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posted by janrinok on Friday March 27 2015, @07:14AM   Printer-friendly

A new plastic waste recycler can convert failed 3D projects or scraps into new filament to use in your 3D printer:

3-D printers are getting cheaper and faster – this week the company CarbonD announced a 3-D printer that the company claims is 25 times faster than the average starting at around $2,500; meanwhile the Xyz home-oriented printer can be had for about $500.

As with regular printers, however, so with the 3-D versions – supplies are another story. The spools of plastic "ink" used in 3-D printers are not so cheap – about $30 a spool – and depending on what the printer is printing, could end up as nothing more than an expensive blob of waste plastic.

Three students at the University of British Columbia – Dennon Oosterman, Alex Kay, and David Joyce – have come up with a way to reduce the waste as well as the cost of 3-D printing. The three have designed an instant plastic recycling machine for home and small-business 3-D printers. The unique feature of this consumer-oriented extruder is that it has a built-in function to grind and pound plastic waste – like pieces of the lids from coffee cups – into small pellets. The machine, called a ProtoCycler, accepts ABS and PLA plastic waste, though each batch of waste for making into new "ink" filaments must come from the same type of plastic.

The ProtoCycler can then extrude new plastic filaments from the pellets at a rate of 5 to 10 feet per minute. That's faster than traditional extruders. The ProtoCycler machine also uses less energy than typical plastic filament-producing equipment, so it is more efficient. Colors will be able to be added to the filaments.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Friday March 27 2015, @08:03AM

    by edIII (791) on Friday March 27 2015, @08:03AM (#163130)

    I just got done sorting plastic waste for recycling in my kitchen. No problem adding a little chore to create feed stock for makers. Colors too?

    Me thinks recycling just got fun.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by WillAdams on Friday March 27 2015, @12:01PM

    by WillAdams (1424) on Friday March 27 2015, @12:01PM (#163162)

    If so, how?

    If not, why wasn't it mentioned in the article?

    http://www.filastruder.com/ [filastruder.com]

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Zinho on Friday March 27 2015, @02:49PM

      by Zinho (759) on Friday March 27 2015, @02:49PM (#163194)

      If you go to the Indigogo page for the Protocycler, there's a hand chart comparing the various filament extruders [indiegogo.com] currently on the market. Obviously, since it's made by the people marketing the Protocycler, the chart shows that Protocycler is the best one available.

      Skepticism of marketing aside, though, Filastruder looks like a kit you assemble yourself, and is much less of a packaged product than Protocycler. For me the selling point of Protocycler over Filastruder is the built-in grinder for making the feed stock. At my house we recycle a bunch of stuff that could become 3D-printer feedstock, and if I bought a Filastruder I'd have to figure out a way to reduce that stuff to bits no larger than 5mm. Also, the Protocycler team has already gone through the trouble of getting their product UL tested for safety; that's worth a bit of my extra cash.

      That being said, I've got other hobbies I'm wanting to finish projects in before I lay out money for a 3D-printer, so this is all going in my "good to know for the future" file.

      +0 grain of salt

      --
      "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
    • (Score: 2) by TheB on Friday March 27 2015, @06:27PM

      by TheB (1538) on Friday March 27 2015, @06:27PM (#163268)

      Filastruder takes plastic pellets melts them and extrudes it as plastic rod.

      ProtoCycler takes used plastic grinds it into pellets then makes the rod.

      You can buy ABS pellets in bulk for around $3 a pound.
      With the ProtoCycler you can reuse the plastic from failed prints as well as old prints you don't want anymore.
      It is also possible to use milk jugs or other sources of plastic waist.

      Repeated recycling will result in weaker/more brittle plastic. Every time plastic is melted it looses chemicals into the air, and the polymer chains become disorganized. There are additives and extrusion tricks that can extend the quality of the plastic, but none of the machines I've looked at address these issues.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by rondon on Friday March 27 2015, @12:20PM

    by rondon (5167) on Friday March 27 2015, @12:20PM (#163164)

    So, if this thing doesn't cost an arm and a leg to make, is it a small business opportunity? It seems pretty easy to get plastic recycling right now, considering my neighbors figure it to be trash. At 30 bucks a spool, maybe somebody could use it as a part-time business?

    Or am I missing something (I know I should have RTFA)?

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Friday March 27 2015, @01:55PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 27 2015, @01:55PM (#163185)

      One big problem is non-chemists thing plastic is "a" thing or theres only one plastic.

      Purified PLA with no contaminants larger than 0.1 mm and no water adsorbed is quite a bit different from some random stuff found in my neighbors recycle bin.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday March 27 2015, @06:17PM

        by frojack (1554) on Friday March 27 2015, @06:17PM (#163263) Journal

        Exactly what I was thinking.
        There is a boatload of plastic compounds, and even the little recycle symbols don't give adequate information for sorting.

        The focus on making spools for 3D printers, which are in use by .0001% of the population, and require pretty precise formulation, is just crazy misapplication of recycling.

        TFS:

        the unique feature of this consumer-oriented extruder is that it has a built-in function to grind and pound plastic waste – like pieces of the lids from coffee cups, into small pellets.

        What about the styro cups themselves? The world is drowning in used Styrofoam, and nobody has a recycle plan for that stuff. It all goes to landfills.

        I've got no coffee cup lids in my recycle bin, but I do have milk containers, bottles, various bags and packaging, etc.
        Something that could reside in the home and extrude something useful out of all that plastic might be far more useful to the world.

        Failing local extrusion, just grind and beat plastic to pellets, which could could be sorted by recycled more easily, and sorted by density much later in the process. (The pellet state is probably more environmentally dangerous than the extrusion, because its hard to contain). Maybe these pellets could just be flushed down the sewers and separated at sewage plants. (Free transportation).

        Or we could all rinse them out, (energy and water waste) set them out for recycle collection, (transportation energy waste), transport in mass to sorting and packaging yards, to make big bails and finally transport them again, (more energy) to plastic plants for recycle use. The whole exercise is not based on sound economics, so it always runs at a loss.

        --
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        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 29 2015, @11:46AM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 29 2015, @11:46AM (#163778)

          Honestly the best thing you can do with plastic is burn it as a solid petroleum fuel. Making a bonfire in the back yard is foolish and will create a superfund site, but fundamentally, its just a long chain hydrocarbon. Given a proper furnace design its not much worse than coal. You won't need the sulfur dioxide scrubbers LOL.

          Second best thing you can do is thermal decompose or hydrocrack it in a refinery back to useful components. This happens semi-uncontrollably in a well designed furnace, this is just controlling the action.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by WillAdams on Friday March 27 2015, @02:17PM

      by WillAdams (1424) on Friday March 27 2015, @02:17PM (#163187)

      The problem is one needs:

        - virgin feed stock to mix in
        - good quality controls

      It's that last which is the killer --- there's a reason why good filament is expensive and nylon weed whacker line is cheap.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @03:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2015, @03:15PM (#163196)

    My question is how do they handle quality control? My understanding of plastic recycling is one of the biggest problems is plastic purity. Colors blend together, and the more time you process plastic the weaker and less consistent the end result (especially if you mix different plastics, like a rustle-y supermarket bag versus a hard plastic handle). Feeding in inconsistent inputs to a 3d printer seems like a recipe for problems.