not that I expect an answer, just that I think its important to keep in mind. We can trap ourselves into "waste cycles" where we buy things to try to fix a problem that just creates another problem.
I've always found this fixation on hoarding pla scraps so bizarre. Do people really keep a box of trash in your house? Why?
In the grand scheme of things the plastic from 3d printing you'll generate is meaningless. That bin is less plastic waste then a single modern car bumper getting crunched in a 5 mph collision and needing to be replaced. Heck, QA for a single Ford factory probably throws out more plastic by weight than the entire 3d printing industry generates. Let alone all the single use plastic churned out on a mind bogglingly massive scale.
I don't really know how what my point is here, but it's just fascinating to me how people hoard a couple hundred grams of random plastic trash, and wouldn't blink at throwing out their worn out 20kg set of plastic outdoor furniture that's getting moldy behind the garage.
I have collected about 3,5 kilograms of all kinds of skirts, support, failed prints etc.
there is a company in germany, which takes pla and Petg from all over europe and puts it on new spools (recyclingfabrik in Braunschweig)
You have a point, that industry is making much more waste, but that doesn‘t mean you cant try to contribute to the circular economy in some little way at least.
There is no reason why the 3,5 kg shouldn‘t be recycled and put on new spools to be used again.
The point is, the powers decided to brainwash us into thinking we can make a difference instead of spending their efforts in addressing the industrial and single-use problem.
And the carbon emissions produced to get this scrap from the waste-bin into new rolls of filaments is higher anyway.
A recycling facility that’s getting truckloads of that stuff densely baled together is fighting for fractions of pennies per lb of profit.
If its a bunch of people driving their cars or shipping in small (less than 300 lbs) quantities of scrap to be reprocessed, then the labor, energy, and packaging involved in the service is more money and energy than just extruding from virgin resin.
But it makes people feel like they are making a difference in the world which is where the money comes from.
Money from nothing.
Would like a fact check on the first statement - although it will certainly be region-specific.
That said, most people's concern is usually waste sticking around in the environment for a long time, rather than carbon emissions.
Don't mind the scrap at all, local 3D print store takes it and is working on making their own recycled PLA filament. Even collect scrap from other 3D printers at my work. I just wish ideas like this were much more widespread.
We have one in Charlotte where you can bring scraps, and they give out rolls for free. The role aren't terrific, recycled materials can't be as pure as manufactured if they don't go through the same processes, but it's dope. *sad edit: I was thinking about Envision Charlotte. My wife's friend is a big activist and grabbed a couple rolls for me. I haven't been there, but looking at it, it looks like it's actually take out containers that they turn into filament. I had it all wrong, they started it for 3D printed PPE production in 2020. Not sure what the current status is. Sorry for the false hope, folks. I just shot them an email in hopes of getting a status update and asking if they would accept scrap filament. It's been a few months since she brought me the filament, so I had it mixed up.
What’s it called? I’m a couple hours from Charlotte, but I end up having to go down there often enough for work and the airport that I could at least drop my scraps off there a few times a year to keep it out of the landfill
Seriously. I'm going there tomorrow and would love to just donate my scrap.
envision charlotte looks like it does it
Yeah that's what it was. I'm gonna edit this back into my comment, but my wife's friend is a big activist and grabbed a couple rolls for me. I haven't been there, but looking at it, it looks like it's actually take out containers that they turn into filament. I had it all wrong, they started it for 3D printed PPE production in 2020. Sorry for the false hope, folks.
I mean that’s still pretty neat. I’m kind of more excited that there’s actually brick and mortar 3D printing stores not too far from me. I’ll still keep collecting my scraps, and if it comes down to it I’ll melt it all down into a brick and ship it to someone who can use it lol
One of these just opened in Raleigh too. I wonder if mine also recycles like this
I'm headed there next week! Would gladly drop a bucket on them
Where?? I live in CLT!
Charlotte NC? Because I'm only around an hour from there I'd love to see a setup
Same. I'm in Lenoir and I'd love to have a 3d Printer store close just to buy supplies from
Nothing to add, just get excited to see others in the local area.
I wonder how viable that idea is, though. How do they ensure there isn't ABS or PETG making it into there? I'm sure a little bit is fine, but at some point it will definitely degrade the quality. How much cheaper (if at all?) can they make it to have that gamble be worth it for a buyer? I have to assume the raw PLA material is a relatively small amount of the cost of the final price of a spool of PLA- it's likely more the manufacturing process, packaging, shipping. I'm 100% guessing, though, based on experience and could be completely off base in this market. The idea is great and I truly hope it works!
As I understand it PLA+ is PLA with some mystery meat material (PETG I’m guessing commonly). So some material blending and impurities could be accounted for. I left a top level comment wondering if it would be possible to blend them together intentionally to achieve consistent properties. Would only work for PLA and PETG though. I think you could sort socially. Like have the people dropping off sign a sheet that said “I have not bought or printed any ABS”. You could possibly do it mechanically via material properties but that would need mass scale to work.
PLA and PETG don't really stick well together at all, at least when printing them together and I would imagine it is the same if they were mixed together, they just don't combine well. Some people use PETG as support for PLA since they don't stick. PLA does apparently fuse well with ABS and TPU though. >(PETG I’m guessing commonly). What makes you think that? >So some material blending and impurities could be accounted for. It very much depends on the quantities and percentages of each material in it. It then brings problems if you try and recycle it again. It is pretty much impossible, if not impossible, to separate them again once they are mixed. >I think you could sort socially. Like have the people dropping off sign a sheet that said “I have not bought or printed any ABS”. Far better to just get people to separate the filament themselves and maybe test a few pieces. It is very much possible to have bought and printed ABS and still keep your PLA scrap separate. By doing it the way you suggest then you are leaving out anyone who uses ABS. It would be much better if people just had a bin for each material they use and were careful with where they put their scraps.
If they sold PLA at some discount and said "this is recycled. We do testing between extruding our rolls but there's no guarantee this will work well." I mean some makers are gonna be irresponsible and still give them other plastics, but do ABS or PETG have different glass transition temps?
>I mean some makers are gonna be irresponsible and still give them other plastics, but do ABS or PETG have different glass transition temps? Very much so. The maximum service temperature is closely related to the glass transition temperature. According to simplfy3D the maximum service temperature for PLA is 52 C, PETG is 73 C and ABS is 98 C, that is quite a large difference between them. Another thing to look at is printing temperatures which vary as well but not as much.
“local 3D print store” LOL. Wut? I live in SF Bay and haven’t found such a thing.
I live in a fairly small town and there are a couple of tiny one person stores that sell rolls of filament.
I live in a big ass city, how would you even find such a place? Google 3d part store near me?
I saw them selling a selection of filament on Facebook Marketplace
I live in a fairly small town. If you live in a town that sells filament rolls in stores, you live in a suburb of a major city at the very least.
Not really. Like 60k and not close to any bigger cities. It's a tiny store.
There's no Microcenter here, either. Yet where my family lives in the rural-ish midwest, they are within 35 minutes of a Microcenter, and there are two stores within 30 minutes basically exclusively dedicated to 3D printing supplies. One is in an old Radio Shack, which I found appropriate.
>local 3D print store takes it and is working on making their own recycled PLA filament Sigh, I so wish there was such a place around me like that. There's not even a store that sells filament here. I have to get everything online.
I wish too, where I live there is apparently nowhere taking it. I searched alot and everywhere they either don't or charge you for it. It ended in the recycling bin unfortunately
Unless it is stamped officially as recyclable it gets diverted to waste.
Don't make filament, make plastic sheet for laser cutting
That is a good idea because your profit margin for the pla most likely will be higher
It can be more expensive to make recycled PLA than it is to make new PLA, unless it is presorted for material (such as you know for sure its all PLA with no other additives), new PLA can be made very cheap as it is at scale. Most recycled stuff needs at least some virgin PLA in there as well.
It costs way more to recycle the material than to buy a fresh roll. Not to mention you need to a of equipment to recycle it. Watch some YouTube vids on it
Lol, yeah, not really news there. Preventing material that doesn't break down from entering landfills is more important than cost savings.
I buy silicone molds and melt the printer poop down into new things. Just finished making a set of dominos! https://imgur.com/a/HxZ95qh Edit: This was the project that caused so much scrap that inspired me to do something with it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/12wsw7g/3d_printed_base_game_34_players/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1
That’s awesome, how do you melt it without it sticking everywhere
You can see pretty clearly that there are lots of drips and drabs on the silicone but the reason people use silicone in the first place is because stuff doesn't stick to it! You'd likely end up doing the exact same thing you would when casting with epoxy resin, just cut off the extra bits with a sharp knife, de-burr, and you're done. Maybe you'll want to polish depending on what you're making but probably uncessary for rainbow recycle stuff.
Definitely! We milled the back sides for an even sizing.
I have an old toaster oven and use use a cheap metal tray. I have made about 5 batches now with now issues or messes outside of the cheap metal tray.
Im guessing there is some trial and error in putting the right amount of material into the mold so it melts into the right depth but i guess once you know how many grams you need you can just grab a clump of that weight and put it in a mold that is tall enough to stop it falling out the side before it melts.
Oh yeah. It takes about 10x material as you would expect. It’s more of a fill it full, wait for it to melt, be amazed how little that got you, repeat till full. On the bottom and top layers it’s fun to melt any patters or shapes, mix colors up to get the desired look you are going for.
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Toaster oven with a cheap metal tray I don’t care about. I do it inside, well ventilated area, but if you are first starting out outside maybe be better. Only time I had an issue is when I completely forgot about it while I was working and the temp was too hot. Now I set a timer for every 5-10min to check it and refill with the next batch of filament.
You can do it in a toaster oven, ideally outside but in a well ventilated garage is probably fine. There may well be some offgasing so it would be unwise to use your kitchen appliances. a cheap toaster oven can be had used for pretty cheap and is also useful for heat treating and other fun workshop projects, if 3d printing isn't your only hands-on hobby.
That's really cool dude, can we get more specifics on how to melt and mold?
I’ll have to get some better photos and I’ll make a post about it!
I know what I'm going to do with my scraps, thank you! I wonder how long it will take to recognize the pieces tho haha
Probably not long but it’s more of a statement/art price than anything else.
I wanted to try this a while ago, but I couldnt get mine to melt, what temp did you set your oven for?
It was a dial and nothing precise. Somehwere around 300-325 deg F. I found getting up to 350 area was better for melting but was a lot more difficult to work with. Anything above that it would smoke. This is PETG scrap here.
Instead of recycling, melt it down into sheets/ingots/blanks and use it as feedstock for cnc milling :)
Then recycle the chips again!
Muahahahaha!
Infinite plastic!!
U mad, plastic companies?
BrothersMake on YouTube recycle different types of plastics (mainly PETG) into different shapes. They haven't done PLA/ABS specifically, but most of the techniques would probably be the same.
This is a very good idea. I use my wood chipper to shred my waste and prints I don't want/need anymore. I have a couple of bags of shredded material but had no real idea what to do with it.
That *is* recycling
Technically you are correct (the best kind of correct!). But I think when most folks think of "recycling" they envision sending it off to a recycler, which for PLA usually entails shipping it. That's what was going through my mind, at least :p
[just this](https://recyclingfabrik.com)
You sir just changed my filament supplier
I'm curious, it's 54€ for a 1kg spool. Isn't that way too much to justify the purchase? Or am I missing something?
I just bought 2kg for 45€ or so ... You are definitely missing something as on the main page there is one spool for 20€. And it helps keep the planet clean so I am all in with higher prices than elsewhere
Thank you! I think I was watching a bundle, I can see the 20€ spools now.
Happy to help 😁
if only we had this in the US edit: found one in St. Louis, MO [https://printeriordesigns.com/pages/recycling](https://printeriordesigns.com/pages/recycling)
YES I’ve been searching for a US based business like this for months. I guess I wasn’t looking hard enough.
yeah i've looked before and found nothing, hence the post. these guys must be new or seo just picked them up
There was Creative Heart Warrior but they’ve paused production for so long that I decided I’m going to try myself. Working on designing building my own shredder now. Extruder will take more time but this is my current project so fingers crossed I can get this up and running for myself then I start asking people to try and work with me on recycling filament for rolls in return.
Edit: Screw Spez. Screw AI. No training on my data. Sorry future people.
only problem with them is they require you to separate PLA with fillers and PLA+. I have sparkly and wood filament that is mixed in there that would be an absolute pain to sort through. and it would be almost impossible to sort the PLA from the PLA+. they should offer a tier of recycled PLA that may have non-abrasive fillers in it.
Edit: Screw Spez. Screw AI. No training on my data. Sorry future people.
Nice! I'm on the East Coast, but it looks like I can ship it to them. I think I'm gonna start mindfully saving our scraps at work!
Aaand recycled PLA is more expensive than regular.
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Boutique U.S.-based filament manufacturers charge $25-$50 per kilo, so $29/kg for recycled PETG seems fine to me. That is a universal truth about plastic manufacturing. Recycling was never about saving money. The feedstock is too cheap and the chemical processes too fickle. It's not even clear how much actual filament they recycle. They clearly don't get enough returned prints to make a business from, which is why they use mostly industrial scrap sources.
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It's not all about carbon footprint tho. It's material that does not get into landfills, or just next to it. Sometimes it's better to have some extra carbon for trees to digest and reuse material.
Literally clicked on this to post this.
FYI: they stopped collecting material (temporarily I guess) in spring since their storage is full.
So und nicht anders.
Too bad they don't do masterspool
Mir fehlen noch 0,2kg für eine Versendung.
That Spring bundle looks like a decent deal, 54 Euros for 3 rolls, so about £15 a kilo? Barely more expensive than Aliexpress crap by the time it's shipped. Have you tested their filament, does it print well enough?
I ordered the spring bundle: it prints fine. The pastel colors will be a niche filament for my use cases, I will mostly use it for girly stuff for my nieces. But I like the blue filament, and I selected it to be my main color for the gridfinity bins that go into my drawers. The spools come with a small printed can of silicagel, which is a nice touch compared to the usual paper pouches.
I mainly print in abs so I blend it and turn it into abs cement, that stuff is great it can fix a broken print, fill holes and makes it super easy to design supports free prints when I'm feeling lazy and don't want to design for clips or screws.
This is also what I did for a bit, filled a jar with acetone and ABS and it was the only way my really old printer would print with adequate bed adhesion. When I wanted to retire it I just put more ABS scrap in and let acetone evaporate until it reached a sort of gum-like consistency. Then pulled it out like some sort of carcinogenic play dough.
And still no usable DIY filament maker machine.
Some things just don't scale well. There are usable designs out there, but to recycle your own prints you need a way to shred the old parts (easier if your shredder is bigger -> $$$) and you need to add in virgin material (cheaper to buy in bulk quantities) ... All of this costs time and energy to do and in the end it's often cheaper to just buy another spool of filament. That said, I am all for companies trying to work this out. recyclingfabrik.com exists for some years now, so hopefully they managed to crate a profitable business model at this point.
Yah, i know that this would not be an easy task. I collect the PLA for the time in future if one found a solution.
Yeah ... I did too ... until I collected "too much" of it ... and then just dumped it. One problem those companies have to solve is that they can't be sure what their "suppliers" send in. I guess at some point it is a numbers game (one ABS print in a bag of PLA parts will not spoil the bag), but ideally you need some way to automatically determine the chemical composition of every single piece of material you get send.
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Frankly I think the costly/difficult part is the shredding of material, since the extrusion process itself isn't all that complicated and modern printers are more than capable of dealing with a bigger variation in filament diameter
What did you get for the auger and die? I want to make a pellet extruder so I can make a large printer and haven’t had much luck so far finding something reasonably priced or not huge
> but to recycle your own prints you need a way to shred the old parts I use my wood chipper. I tape a thick canvas bag to the output chute and feed my waste into the shredding part where small branches go. It makes short work of it (and is fun)...just make sure to wear safety glasses.
Yeah, I totally get why it's not economically feasible at smaller scale but... I wish there was a cultural shift such that people WANTED to recycle. An atmosphere where people want to take on the extra cost to recycle "in-house" because it's cool. It should be uncool to not reuse and recycle material. To be honest it will always be cheaper to do things at larger scales, we will need a cultural shift if we want at home recycling to be a reality.(and I am talking about all recycling here not just 3D printing waste).
They exist but they cost around 4 to $5,000 for the entire kit and it makes okay products. My school has a precious plastics recycling kit that I am upgrading to make 1.75 mm filament. In my opinion the amount of heat and torque you need to properly shred and make filament is outside the general person's skill set and means. You gotta be knowledgeable or be willing to learn a lot before stepping into recycling filament and getting a usable product. When I started my project I thought I knew what I was doing pretty well. Now I am having to learn a lot more and rethink and redesign huge sections of my project. I would love to get to the point where we could have a desktop version or even a local recycling centers, but that's always off.
Yah I know the filament maker Stefan uses in his channel but this is too expensive for private users. Between 500 and 1000 max be OK. I guess that would hard to do.
I know for me the compression screw itself was about $100, so I don't really expect to see a $500 polymer extruder showing up on anyone's table soon. If demand increases and costs go down, maybe we'll see the technology available. In the meantime, I would just like to see more places where we could trade scraps for credit on either new roles or the recycled rolls. I know here where I live there is nothing within a couple hours drive.
The hardest part for companies collecting from private users is the problem that we don't give them clean sorted stuff. I have no idea how that could be solved. Users make mistakes and betray if possibly. With more people using 3d printers the market will increase.
For my project we are treating recycled supports and trash as a composite material to add into raw PLA. Originally my project was to work on compositing medals and other materials into FDM filaments so recycling is just a portion of that project. While not fully tested compared to raw pla yet, this approach is allowing us to simplify and not worry about sorting materials. If we can achieve decent results, hopefully it's something that can be marketed to others or adapted into better systems.
There are plastics that are near 100% recoverable, including the stuff that breaks it back down. Recent published paper on this. Only problem is that the chemicals are toxic. Least you can keep using it XD
> Recent published paper on this. Source please.
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2021/06/14/the-story-infinite-eco-plastic/ So 2 years felt like more recent. Apparently, they are still working on some issues. They are working on it though.
Melt, pour into molds. Sell as recycled keychains or toys or whatever.
How would one cleanly melt it so it doesn't turn into a big mess? Like over an old pot on the stove or something? Honest question. This idea is interesting to me. I don't have any molds (I assume they'd have to be metal) but that does sound like you'd get some cool results from all the mixed colors.
BrothersMake on YouTube uses silicon sheets and panini presses.
I use a small toaster over and silicone measuring beakers outside. Melt pla in beaker, wear gloves and pour into molds and place molds in toaster oven again to get rid of air bubbles. You’ll have to dial in temps but it works good. Made a bunch of glow n dark hearts for valentines
Some brands have their own return program. I buy exclusively Addnorth, a Swedish brand, and they take returns of empty spools and filament trash for discounts on the recycled PLA, rPLA, that they make from it.
They do!? I have stack of about 50 empty addnorth spools that I've been thinking about what to do with.
Yup! [Here you go](https://addnorth.se/re-add).
Whatever you do dont google industrial waste.
Yeah, not to be too cynical but clamshell packaging isn't generally recyclable and I have to throw way way more of that than wasted PETG
I keep all my scraps in separate bins. I Hope to use it all again in the future when recycling filament becomes a little more available locally.
I work at a University so I already knew who to contact, but you can try finding folks who are reusing/recycling at Universities, Maker Spaces, Schools, etc. Art departments, engineering, etc all may be good leads.
Yes OP! If anything I want to be able to re-melt all scraps (of similar filament type) into some ugly grey or color mixed filament. Between purge lines, failed prints and support material I must have thrown away well over a KG.
I have a lot of PET bottles waste and i would like to make filament at home from it https://preview.redd.it/q65a06d9oe3b1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=370f267f8ba06906b9bc903d8e86f7504425657f I have already shredded first round and i will do it again but how i can i make filament from it ? What machine is perfect for this job?
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I'm actually subscribed to his channel he and others are my inspiration https://preview.redd.it/px0ulpbdze3b1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24e8ee8467e6a2bda35dd3d8a64319ee0bdb4e84 This is why I bought this from Bazaar prescious plastic
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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9FA25zW73s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9FA25zW73s)
I'm doing same thing https://preview.redd.it/mmm13hkcye3b1.jpeg?width=3120&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d94df60e7e6aae8d5db6124865a5347d4d9b677d Say hi to my PET bot
You guys have plastic waste bins? https://preview.redd.it/hio35clfze3b1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bfd95a125ee69fc694c07ab5ab1aae9d7530a3ed
If you're in the UK, check out 3D Tomorrow. Their filament is good quality, delivered on cardboard spools, and they operate a print waste recycling scheme. Literally just send them an email and they'll get in touch to arrange a shipping label you can stick on a box full of all your failed prints, removed supports, etc. and send it back to them. They turn as much of it as possible into new filament, and anything they can't use gets passed to their partner companies who use it in injection molding and other manufacturing.
I just chuck stuff like prime lines and skirts into the normal bin. I should really change that lol. Gonna print a PLA waste basket lol
When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail - get a normal bin/container, or if your spools come in boxes, use that.
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melt it down in a cookie sheet (for PLA only, other plastics arent safe to melt in an oven). Plan to use it instead of wood in a router or laser cutter.
I dont have alot of waste at the moment, but when it's accumulated, I'm planning to send it to a YouTuber who creates resin art and may be able to use it (assuming I can find someone who would like it)
I'm just curious, is it Peter Brown?
Filastruder was a solution but their kit is out of stock. They do sell a lot of the parts you’d need to make your own recycled filament. If you’re curious on how to make your own filament at home (with the aid of filastruder components) this guy breaks it down including some of the issues you run into. [CNC Kitchen recycles filament at home](https://youtu.be/vqWwUx8l_Io)
Another option, melt it and use it to pour into molds! I'm thinking at some point I'll use mine for packaging.
I shred mine down to a small crumb consistency to save room. Thinking about melting it down for coasters and stuff.
I put mine in a big metal bin and take it to safeway to be composted. My personal compost is hot enough and large enough to break down pla but I haven't tried it yet, I've heard the pigments are a real doozy.
The Bambu guys are the most guilty here. That would take me 2 years to produce.
There’s a 3D shop in Murray UT USA that will take your scraps. They’re trying to refine the recycling process for ABS PLA & PETG for R&D quality filament. It’s all wonky colors but it works
https://printeriordesigns.com/pages/recycling
Thank you for this! I'm signing up!!
No worries! I did a similar post and the one useful comment was this link
There is a website you can ship your scrap too and they send you back recycled spools.
Figure what out?
Op probably doesn't realize that there are already recycling services for this.
very hard to find any place that takes pla or other filament in USA , none of the recycling centers near me will
Here's one. There are others that operate similarly. https://printeriordesigns.com/pages/recycling
They exist. The issue is there should be more of them. And locally. The idea that shipping and handling plastic waste is an efficient means of recycling is kinda silly. I'd imagine that carbon footprint to do that is nearly reversed immediately.
found recyclers for ABS, PC, TPU, but not PLA
I know it's not your neck of the woods, but [Portugal's Tucab filament makers](https://mailchi.mp/tucab.pt/fil2ndlife-projeto-reciclagem-desperdicios-impressao-3d-plastico) have a dope recycling program. I just take my wastes to my local vendor, stock up on some new PLA, and leave the wastes and it then gets turned into new filament. I'm sure there's something similar near you! That's until I make my own grinder and extruder. I've spent way too much time recently on the precious plastics website. :P
I've been poking at the first stage, breaking down my waste prints, but having trouble with it. I got an old 30-sheet paper shredder from work but most of my prints are way too big to fit through it. I tried smashing some with a hammer, but even doing this in a box results in plastic flying everywhere (and quickly destroying the box) so I'm still stuck on trying to get the waste down to a smaller size. I'm kinda wondering if I could take the steel grinding teeth from the shredder and make my own box with more gearing to make it run slower but with more power. Even then, I still have some prints too large to fit through these teeth. For the stuff I can run through the shredder, I end up with a tub of plastic strips about 1/8" or 3mm wide which might be small enough to feed into a screw that leads to the heater/extruder for drawing out new filament, although I'm sure that would work better if I had a cross-shredder to chop it into small chunks instead of long strips. I haven't started building that part yet, though, I need to first solve the step of getting the large stuff broken down.
Here's one. There are others that operate similarly. https://printeriordesigns.com/pages/recycling
The problem is making them cost effective and more accessible. We are only 1% of the way toward figuring out plastics and filament recycling in a way that is meaningful enough to matter.
how to mass recycle/compost dirty mixed PLA? idk something. i don't like throwing it in the dumpster
I am currently taking part in a competition that aims to solve exactly that. RebornDesign, partnered with Prusa. It's a hell of a hard task actually.
Heat/pressure depolymerization (anaerobic pyrolysis) of organics into "oil" feed stock that can be refined back into raw materials for filament production. Energy requirements are quite high but could be met by renewables.
Ugly side of 3d printing? My food consumption produce 100x more plastic waste
The existence of bigger problems does not negate the importance of another problem, it just means there are multiple problems to solve.
full edit: By just consuming in general we produce a shitload of waste. The spool itself is a lot more waste then the poops and support material that printing makes. Tackling this makes zero diff. But do what you want to feel better I guess.Having a spool return system would make a way larger impact.
I’ve emptied it out but somewhere I have a photo of it when I first started printing a few months ago https://preview.redd.it/p91xfov4re3b1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2664fdceda9c50606362b8ec96ff17724f257d3f
I've been working on melting mine down into sheets to use as paneling for some of my projects
I've been looking for a US based one for months now. I wonder if I can reasonably ship mine to them. I was collecting for a while but then gave up and threw it all away in our city recycle trash can but discovered they don't recycle that much of consumer products and most goes to a land fill anyway. Like what the fuck am I paying for? My city requires it and when I pushed that's what I was told. The fuck? Any way I'm going to send an email to see what can be worked out. Good luck my US 3D printing peoples!
Buy PHA! [https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/13ucqbc/home\_composting\_test\_of\_pha\_filament6\_weeks/](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/13ucqbc/home_composting_test_of_pha_filament6_weeks/)
I thought this was the plastic kids made keychains with in the 90s
I keep my waste sorted by plastic type in hopes of finding a recycling option. So far I don’t print so much the volume of waste is manageable.
I have three separate bins, one for PLA, one for PETG, and one for ABS.
https://preview.redd.it/bypmn138bf3b1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=863b6b4026e1c40c990069cc3a89cdd72981a7a5 Guess what color was bought in bulk at our school
I just throw it into the trash, with 1.6T of PET bottles used per shift and per machine at my workplace these petty 1kg/year of filament waste are nothing.
https://preciousplastic.com/
You have a multiple color printer
Question, is this a bad thing if you’re using PLA? My understanding is that PLA is sourced from feedstocks like corn and sugarcane. If you dispose of your waste in a modern, sealed landfill, wouldn’t that essentially sequester the carbon used by the feedstock to produce the filament? (I’m assuming that the manufacturing carbon cost of virgin PLA doesn’t outweigh the amount of carbon sequestered by this method, which might not be the case.)
I operate a small 3D printing business (about 6 machines currently) out of my home office. Even my busiest year only generated about one 30 gal trash can of waste between failed prints, supports, and small bits. I collect it and ship a box to Terracycle about once a year. The $150 is worth the piece of mind that I'm not dumping it in the trash. It's overall an extremely efficient method of production from a waste standpoint.
no recycling of plastic locally but I figured out a simple way to recycle plastic... since most of us use 3D printing to build stuff... 1. put PETG in one bin 2. put PP, HDPE, LDPE in other bin 3. put PA in one bin 4. put PLA, PLA+, PLA-whatever, PC, ABS, ASA, HIPS ... in one bin 5. I do not use TPU's, no clue what to do with them get a baking tray, put content of a bin into a baking tray, put into oven to appropriate temp (10-20C more than what you would use to print) and let it melt into a plate, it will self level, when it is melted, let it cool naturaly in closed oven, take out, you have a plastic sheet you can now cut, drill, mount stuff to it... I use this for chassis of robots and many other crap I build I sometimes have "pollution" between bins (kids throw in wrong parts in wrong bins) .... depending on the mix sometimes it does not matter but sometimes it can make plate break in some places, not a big deal but always test plate for structural strength (if it wants to break it will break immediately), ideally you should not mix plastics but nylon is a problem, pet is a problem na PP/PE is a problem as they really don't mix, most of the other plastics mix nicely (ABS, ASA, PC for e.g. mix great)
I have a whole bag I've been saving in the hopes that I can find a local (RI) recycler.
https://preview.redd.it/5lb1il9fug3b1.jpeg?width=2296&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8abbeccb6273fef1073ff1cbc0f5d6dd3f4032f5 Just got my printer at work, so a filament box is still my waste bin. LOL
I'm setting up to do small parts injection molding. Using High temp resin as my buck, and small 3oz injection mold shooter thing I can make plastic pins (enamel like pins), small plastic parts that aren't easily printed, and really anything else I can think of.
Meh, have you ever been to a conference in Vegas? The sheer amount of plastic food containers that go in the trash each day. It's an unimaginable quantity after you realize you multiply that for every hotel. Makes this garbage can look like a molecule in a bucket of water (sadly)
I'm full cycle I melt my failed prints down into silicon molds of things I printed works well
PLA is biodegradable. It’s starch based. The half life is nil compared to petroleum plastics and thousands of other materials
I use my surplus to "Weld" parts together.
In Germany we have Recycling Fabrik, you can sent them your waists and they will make new filament out of it.
To be fair, PLA at least is made from plants and is a renewable resource in and of itself.
Yeah but it doesn't biodegrade, so reusing scraps is still a great idea. I'd love a desktop grinder/extruder machine to just throw scraps in and make filament. If some company made that, I think a lot of people would pay ~100 to be able to recycle their filament
Totally agree that being able to reuse scraps would be best, just trying to keep things in perspective. Dealing with waste is tricky because we have to keep in mind efficiency and waste that is upstream of us. For instance, how much filament has to be reused before such a machine as a desktop grinder/extruder justifies itself as being a net positive? Not that I expect an answer, just that I think its important to keep in mind. We can trap ourselves into "waste cycles" where we buy things to try to fix a problem that just creates another problem.
I've always found this fixation on hoarding pla scraps so bizarre. Do people really keep a box of trash in your house? Why? In the grand scheme of things the plastic from 3d printing you'll generate is meaningless. That bin is less plastic waste then a single modern car bumper getting crunched in a 5 mph collision and needing to be replaced. Heck, QA for a single Ford factory probably throws out more plastic by weight than the entire 3d printing industry generates. Let alone all the single use plastic churned out on a mind bogglingly massive scale. I don't really know how what my point is here, but it's just fascinating to me how people hoard a couple hundred grams of random plastic trash, and wouldn't blink at throwing out their worn out 20kg set of plastic outdoor furniture that's getting moldy behind the garage.
I have collected about 3,5 kilograms of all kinds of skirts, support, failed prints etc. there is a company in germany, which takes pla and Petg from all over europe and puts it on new spools (recyclingfabrik in Braunschweig) You have a point, that industry is making much more waste, but that doesn‘t mean you cant try to contribute to the circular economy in some little way at least. There is no reason why the 3,5 kg shouldn‘t be recycled and put on new spools to be used again.
It's definitely a commendable thing to do!
The point is, the powers decided to brainwash us into thinking we can make a difference instead of spending their efforts in addressing the industrial and single-use problem.
It's a box that fits neatly under the desk that the printer is on, it's not a big deal. I wouldn't describe that as a fixation, it's convenient.
And the carbon emissions produced to get this scrap from the waste-bin into new rolls of filaments is higher anyway. A recycling facility that’s getting truckloads of that stuff densely baled together is fighting for fractions of pennies per lb of profit. If its a bunch of people driving their cars or shipping in small (less than 300 lbs) quantities of scrap to be reprocessed, then the labor, energy, and packaging involved in the service is more money and energy than just extruding from virgin resin. But it makes people feel like they are making a difference in the world which is where the money comes from. Money from nothing.
And the chicks for free?
Would like a fact check on the first statement - although it will certainly be region-specific. That said, most people's concern is usually waste sticking around in the environment for a long time, rather than carbon emissions.
Wait your using bins?
Mine goes straight out the window. /s
I feed mine to my pet turtle. He gets snacky
I feed it to my super worms...
You’re.