3d printing filament recycling?

[tahu505]

I was wondering if anyone knew of good ways to recycle scraps from 3d prints? I do not own a filament recyclers myself, and I don't want my scraps to create waste. I remember there used to be a website where you could ship your scraps to them and they'd recycle it, but that site is down now.

 

[tahu505]

I came across this YouTube video that talks about recycling 3d printer waste and in the end of the video, alternative ways to recycle material are discussed.

In the alternative recycling methods a US based company named Printerior is brought up. After looking at there website, it seems you can sort your material and ship it to them to be recycled. I'm going to try organizing and shipping my scraps this week.

3D Printer Recycling Programs

Printerior offers recycling programs for businesses, schools, maker spaces, and hobbyists. We know that most failed prints end up going straight into the garbage, and with your help we can do something about that. For every KG of waste plastic you recycle you'll receive discounts on filament...

printeriordesigns.com

 

[SgtSaint]

When I lived in Florida and had the space...
I would save up all the household plastic, not just the printer waste. Once a month or so use a 5 gallon bucket to press down into the sand to make round sand-molds about 2" thick. Melt down batches of plastic (most of which is a PE or PETG out of the house) over an open camp fire and pour the plastic slag into the molds. Once cool: Plastic stepping stones for around the property, garden and so on - with an embedded and texture making them "theme in" to the property as well as anti-slip tread.

That was about as direct, low energy way to put all that plastic to use that I could come up with. Just melt and pour.
In a similar vein to the direct reuse idea there was some videos floating around a few years back where a couple guys were melting and pouring into 4" square pipe to make square plastic 'beams' for non-structural-support uses like bike racks, dog houses, decorative laminates etc. But in the end it was the same concept: Can't care about the type of plastic, minimal energy going into the overall process to get something useful out. Otherwise you're adding to the planetary-scale issue not subtracting from it.

But for actual recycling of just filament, sadly the energy going into the entire process does more harm than trying to turn it back into filament. You're better off just throwing your personal filament waste into the recycling and letting the big boys deal with as `type 7: other` on an industrial scale along with the other 140 tons a month that comes through their facility.

I remember there used to be a website where you could ship your scraps to them and they'd recycle it, but that site is down now.

Well, probably because end-to-end that's putting more carbon into the planet that it is saving, combined with being a hard business model to maintain. Recycled filament in the end always has to be shipped (that's energy + packaging), unpackaged (human labor then what do you do with the packaging), sorted (labor + shop footprint=lighting&aircon), further shredded (energy), then eventually mixed and extruded back to filament (neutral to making new). So in the end you wind up with material of a so-so recycled quality that's commonly double the cost of a spool made from virgin pellets with better quality consistency.

 

[marinesniper]

i melt mine down like sgt saint and then use a big old oven pan and pour it in let cool and pop it out i now have a cutting board for crafts that looks cool

 

[PlanetAlexander]

I did a whole heap of research about recycling FDM filament for a university assignment last year. I'll add my two cents, albeit it sadly doesn't do much to answer your question Tahu.

Like Sgt Saint said, it's very hard to recycle filament. Firstly, as we know, filament is very tempremental and any slight flaws can cause a defect in the print or stuff up the printer, like a clog. That means any foreign particles (ie. dust), moisture, mixture of different filaments - or even same filament but different colour - that gets recycled can end up jeapardising the end result. So it's quite tricky to get it all prepped.

After each "life" that plastic gets recycled, it starts to lose its materialistic properties. After plastic gets recycled over and over, it becomes inconsistant and behaves much differently to virgin material, thus becoming unreliable.

That's uh... that's all I can remember right now at 11pm about an assignment that I finished a year ago. I also did a bit of research on the ability to break down plastics in composte. I'm happy to go back over my research if anyone wanted to discuss it further.

 

[tahu505]

I did a whole heap of research about recycling FDM filament for a university assignment last year. I'll add my two cents, albeit it sadly doesn't do much to answer your question Tahu.

Like Sgt Saint said, it's very hard to recycle filament. Firstly, as we know, filament is very tempremental and any slight flaws can cause a defect in the print or stuff up the printer, like a clog. That means any foreign particles (ie. dust), moisture, mixture of different filaments - or even same filament but different colour - that gets recycled can end up jeapardising the end result. So it's quite tricky to get it all prepped.

After each "life" that plastic gets recycled, it starts to lose its materialistic properties. After plastic gets recycled over and over, it becomes inconsistant and behaves much differently to virgin material, thus becoming unreliable.

That's uh... that's all I can remember right now at 11pm about an assignment that I finished a year ago. I also did a bit of research on the ability to break down plastics in composte. I'm happy to go back over my research if anyone wanted to discuss it further.

I've definitely heard how hard it is to recycle filament into new material. That's something I don't see myself getting a set up for anytime soon. I know there are more companies starting up that do recycle filament in a more professional environment.

I'm mainly looking for ways to avoid having material end up in landfills. I didn't know that the material loses its material properties after each recycled life, but that makes sense. That does give me the idea that I could get my scraps recycled into new rolls for one life, then the scraps from the recycled roles could be melted down and turned into new objects as brought up by marinesniper and credited to SgtSaint . I've also seen some people use 3d printing scraps for injection molding.