SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday March 27 2015, @06:17PM
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.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 29 2015, @11:46AM
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.