recycling 3D print could be done like big water bottle. you bring your failed prototype to the filament store and they give you a discount on new spool. they could also sell recycled spool for super cheap
@@GigsTaggart Could probably automate most of the process apart from like 1 or 2 people to run the front and back of the shop. Save some money on shipping virgin plastic to the manufacturing location and on shipping finished filament from abroad. Might be financially viable but might not be super lucrative.
good luck with sorting the different kind of plastic. Are you going to trust what the customers say they deposit, or are you going to manually sort the plastics ? Also, you end up with a mix of material from random quality, which will give a finished product with a random quality, if you're even able to differentiate the plastics properly
@@xl000 Density of ground up plastic might be a good way of sorting them out, I have thought about doing the same but had some trouble figuring out the right scale of production required that would allow for profit. For model makers or people making form over function type prints quality of the finish might matter or people making mechanical parts that require specific strength recycled filament might not be good for them. There are plenty of use cases for cheap plastic were the quality doesn't matter too much such as small things around the house, quick prototyping of parts to make sure the dimensions are close to what is required, light duty mechanical parts, all of which I would gladly use lower quality plastic for if it was significantly cheaper. As long as it prints ok that is.
Let's throw a brick into this boat's tiny ocean pond: sort then melt the waste 3D print materials, then using either 3D printing or other forming methods, make molds of useful parts that you will simply press cast your bulk non filament material into. Less labor related to the cleaning, sorting, melting extruding and remaking spools. Also, you could potentialy just bring a standardized block of recycled material to a store or other 3D printing business and get a standardized amount of money from it. Then everybody can pre recycle their material and choose to reuse or resell.
I work in manufacturing, high speed linear plastics extrusion is a large part of what we do (jacketing and insulating medium voltage cable) The equipment in this video looks like miniaturized versions of equipment I work with. We filter our molten plastics and rubbers through multiple layers of magnetized mesh screens to keep out impurities, especially metals, and handle our pellets in clean-room conditions. The diameter of the extruded material is modulated by the extruder's screw rpm mostly, but fine-tuning is adjusted by adjusting the tension of the take-up spool. As the spool fills up the force it is pulling with changes due to the effective-radius of the spool drum increasing the s it fills with material. We use in-line equipment to compensate for this, but the equipment's effect on the tension has a non-zero latency, so the faster the machine runs, the more the tension will vary along a given length, and I'm turn, the diameter as more tension causes the material to "neck-down" and less tension causes a "buldge". If the latency of the tension-correcting equipment resonates with the rotation of the take-up spool that causes exponential issues. As a spool rotates, it filled unevenly, and will become slightly oblonged, when the peak of that radius is pulling in the line the tension increases slightly, and when the trough is pulling on the line the tension decreases slightly, and when that resonates with the latency of the tension-correcting equipment then it looks like the line becoming slack- then taught, then slack, them taught. It can be fixed by changing the speed of the machine so it no longer resonates, and after the radius of the drum changes (from further filling with filament) the machine can be restored to it's ideal operating speed.
In line equipment used to stabilize the tension on the line are dancers. Additional rollers installed in front of the take-up spool that have a degree of movement relative to the material's tendency to slack. If slack in the material causes the line to drop towards the ground, then the roller is free to move up/down. Limit switches are used to detect the roller's position, and the take-up spool motor is configured to increase/decrease power based on the limit switches. Additionally the dancers are under tension to pull the material toward it's position of slack, to dampen any higher tension from the take-up spool, as any additional tension will have to pull the slack out if the line caused by the dancer.
slightly off topic, but how are plastic parts like this green/yellow terminal block molded without the colors blending? www.wago.com/medias/0200000a00001bcb000200b6-DE.jpg?context=bWFzdGVyfGltYWdlc3w4MDM1OXxpbWFnZS9qcGVnfGltYWdlcy9oYTQvaGU1Lzk4ODIzMDM3OTExMzQuanBnfDVlZTY2ZGNjZjhiOTUxZmRlMWU4MWZkNDllMzQwYTg0M2U4OGY3Y2ZkZGJkZjg5NzNmOTgyNGVjMjE5MzNlOWY
I've got 10 years experience running big extruders. I was the lead mechanic on a PET cup production line. We made our own sheet in line. (Most cup companies buy pre-made sheet.) We never ran 100% regrind. Not just for feeding issues, but also because grinding the material makes it Weaker. Intrinsic viscosity goes way down at regrind % goes up. Don't go above 60% regrind and your product and ease of production will improve.
I'd love an affordable user-level version of the grinder + melter, being able to completely recycle old material seems way more cost-effective on the individual level
@@exMuteKid Not really. People have built extruders for 200-300 bucks. The sensor doesn't need to be optical and other parts can also be much cheaper if you're just a hobbyist and not interested in producing high quantities of filament. It would be cool if people came up with a DIY design using standard parts, would be an interesting project and very useful. Kind of like the Voron printers which you have to build yourself but the parts can all be sourced easily.
@@larrybud Maybe so, but it reduces waste and adds another layer to the hobby. In the world of cheap mass produced injection molded crap 3D printing usually isn't exactly cost effective either, but that was never the point.
Indeed, I have also thought of this. Instead of grinding, one could also run the rough recycled filament through a drive mechanism (part of an extruder) with a blade immediately after it, that chops the rough filament into tiny segments (pellets) of the same length. This should produce pretty consistent pellets that will hopefully also flow nicely due to the round shape.
i was thinking just send the filament through a second smaller extruder while its still hot. just one extruder then another right after@@martinwhite3005
as a Process mechanic for plastics and rubber engineering i really appreciate that you recycle the plastics. the rough surface you had after extrusion is most likely due to water that was still in the plastic. idk which material you used but here are a few tips: dry the plastic longer (pretty obvious) or you can change the temp settings. For a 3 zone Extrusion i recommend this setup for HDPE: 1st zone (feed section) 30-50 °C zone 2 (Compression section) 180-190 °C zone 3 (Matering section) 160-180 °C. you want to heat up the plastic quickly so for that you use higher temps in the Compression section and set it lower in the Metering section so it is thermoplastic.
@@powermos but he probably didn't delete the x/y auto leveling and the additional height (z raising) for the new 'first' layer (and also the setting for speed, temperature, fan power...). I would also recommend to give the new first layer a tiny bit higher extrusion rate. ...and except the code he must have adjusted the printer to a new 0 for z at the last printed layer.
@@powermos The hard part is finding the correct reference point. If the printer was stopped when the filament was removed, the steppers may not have been locked, or maybe they moved slightly. Everything's gotta be perfect, and that's what makes it impressive imo.
@@Joe_Yacketori Im thinking maybe he does it by keeping track of the time and filming it? You could theoretically jot down the print time for every big print and scroll through a print preview of the gcode to find out what layer would happen at what time. Cross reference your video with the print preview and find out what layer it failed on. I hope that made sense I'm quite a bit less than sober and I'm certain there is a way easier and smarter way to do whatever he's doing lol.
@@N-VAMusic Nah, figuring out which part of the G code it failed on is the easy part. What I'm talking about is keeping your print head in a "known" location. At the beginning of the print, the print head homes itself. The rest of the print is open-loop, so it just prays that it doesn't ever get shifted. It assumes its reference point hasn't changed. The challenge here is tinkering with the print head and swapping out G code without disturbing the reference point of the print head, because it is 100% reliant on its recording of the initial homing location, which could get shifted if you move the steppers slightly while playing with it and unclogging it.
Interesting concept. I recently bought my first 3D-printer, and recycling the material was constantly on my mind as the unnerving mound of failed prints started to grow. Hopefully we'll see affordable recyclers in the near future.
I'd kill for a strength test recycle after recycle from the same material. see how it degrades recycle after recycle. and also how adding fresh pla would help. in different amounts
THIS IS AMAZING! Despite the issues you encountered the process went much better than expected. I'm very much looking forward to being able to replicate this myself as I've saved every failed print since I got into 3d printing a few years ago and I'm sitting on a few kilos of otherwise wasted plastic.
For the inconsistency of the mixed material, I imagine it'd help the more times you recycle material and mix it with already mixed materials as that should help to essentially remix the material getting it closer to a more even mix. Still, I think this is definitely useful. Perhaps most useful for anyone who uses 3D printing for rapid prototyping and creating blanks for molds and the like. Like someone using 3D prints to create blanks for dice molds that'll be cast in resin in the end. Just design, print, smooth and polish, mold, and then recycle once you're done.
Great video. I really enjoy how much content you’ve created over this topic. It’s brings attention to a significant waste problem with 3D printing. I’ve been hoarding my scraps for years until I can find a good way to reuse the material. I bought a Filastruder after watching your video on it a while ago. It’s easy enough to acquire equipment that can melt and extrude plastic pellets but the biggest hurdle is shredding them. I modified a paper shredder, just as you did, but it’s not efficient and the shredder died eventually. When there is a way to affordably and reliably shred and pelletize the scraps, recycling our material will become much more achievable to the average hobbyist.
Totally agree here it annoys me a lot to waste material on 2 fronts , 1 the fact I'm wasting money and 2 the fact you know even putting these in the recycling bin that it most likely won't be recycled.
@@Mrtickleberries Definitely wouldn't be recycled, I'm mortified to think that these straws of plastic could show up in the future in birds nests and such :/
8:51 > stockpiles 3dbenchy boats > takes time and effort to seperate polymer types and making sure that it comes out fine > finishes making filament out of boats > prints even more 3dbenchy boats > refuses to elaborate
Thanks for the thorough review of this. Yes, not something I will own anytime soon. But I can sew how this could be a service or a tool found in maker spaces.
Thank you for this video Stefan! It’s great to be able to show people why recycling PLA (& other materials) back into filament is so challenging. At 3DTomorrow we have a waste print recycling scheme to promote #ZeroWaste but the material is used to produce less tolerance defendant parts. The challenges and time consuming processes involved in producing recycled material generally means you’d have to charge more for a product which is inherently worse than the virgin polymer and with the potential of some inconsistencies. I personally don’t think the 3D printing community would be very tolerant of such a truly recycled material and a few bad reviews could destroy its chance of sale, particularly when there are brands in the industry who purposely mislead their customers as to the nature of their recycled content, which raises consumer expectations for truly recycled blends.
The effort that went into this video is impressive. Thank you for putting out such well produced content. I don't have a 3D printer yet, but videos like these are so inspiring!
love to see how much you've improved your process since 2018! I think recycling all our plastic is a great idea and should be pursued more so that home recycling can be effective and practical.
This would be a good tool for well funded makerspaces or college labs tech etc, but price prohibitive for most. Still neat to see how miniaturized this tech has become already
this is very impressive and in depth. thank you! I don't say this often but I hope this process gets commercialized soon. The money and effort put into it doesn't make a lot of sense on a small scale, but would probably work well on a larger one.
What's your take on recycling 3D prints? Totaly worth it or too much work? Don't forget to like & subscribe and share this video on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and other platforms!
Those extruder machines worth more than 8k USD, and you also have to buy the grinder. I am guessing you spent 5 or more hours including the 2 hours to extrude, and you got 300g of recycled filament that worth about 20 USD. I don't know about you, but It doesn't look like worth for me.
You are obviously an engineer with access to more funding and materials than I do, I'm envious. I see recycling as a project of the future because of the few dificulties that you have sshown and a few that you have yet to discover. I wish you well in your researches and 3d printing endevours. Cheers.
That's awesome and it's exactly what I want with my business. I remember seeing a video of someone a long time ago taking up a whole room just to do what this machine is doing. I can't afford it now but I haven't thrown out a single failed print since I got my printers a couple years ago because I want to reuse the filament. Great video! It pointed me in the right direction
The really long setups are for higher output, as in faster production of filament. With smaller setups your filament production dramatically slows down, which isn't a big deal for a hobbyist, but important for a business.
Could a 2-step extrusion work? I was wondering, if one first would extrude the chips with a larger diameter (lets say 2.85mm just for the sake of it) and not care so much about the constant thickness. Next clip the result to small pellets with some kind of machine and feed those to the final extrusion process. Of course that would requires two melts. But that way one could filter depris in the first pass, and the resulting pellets would possibly run in the second pass easier. Might not be worth the effort, thou.
Interesting idea, dunno if it's what you thought about or a variation, but extruding pellets of somewhat constant size might indeed make the results better. Also probably making it easier to mix new material or pigments on it.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 That's true but given that Stefan had decent success without adding in any virgin PLA it seems like the degradation might be insignificant enough to not be an issue? I'd love to see more, having a method to reuse failed prints would be a game changer. I hate adding plastic waste so I've been collecting and sorting all of my waste plastic for years just waiting until I can reuse it someday.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 that is true, but it makes me wonder how much the temperature influences on that. When we think about it, the 3D print is already 3rd generation melt (base plastic - which might be recycled but let's assume not - to pellet, pellet to filament, filament to print) or how do you call it.
It will be essential in the future, even with Bioplastics like PLA. I am extremely impressed with the results you got at 100%. Where I work all our plastic is being moved to 30% recycled (well, some of it has been that way for years!) and there have been some huge challenges, all similar to what you have mentioned. They are pushing for 50%, but contamination is very difficult to work around. Some materials were even aggressively eroding the dies used to blow the polymer, and the energy required to have those re-made was huge. ultimately, what I would love to see is people REDUCE the amount of types of plastic we use, but the way the world is going it is getting worse, with so many companies adding different stabilisers or modifiers to Polymers, in attempt to make them "better" for the environment, but really its making recycling much harder.
This is so good! I've heard of a few companies that do this, if you're able to do this with *KIND OF* consumer ready machines, I'm sure industrial recycling will make it big eventually. Really glad to see my failed prints don't just have to be trash!
I think this is awesome for prototyping. It seems it would be best to use the exact same filament brand and type to create a reliable process for reuse. It would be nice to take a failed prototype and immediately grind and store in a specific container till enough is ready for creation of new filament. It seems with current technology at home recycling would have to be a very rigid process for consistent results. Nice work as usual, thanks!
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There seems to be a lot of complication to getting even extrusion starting with fully recycled material. What's the feasibility of starting with a DIY preform and using a drawing process (like your investigations on what the US Army was doing with the PC core-ABS filament)? Ovens, heating elements and lathes are more accessible than shredding/pelleting machinery, not to mention maintenance. Not every location on the globe has 3 phase power, either. I envisioned melting down plastic scraps and rolling them into a core (extrude it into a pipe in the case where you already had invested in some small scale machinery). You could even take multicolor/multimaterial wipe towers of cylindrical geometry and submit them directly to drawing as they're already solid. Chemically or friction weld many together for bigger feedstock. Not saying any of it is easy, just putting an idea out there! Thanks so much Stefan for all the experiences you share!
That doesnt seem like a very solid buissiness model. Your establishing a niche service in an already niche market, then you're giving 1/3 of your product away for free.
A standalone business maybe not but it would be interesting if maker spaces could run a service where you can bring in material and get credit towards the recycled material it produces and sell it as cheaper prototype filament.
I used to work at an industrial plastics facility. Contamination in the regrind material was a huge problem (partially because someone kept throwing our metal post-processing tools in the grinder). I got flashbacks when I saw the metal bit in the filament!
Thank you for putting in so much effort to show this! Besides cost, I think about the space that the recycling equipment takes up. That's really the 'tipping point' for me in thinking that a service would be the more economical method to recover 3D printing waste/recycling prints. Also, it would be something that schools/public libraries could use. The company could possibly 'donate' the recycled filament to these public institutions for tax write-offs, too. The downside is shipping costs. If material has to be sent into this service, and the filament mailed back, there is that added overhead. Perhaps collection points at libraries or other creative solutions could solve some of that. I'm really looking forward to ending the 'wasted plastic' stigma attached to this technology!!
Late to the party but I work with industrial extruders, and want to add if you didn't got that info yet, that when you want to use multi material recycled plastic, you need to mix it in small ratio with something else to get a stable output, like 1:5 or even less down to 1:20. Also, there are very efficient coloring pellets, so you can turn your ugly grey into nice black with jusy a tiny addition of it.
I have a hypothesis on the stringiness of the final prints. In the past when I've printed with filament that was rough, I had similar results to what you showed. I believe this might be due to an increased surface area. If you have the time, I'd really like to see virgin/recycled mix extruded with the same setup. I believe this will decrease the roughness, and therefore lower the surface area of the filament. I bet if you roughed up that same filament while warm, you'd see the roughed up filament is much more stringy.
This is all great news. Sure, there's some small issues, but nothing that cannot be tackled and fixed. When the methods are refined and optimized for cost, I cannot wait to have one of these in my workshop.
What if you chopped up the recycled filament to make more consistent pellets and re-extruded that? I think it might help with the consistency problems.
I work at an automotive factory where we make fuel tanks from plastic and it’s interesting how similar my job is to this process. Defect tanks are ground up, mixed with plastic pellets, and put back into the machine to be melted, pushed through a breaker plate to catch impurities, and then fed out. Waste material must be purged out before useful material can be used and so on. It’s just super fascinating to me
Man i would love to be able to recycle my own prototypes etc. i always feel so bad banging them in the bin. somewhere that collects and recycles filament would be amazing
sell your scrap on mercari or ebay. As long as you grind it up so it is economical to ship, people will buy them. Or melt them into a solid block because the people like me who want to buy cheap plastic have shredders to do it.
I keep the ziplock bag that my filament comes in to keep all the failed prints from that color, so it is always separated by material, color, and brand.
@@alphastratus6623 When it goes beyond the bag's size I might port some over to a different bag. Some filament colors have very little waste because I bought them solely to print for a client. I get fuller bags when I keep a particular filament in the machine for rapid prototyping and color is not important.
I think recycling is essential since we reach to a point that people are amazed by 3d printing and are using it in different fields, so we have a lot of plastic waste that could be used again which saves money and the environment, nice job.
Excellent experience, Liked the use of the mesh to clean undesired materials. For metal particles in the Extrusion process we use neodymium magnets to capture them at the end of the hopper, maybe could be useful for you to try.
Not bad, but there is glue, sugar, skin oils and who knows what else on them. You might clean the exterior (not the glue, though), but the interior is another issue. Maybe water bottles are ok on the inside, the leftover saliva and minerals being only in negligible quantities. An advantage would be that the pellets would be actually flakes, melting easier.
I believe the University of Technology in Sydney is running a industrial robot arm 3D printer on directly melted HDPE from washed and chipped milk bottles.
Honestly this is the dream of most makers. It just hurts me to see failed prints go to the bin, but it sadly seems like such a hassle even with a machine like yours. It would be amazing if a company like Das Filament would let you send them kilo boxes and then they send you back a roll. Or even have their own recycled filament which you can buy and if you send them plastic to recycle they give you a discount depending on the weight! The filament would be maybe cheaper and less qualitative and also color may vary but for prototyping it'd be amazing! I'd honestly buy it. One can dream...
I do not think so because if the jam is dissimilar material, it will still be present. If the issue is jams, filament pellets are still not as smooth as real pellets. Factory pellets are round and smooth, like airsoft BB, just not spherical. I am experimenting with ball milling pellets to round them. Although I'm not super motivated as shreds do produce perfectly usable filament for pretty much any print you are realistically going to do.
You should add a 20% new plastic to compensate the decay of the recycled particles and maintain the properties of the original material! Great process, really clean! Congrats!
I know it's not perfect for this, but I'd love to see these recycle plastics from other thing. We drink a ton of sparkling water that comes in plastic bottles and I'd love to turn it into filament. 😁
Would be interesting to know if age affects recycling feasibility. Some of the benchies would have been years old I guess, and some out in sunlight and air. If the colours were of different average ages that could account for the differences in strength.
Would be interesting how the filament behaves, if you recycle it again. and again. and so on. Recycling once is awesome, but imagine you could recycle it like 5 times or so. But I guess this only works if you add virgin material every time
There are some companies that do recycle filament, they usually throw in about 50% virgin plastic into the mix. The more you heat the plastic the more it breaks down the polymer chains causing it to be weaker. Ideally you would break down the polymers into monomers and reform the chains to create virgin material, would give a chance to remove any dyes as well from the plastic. But that would require a fairly large scale set up to break even on cost. Though the solvent used in creating PLA would be reusable so there wouldn't be much waste created apart from the energy requirements of the whole process.
This would probably be the dream of every small and large 3d print farm owners. Failures would become meaningless as you learn and then throw that into this machine which makes those filament again. How wonderful!
Not sure if you will see this months later or not, but I work in the flour grinding industry and might know whats going on with the metal shaving. Even grinding flour, there is a small production of metal shavings from the grinding process that is usually captured with a magnet in the production line. Not sure how much of your system is ferrous versus not, but if its primarily steel then you can catch the metal shavings using a strong magnet over the ground product.
I don't have a lot of knowledge on crude oil and creating plastics, but I enjoyed watching the whole process. Thank you for the video and wish you the best.
The cardboard in it would clog the nozzle. ... If we mean the same thing with the milk carton: A cardboard box which is covered on the inside with a thin film of plastic. And such a box contains 0.5L or 1L of milk. When I'm not wrong on it, they still just burn that, because they still have not figured out how to separate the cardboard from the plastic for a clean recycling. Or did you mean a cardboard tray with plastic bottles? Of course that could be separated very easy ;-)
Fantastic, I usually use a toaster oven, And melt my failed prints into sheets. They can be used for small cutting boards or some wood working projects.
I will take them if you wish to unload them. I have a homemade filament maker of my own, but no PLA scrap. Please message me at the below gmail account. "dandsmiths"
I’ve worked in several plastic industry for over 10 years and I can tell you for a fact a possibility of having inconsistencies is you probably didn’t strain out possible metal bits. Having worked both the Raw Materials and production here’s what I know. Failed parts are sorted (mostly color from clear) ground up into small chunks. Then ran through a metal detector which spits out more than just metal. My guess is some irregular chunks tripped the sensor or some times couldn’t handle the flow of the regrind. Then once done we would either mix it improperly mixed virgin material or leftover material that wasn’t used. Then to make it all one nice uniform color black pigment was added and mixed before being ready to ship out as new material.
It's not worth it for those 99% _yet!_ Remember that, 10 years ago, filament 3D printers cost $10k-$100k+ and only big companies and universities could afford one. Look where we are now, after a decade of work by the RepRap community (initiated by Adrian Bowyer, of course). In theory the same thing could happen with filament recycling. (Although I personally have my doubts about how many people would really bother, given the required effort, unless the process could somehow become a lot more automated. And I have even greater doubts over it ever becoming economical - i.e. the average home 3D printer user actually _saving money_ by recycling failed prints/etc. Virgin PLA/PETG/ABS/etc pellets are just so cheap, and even manufactured spools of filament aren't expensive enough for most people to find recycling at home to be worth it. Just look at how much time Stefan spent in this video to end up with what looks like less than 1kg of PLA, which could have been bought for less than £/€/$20... _I'd love to be proven wrong,_ but I'm not optimistic about it, sorry!)
You could check if there is a different type of screw available. When we're doing a lot of different colors we will often change out the screw flights with very aggressive mixing sections. This is very helpful when we need very homogeneous mixing of colors, fillers, additives.
Suggestion about moisture: You mentioned that stringiness might have been caused by your filament being moist, then claimed it was bone dry. Can you really be sure of that? After drying the chunks it took the machine hours to to re-melt the plastic into filament. During this time it was exposed to moist air and since the ground chunks are smaller and much rougher than commercial plastic beads they should experience greatly accelerated sorption while just waiting in the hopper of the machine to be re-melted. I don't know about the plastic industry but in the chemical industry you typically add a hygroscopic desiccant into a closed space with your material when storing or even when working with it to ensure absolute dryness. If I didn't just miss something and your chunks really were exposed to moist air for hours while sitting in the hopper, I may suggest: - actually testing the moisture levels in your recycled filament - enclosing the hopper and using an air dryer or desiccant to keep it dry right up till it gets processed
I'd love to see a follow up on this where the filament is used, broken down, and re-extruded a few times to see how much degradation is from the recycling process itself, or if the integrity drop is just because there are different brands with different stabilizer/add-in ratios being blended together.
Grinding Benchies to make not only more Benchies... but also a MEGA Benchy!! I love it! XD Great proof of concept here, I really like it! I do believe, however, that recycling 3D printing material would be much more viable for industrial or large-scale 3D printing farms. I think for most hobbyists that have one, maybe two 3D printers that are not constantly printing, recycling the material at home may be too far-fetched considering the equipment cost and the smaller amount of material to recycle. It would be amazing, however, if there were easily-accessible services that could buy 3d printed waste (maybe $5-10 or so per kg of material?), turn it into usable filament, and resell the new spools for reuse.
I just wish the recyclers were more affordable for regular folks. 3 grand is quite a steep price for a reasonably simple machine. I had a giant bin of plastic waste just from 3 months of printing. (I made alot of mistakes in the beginning and I tend to print with supports and rafts as I print complex objects, so I have quite a bit of waste) I had to just put it out for the municipal recyclers because I couldn't find an economical way to recycle it back into filament.
Cant wait till this is cheap enough for the masses. Seems like the gray recycle would be good for smaller parts due to the contamination. Still useful imo. Great vid!
Mixing the grinded leftovers with pure pellets can improve extrusion quality, but dissolve a colour. You can use dying concentrate to dye your colorfull grind to black. In addition, cooling extrusions with fans is not recommended, that causes rough texture, you should use water bath, but in vertical process it isn't possible.
Besides a filter for the liquid plastic, I would also recommend adding a magnet to the output of the hopper. Its just a cheap and easy way of getting rid of any ferrous material, and it will reduce the amount of times you need to change your filter mesh ;)
100% necessary and revolutionary in fact. The filament produced from waste would help offset the massive waste this hobby produces and also would stop people from throwing away money. It also makes it a lot easier to recycle in the future as well and make a product that can be converted into a limitless amount of others. If a company was able to pay people for plastic waste, preferably the homeless and needy people it could give them a voice that could be used to help the homeless crisis. There's so many options and opportunities to help the earth and the community while lining your pockets. It's insane how over looked this is.
Regarding removing contaminants and producing consistent sized chunks- would it make any sense to do a rough first run (with a simpler & faster process) that filters and extrudes through a wide nozzle (like 3 mm or something) which gets cut into pellets as it extrudes. Then you get a consistent-ish sized pellet that's already been filtered to put through the final extrusion process.
I think "Home recycling" of PLA is certainly an achievable goal within the next few years, With a machine that costs a similar amount to a standard 3D printer. I would love to be able to recycle test prints, failed prints and other plastic waste, and I think the home user is in a good position and motivated to sort his waste (big plastic bag stored with the reel?). If its necessary to use a proportion of new pellet material then that wouldn't be a problem, and would improve the quality of the resulting material. Of course, if you have a CNC mill its relatively simple to melt down your 3D print waste to make blocks of plastic for those test millings, so for those who don't have the time or money to make new filament you still have the option of making plastic blocks or even sheet material for other projects. I think its going to be important to be able to recycle our print waste, and it will be of economic benefit too.
I think the answer to getting consistent filament size with recycling prints is to take just one more step. Run it through the extruder twice. At the extruder, Have rotating blades similar to a pasta maker, the first batch run through gets chopped into a MUCH more consistent size, you would get little pellets. Then run the pellets through the extruder the second time and since the pellets will go through the extruder much more evenly you should get a more consistent end product.
Would love to see more user-friendly machines that shred and extrude out filament. I'm sure such a device will become a thing the more 3D printing becomes more wildly available to the everyday person.
This video was excellent! Best video on 3D printing recycling so far on TH-cam. This is an issue I think about a lot, since I feel somewhat guilty for all the plastic waste I create with 3D printing. A place to send in all my 3D print waste would be great, imo.
Strangely enough my biggest waste of plastic at home is from PET drinking bottles. For my use case these are great candidates for prototyping and for outdoor functional parts where appearance is not of great importance. Love your content.
I love how after recycling hundreds of boats, he just printed more boats
ashes to ashes, dust to dust, boats to boats
Boatception
What else to print to test other than the mighty Benchy?
@@Sam-fq5hc yes
I saw that too
recycling 3D print could be done like big water bottle. you bring your failed prototype to the filament store and they give you a discount on new spool. they could also sell recycled spool for super cheap
US labor costs more than foreign plastic plus labor
@@GigsTaggart Could probably automate most of the process apart from like 1 or 2 people to run the front and back of the shop. Save some money on shipping virgin plastic to the manufacturing location and on shipping finished filament from abroad. Might be financially viable but might not be super lucrative.
good luck with sorting the different kind of plastic. Are you going to trust what the customers say they deposit, or are you going to manually sort the plastics ? Also, you end up with a mix of material from random quality, which will give a finished product with a random quality, if you're even able to differentiate the plastics properly
@@xl000 Density of ground up plastic might be a good way of sorting them out, I have thought about doing the same but had some trouble figuring out the right scale of production required that would allow for profit. For model makers or people making form over function type prints quality of the finish might matter or people making mechanical parts that require specific strength recycled filament might not be good for them. There are plenty of use cases for cheap plastic were the quality doesn't matter too much such as small things around the house, quick prototyping of parts to make sure the dimensions are close to what is required, light duty mechanical parts, all of which I would gladly use lower quality plastic for if it was significantly cheaper. As long as it prints ok that is.
Let's throw a brick into this boat's tiny ocean pond: sort then melt the waste 3D print materials, then using either 3D printing or other forming methods, make molds of useful parts that you will simply press cast your bulk non filament material into.
Less labor related to the cleaning, sorting, melting extruding and remaking spools. Also, you could potentialy just bring a standardized block of recycled material to a store or other 3D printing business and get a standardized amount of money from it. Then everybody can pre recycle their material and choose to reuse or resell.
Someone needs to design a test print that is also a widely useful object.
I do my experimenting on objects I wanted to print anyways. Still a fair amount of waste, but at least I get something out of it.
Hooks that are compatible with 3M command tape would be a good start. There's lots of ways to design such a thing to test overhang, bridging, etc.
i dont think they will be useful anymore if you have 500 of them
@@DI-xe8vq If you have 500 of them you're kinda doing a bad job at calibration ngl
@@giedrius2149 or testing alot of different printers, filaments, or setting
It's impressive the work that goes behind recycling filaments.
Thanks for showing the process, it's pretty useful to see 🙂
Today is my birthday.. I am ur big fan
2nd comment 😎😎
Luv u bro
He looked at all those little boats and said “im gonna need a bigger boat!”
Omg we thinked about the same ting in a schoolprosject without see this video!
I work in manufacturing, high speed linear plastics extrusion is a large part of what we do (jacketing and insulating medium voltage cable)
The equipment in this video looks like miniaturized versions of equipment I work with.
We filter our molten plastics and rubbers through multiple layers of magnetized mesh screens to keep out impurities, especially metals, and handle our pellets in clean-room conditions.
The diameter of the extruded material is modulated by the extruder's screw rpm mostly, but fine-tuning is adjusted by adjusting the tension of the take-up spool.
As the spool fills up the force it is pulling with changes due to the effective-radius of the spool drum increasing the s it fills with material. We use in-line equipment to compensate for this, but the equipment's effect on the tension has a non-zero latency, so the faster the machine runs, the more the tension will vary along a given length, and I'm turn, the diameter as more tension causes the material to "neck-down" and less tension causes a "buldge".
If the latency of the tension-correcting equipment resonates with the rotation of the take-up spool that causes exponential issues.
As a spool rotates, it filled unevenly, and will become slightly oblonged, when the peak of that radius is pulling in the line the tension increases slightly, and when the trough is pulling on the line the tension decreases slightly, and when that resonates with the latency of the tension-correcting equipment then it looks like the line becoming slack- then taught, then slack, them taught. It can be fixed by changing the speed of the machine so it no longer resonates, and after the radius of the drum changes (from further filling with filament) the machine can be restored to it's ideal operating speed.
In line equipment used to stabilize the tension on the line are dancers.
Additional rollers installed in front of the take-up spool that have a degree of movement relative to the material's tendency to slack.
If slack in the material causes the line to drop towards the ground, then the roller is free to move up/down. Limit switches are used to detect the roller's position, and the take-up spool motor is configured to increase/decrease power based on the limit switches.
Additionally the dancers are under tension to pull the material toward it's position of slack, to dampen any higher tension from the take-up spool, as any additional tension will have to pull the slack out if the line caused by the dancer.
slightly off topic, but how are plastic parts like this green/yellow terminal block molded without the colors blending? www.wago.com/medias/0200000a00001bcb000200b6-DE.jpg?context=bWFzdGVyfGltYWdlc3w4MDM1OXxpbWFnZS9qcGVnfGltYWdlcy9oYTQvaGU1Lzk4ODIzMDM3OTExMzQuanBnfDVlZTY2ZGNjZjhiOTUxZmRlMWU4MWZkNDllMzQwYTg0M2U4OGY3Y2ZkZGJkZjg5NzNmOTgyNGVjMjE5MzNlOWY
@@skmetal7 so funny he's taken so long to write out this point and you just totally hijacked to a totally unrelated topic. 😂
Bit in it hey.
@@ChayComas this was a fascinating read. Hats off to you 👏.
I've got 10 years experience running big extruders. I was the lead mechanic on a PET cup production line. We made our own sheet in line. (Most cup companies buy pre-made sheet.) We never ran 100% regrind. Not just for feeding issues, but also because grinding the material makes it Weaker. Intrinsic viscosity goes way down at regrind % goes up. Don't go above 60% regrind and your product and ease of production will improve.
This equipment would be a good thing for local 3d printing clubs to pool their money and purchase for the community use.
Yeah question is who would fix it when someone breaks it 😂
That's exactly what I was thinking when the price came up. One day I will open a makerspace!
And some moran will drop ABS into the PLA pile 🤦♂️
While this sounds like a great idea, my first thought was, like others say, that one must never underestimate the power of idiots.
@@xanderstuff7 we've got one in our town we've got probably 50 or 75 people registered very cool for working with projects.
I'd love an affordable user-level version of the grinder + melter, being able to completely recycle old material seems way more cost-effective on the individual level
Yeah but the detector and stuff would still be expensive
@@exMuteKid Not really. People have built extruders for 200-300 bucks. The sensor doesn't need to be optical and other parts can also be much cheaper if you're just a hobbyist and not interested in producing high quantities of filament.
It would be cool if people came up with a DIY design using standard parts, would be an interesting project and very useful. Kind of like the Voron printers which you have to build yourself but the parts can all be sourced easily.
Time is money, and none of this is cost effective on any level.
@@larrybud Maybe so, but it reduces waste and adds another layer to the hobby. In the world of cheap mass produced injection molded crap 3D printing usually isn't exactly cost effective either, but that was never the point.
@larrybud oh yes u dont have a single second to waste in your lifetime... meanwhile watching this video..
"Let me grind up this boat to see if it makes for good boat printing material"
Task failed successfully.
You are familiar with the thought experiment the Ship of Theseus in the field of identity metaphysics?
benchy-ception ;)
I SAWED THIS BOAT IN HALF
If only we could do that for materials like carbon fiber.
You should try to re-grind a re-extruded recycled spool, the metering and mixing of the extrusion process will make the re-grinds more consistent
I've built a filament pelletizer a while back and plan to exactly do that!
Indeed, I have also thought of this. Instead of grinding, one could also run the rough recycled filament through a drive mechanism (part of an extruder) with a blade immediately after it, that chops the rough filament into tiny segments (pellets) of the same length. This should produce pretty consistent pellets that will hopefully also flow nicely due to the round shape.
@@alexanderthomas2660 Why not extrude to say 2 or 3mm diameter, then re extrude at 1.75mm diameter. say spool to spool...
i was thinking just send the filament through a second smaller extruder while its still hot. just one extruder then another right after@@martinwhite3005
WOW, you have many boats. You must be sailing a lot.
You could say he catches alot of marlin
These are actually too small to be used as sailing boats for humans
@@lerikhkl please tell me you are joking and can understand a joke....
@@lerikhkl r/woooosh
@@CameronVarley no I am completely serious! It worries me that you cannot see that these vessels are too small for humans!!
as a Process mechanic for plastics and rubber engineering i really appreciate that you recycle the plastics. the rough surface you had after extrusion is most likely due to water that was still in the plastic. idk which material you used but here are a few tips: dry the plastic longer (pretty obvious) or you can change the temp settings. For a 3 zone Extrusion i recommend this setup for HDPE:
1st zone (feed section) 30-50 °C zone 2 (Compression section) 180-190 °C zone 3 (Matering section) 160-180 °C. you want to heat up the plastic quickly so for that you use higher temps in the Compression section and set it lower in the Metering section so it is thermoplastic.
Any good handbooks you would recommend for extrusion?
"I recovered the part with some G-Code trickery". Yeah, we're gonna need you to elaborate on that. That sounds amazing
Delete all the rows before the jam? Not that complicated.
@@powermos but he probably didn't delete the x/y auto leveling and the additional height (z raising) for the new 'first' layer (and also the setting for speed, temperature, fan power...). I would also recommend to give the new first layer a tiny bit higher extrusion rate.
...and except the code he must have adjusted the printer to a new 0 for z at the last printed layer.
@@powermos The hard part is finding the correct reference point. If the printer was stopped when the filament was removed, the steppers may not have been locked, or maybe they moved slightly. Everything's gotta be perfect, and that's what makes it impressive imo.
@@Joe_Yacketori Im thinking maybe he does it by keeping track of the time and filming it? You could theoretically jot down the print time for every big print and scroll through a print preview of the gcode to find out what layer would happen at what time. Cross reference your video with the print preview and find out what layer it failed on. I hope that made sense I'm quite a bit less than sober and I'm certain there is a way easier and smarter way to do whatever he's doing lol.
@@N-VAMusic Nah, figuring out which part of the G code it failed on is the easy part. What I'm talking about is keeping your print head in a "known" location. At the beginning of the print, the print head homes itself. The rest of the print is open-loop, so it just prays that it doesn't ever get shifted. It assumes its reference point hasn't changed. The challenge here is tinkering with the print head and swapping out G code without disturbing the reference point of the print head, because it is 100% reliant on its recording of the initial homing location, which could get shifted if you move the steppers slightly while playing with it and unclogging it.
Interesting concept. I recently bought my first 3D-printer, and recycling the material was constantly on my mind as the unnerving mound of failed prints started to grow. Hopefully we'll see affordable recyclers in the near future.
I'd kill for a strength test recycle after recycle from the same material. see how it degrades recycle after recycle. and also how adding fresh pla would help. in different amounts
This ☝
THIS IS AMAZING! Despite the issues you encountered the process went much better than expected. I'm very much looking forward to being able to replicate this myself as I've saved every failed print since I got into 3d printing a few years ago and I'm sitting on a few kilos of otherwise wasted plastic.
Essential. Totally absolutely necessary to get recycling into the product chain.
I agree. I have like 2 kg of waste prototypes ftom the past year that I kept in my closet
"Reduce" and "reuse" are way more important than "recycle".
@@tissuepaper9962 we can already do that. Sometimes tho you just don't have a choice
Since you lose a certain amount just being attached to the roll, you can use the off color portion to secure it to the roll.
I been saving most of my extra/ failed stuff just waiting for a cheap option to recycle them😉
me too, just can´t throw it away, cause i don´t want to waste anything
I resigned and thrown my 15kg+ of scrap and failed parts because it was taking too much space in my shop... :(
Yeah I feel too guilty
Melt it into plastic sheet or bar stock using a second hand oven and old teflon coated baking utensils as demonstrated by Precious Plastic on TH-cam.
@@Joshua0689 and how would that help in any way?
For the inconsistency of the mixed material, I imagine it'd help the more times you recycle material and mix it with already mixed materials as that should help to essentially remix the material getting it closer to a more even mix. Still, I think this is definitely useful. Perhaps most useful for anyone who uses 3D printing for rapid prototyping and creating blanks for molds and the like. Like someone using 3D prints to create blanks for dice molds that'll be cast in resin in the end. Just design, print, smooth and polish, mold, and then recycle once you're done.
Great video. I really enjoy how much content you’ve created over this topic. It’s brings attention to a significant waste problem with 3D printing. I’ve been hoarding my scraps for years until I can find a good way to reuse the material. I bought a Filastruder after watching your video on it a while ago. It’s easy enough to acquire equipment that can melt and extrude plastic pellets but the biggest hurdle is shredding them. I modified a paper shredder, just as you did, but it’s not efficient and the shredder died eventually. When there is a way to affordably and reliably shred and pelletize the scraps, recycling our material will become much more achievable to the average hobbyist.
Totally agree here it annoys me a lot to waste material on 2 fronts , 1 the fact I'm wasting money and 2 the fact you know even putting these in the recycling bin that it most likely won't be recycled.
@@Mrtickleberries Definitely wouldn't be recycled, I'm mortified to think that these straws of plastic could show up in the future in birds nests and such :/
Has anyone tried using a garden waste shredder?
Coffee grinder might work.
@@mattv6262 I doubt it'll be strong enough tbh.
8:51
> stockpiles 3dbenchy boats
> takes time and effort to seperate polymer types and making sure that it comes out fine
> finishes making filament out of boats
> prints even more 3dbenchy boats
> refuses to elaborate
Thanks for the thorough review of this. Yes, not something I will own anytime soon. But I can sew how this could be a service or a tool found in maker spaces.
Thank you for this video Stefan! It’s great to be able to show people why recycling PLA (& other materials) back into filament is so challenging. At 3DTomorrow we have a waste print recycling scheme to promote #ZeroWaste but the material is used to produce less tolerance defendant parts. The challenges and time consuming processes involved in producing recycled material generally means you’d have to charge more for a product which is inherently worse than the virgin polymer and with the potential of some inconsistencies. I personally don’t think the 3D printing community would be very tolerant of such a truly recycled material and a few bad reviews could destroy its chance of sale, particularly when there are brands in the industry who purposely mislead their customers as to the nature of their recycled content, which raises consumer expectations for truly recycled blends.
The effort that went into this video is impressive. Thank you for putting out such well produced content. I don't have a 3D printer yet, but videos like these are so inspiring!
love to see how much you've improved your process since 2018! I think recycling all our plastic is a great idea and should be pursued more so that home recycling can be effective and practical.
"it works on our machine" An eternal R&D classics.
This would be a good tool for well funded makerspaces or college labs tech etc, but price prohibitive for most. Still neat to see how miniaturized this tech has become already
this is very impressive and in depth. thank you! I don't say this often but I hope this process gets commercialized soon. The money and effort put into it doesn't make a lot of sense on a small scale, but would probably work well on a larger one.
We need more filament recycling options and I appreciate your exploring the problem and possible solutions.
What's your take on recycling 3D prints? Totaly worth it or too much work?
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Pretty cool i can save money
Sounds pretty amazing! But only if it were far far FAR cheaper!
Expensive, but to me it's not about the cost but reducing waste
Those extruder machines worth more than 8k USD, and you also have to buy the grinder. I am guessing you spent 5 or more hours including the 2 hours to extrude, and you got 300g of recycled filament that worth about 20 USD. I don't know about you, but It doesn't look like worth for me.
I want you to try recycling hay bale string having a farm means I have over 50 lbs of plastic string at the end of the year
You are obviously an engineer with access to more funding and materials than I do, I'm envious. I see recycling as a project of the future because of the few dificulties that you have sshown and a few that you have yet to discover. I wish you well in your researches and 3d printing endevours. Cheers.
What's up with the screwdriver? Did you fix wobbly filament in a 6000$ machine by placing a 1$ screwdriver pushing on the filament? 🤣
That's what it looks like lol
That's exactly it. The filaments tends to resonate and vibrate. The screwdriver just stabilizes it before it enters the thickness sensor.
@@CNCKitchen I hope 3devo sees this ....and starts including a screwdriver 👍
Отдай 5к $ и ещё нужно вставлять отвёртку чтобы работало!🤣🤣
@@lannik_0 LoL
That's awesome and it's exactly what I want with my business. I remember seeing a video of someone a long time ago taking up a whole room just to do what this machine is doing. I can't afford it now but I haven't thrown out a single failed print since I got my printers a couple years ago because I want to reuse the filament.
Great video! It pointed me in the right direction
The really long setups are for higher output, as in faster production of filament. With smaller setups your filament production dramatically slows down, which isn't a big deal for a hobbyist, but important for a business.
Could a 2-step extrusion work? I was wondering, if one first would extrude the chips with a larger diameter (lets say 2.85mm just for the sake of it) and not care so much about the constant thickness. Next clip the result to small pellets with some kind of machine and feed those to the final extrusion process. Of course that would requires two melts. But that way one could filter depris in the first pass, and the resulting pellets would possibly run in the second pass easier. Might not be worth the effort, thou.
thats what i was thinking too
Interesting idea, dunno if it's what you thought about or a variation, but extruding pellets of somewhat constant size might indeed make the results better. Also probably making it easier to mix new material or pigments on it.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 That's true but given that Stefan had decent success without adding in any virgin PLA it seems like the degradation might be insignificant enough to not be an issue? I'd love to see more, having a method to reuse failed prints would be a game changer. I hate adding plastic waste so I've been collecting and sorting all of my waste plastic for years just waiting until I can reuse it someday.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 that is true, but it makes me wonder how much the temperature influences on that. When we think about it, the 3D print is already 3rd generation melt (base plastic - which might be recycled but let's assume not - to pellet, pellet to filament, filament to print) or how do you call it.
@@Kalvinjj Good points. Hopefully we’ll see some sort of a test about that later; how much remelting affects quality over time :)
It will be essential in the future, even with Bioplastics like PLA. I am extremely impressed with the results you got at 100%. Where I work all our plastic is being moved to 30% recycled (well, some of it has been that way for years!) and there have been some huge challenges, all similar to what you have mentioned. They are pushing for 50%, but contamination is very difficult to work around. Some materials were even aggressively eroding the dies used to blow the polymer, and the energy required to have those re-made was huge.
ultimately, what I would love to see is people REDUCE the amount of types of plastic we use, but the way the world is going it is getting worse, with so many companies adding different stabilisers or modifiers to Polymers, in attempt to make them "better" for the environment, but really its making recycling much harder.
Dang, that cherry red filament looks so good🤤
It does 😍
This is so good! I've heard of a few companies that do this, if you're able to do this with *KIND OF* consumer ready machines, I'm sure industrial recycling will make it big eventually. Really glad to see my failed prints don't just have to be trash!
I think this is awesome for prototyping. It seems it would be best to use the exact same filament brand and type to create a reliable process for reuse. It would be nice to take a failed prototype and immediately grind and store in a specific container till enough is ready for creation of new filament. It seems with current technology at home recycling would have to be a very rigid process for consistent results. Nice work as usual, thanks!
There seems to be a lot of complication to getting even extrusion starting with fully recycled material. What's the feasibility of starting with a DIY preform and using a drawing process (like your investigations on what the US Army was doing with the PC core-ABS filament)? Ovens, heating elements and lathes are more accessible than shredding/pelleting machinery, not to mention maintenance. Not every location on the globe has 3 phase power, either. I envisioned melting down plastic scraps and rolling them into a core (extrude it into a pipe in the case where you already had invested in some small scale machinery). You could even take multicolor/multimaterial wipe towers of cylindrical geometry and submit them directly to drawing as they're already solid. Chemically or friction weld many together for bigger feedstock. Not saying any of it is easy, just putting an idea out there! Thanks so much Stefan for all the experiences you share!
I'd love to see local filament recycling centers in every city, with 3kg or so of recycle getting you a free roll.
That doesnt seem like a very solid buissiness model. Your establishing a niche service in an already niche market, then you're giving 1/3 of your product away for free.
A standalone business maybe not but it would be interesting if maker spaces could run a service where you can bring in material and get credit towards the recycled material it produces and sell it as cheaper prototype filament.
I\d love to see the price drop so we can do it at home. I have a pile of failed prints im waiting to recycle for years now.
I used to work at an industrial plastics facility. Contamination in the regrind material was a huge problem (partially because someone kept throwing our metal post-processing tools in the grinder). I got flashbacks when I saw the metal bit in the filament!
I can't wait for them to become more affordable so we can all have them! Great video as always
Thank you for putting in so much effort to show this!
Besides cost, I think about the space that the recycling equipment takes up. That's really the 'tipping point' for me in thinking that a service would be the more economical method to recover 3D printing waste/recycling prints. Also, it would be something that schools/public libraries could use. The company could possibly 'donate' the recycled filament to these public institutions for tax write-offs, too.
The downside is shipping costs. If material has to be sent into this service, and the filament mailed back, there is that added overhead. Perhaps collection points at libraries or other creative solutions could solve some of that.
I'm really looking forward to ending the 'wasted plastic' stigma attached to this technology!!
That’s so crazy how many benchys you’ve made, ive had my printer for about a year now and I’ve only ever printed one when I first got it
Late to the party but I work with industrial extruders, and want to add if you didn't got that info yet, that when you want to use multi material recycled plastic, you need to mix it in small ratio with something else to get a stable output, like 1:5 or even less down to 1:20. Also, there are very efficient coloring pellets, so you can turn your ugly grey into nice black with jusy a tiny addition of it.
I have a hypothesis on the stringiness of the final prints. In the past when I've printed with filament that was rough, I had similar results to what you showed. I believe this might be due to an increased surface area. If you have the time, I'd really like to see virgin/recycled mix extruded with the same setup. I believe this will decrease the roughness, and therefore lower the surface area of the filament. I bet if you roughed up that same filament while warm, you'd see the roughed up filament is much more stringy.
This is all great news. Sure, there's some small issues, but nothing that cannot be tackled and fixed. When the methods are refined and optimized for cost, I cannot wait to have one of these in my workshop.
What if you chopped up the recycled filament to make more consistent pellets and re-extruded that? I think it might help with the consistency problems.
Each time you process a thermoplastic it's properties change. Eventually you end up with crap.
I work at an automotive factory where we make fuel tanks from plastic and it’s interesting how similar my job is to this process.
Defect tanks are ground up, mixed with plastic pellets, and put back into the machine to be melted, pushed through a breaker plate to catch impurities, and then fed out. Waste material must be purged out before useful material can be used and so on.
It’s just super fascinating to me
You recycled them and printed them back xD, I appreciate the comedy
Run a magnet through the granulated material to pick up any metal contaminants.
Man i would love to be able to recycle my own prototypes etc. i always feel so bad banging them in the bin.
somewhere that collects and recycles filament would be amazing
sell your scrap on mercari or ebay. As long as you grind it up so it is economical to ship, people will buy them. Or melt them into a solid block because the people like me who want to buy cheap plastic have shredders to do it.
The music at 8:13 scared me so badly because I thought it was coming from in my house
I keep the ziplock bag that my filament comes in to keep all the failed prints from that color, so it is always separated by material, color, and brand.
I tried this, but it didn't work because the prints has way less density than the spool.
@@alphastratus6623 When it goes beyond the bag's size I might port some over to a different bag. Some filament colors have very little waste because I bought them solely to print for a client. I get fuller bags when I keep a particular filament in the machine for rapid prototyping and color is not important.
I think recycling is essential since we reach to a point that people are amazed by 3d printing and are using it in different fields, so we have a lot of plastic waste that could be used again which saves money and the environment, nice job.
You should create a modified version of the 3D Benchy that actually floats a little better. Maybe a dual-hull vessel?
Excellent experience, Liked the use of the mesh to clean undesired materials. For metal particles in the Extrusion process we use neodymium magnets to capture them at the end of the hopper, maybe could be useful for you to try.
Greeeeeaaaaaat one 🤩!
Thank you! 😊
@@CNCKitchen I’ll send all my failed Speedbenchies to you for recycling 😬
Please make sure they are "sortenrein" ;-)
You should start using a floating variant of the benchy
Can you try and grind 1kg of PET bottles and try to make a spool out of them?
PETE, HDPE, PP, PS. Several common plastics to try.
Not bad, but there is glue, sugar, skin oils and who knows what else on them. You might clean the exterior (not the glue, though), but the interior is another issue. Maybe water bottles are ok on the inside, the leftover saliva and minerals being only in negligible quantities. An advantage would be that the pellets would be actually flakes, melting easier.
I believe the University of Technology in Sydney is running a industrial robot arm 3D printer on directly melted HDPE from washed and chipped milk bottles.
@@Constantinus213421 true that, could try ABS from common cheap items enclosures or TPU from soft phone cases
Honestly this is the dream of most makers. It just hurts me to see failed prints go to the bin, but it sadly seems like such a hassle even with a machine like yours. It would be amazing if a company like Das Filament would let you send them kilo boxes and then they send you back a roll. Or even have their own recycled filament which you can buy and if you send them plastic to recycle they give you a discount depending on the weight! The filament would be maybe cheaper and less qualitative and also color may vary but for prototyping it'd be amazing! I'd honestly buy it. One can dream...
Would extrusion be more consistent if you chop up the new filament into even pellets? And then redo the recycle?
Buy that you also make plastic degrade a little bit more, so the profit of this is unreasonable
I do not think so because if the jam is dissimilar material, it will still be present. If the issue is jams, filament pellets are still not as smooth as real pellets. Factory pellets are round and smooth, like airsoft BB, just not spherical.
I am experimenting with ball milling pellets to round them. Although I'm not super motivated as shreds do produce perfectly usable filament for pretty much any print you are realistically going to do.
You should add a 20% new plastic to compensate the decay of the recycled particles and maintain the properties of the original material! Great process, really clean! Congrats!
I know it's not perfect for this, but I'd love to see these recycle plastics from other thing. We drink a ton of sparkling water that comes in plastic bottles and I'd love to turn it into filament. 😁
there are ways to turn it to ribbon
I think that recycling material will be essential for the future of 3d printing
Cheaper, simpler and more accessible recycling should be one of the highest priorities for the development of consumer 3d printing.
Would be interesting to know if age affects recycling feasibility. Some of the benchies would have been years old I guess, and some out in sunlight and air. If the colours were of different average ages that could account for the differences in strength.
I love how you used your steamers trays as sieves. I'd recognize those anywhere!
Would be interesting how the filament behaves, if you recycle it again. and again. and so on.
Recycling once is awesome, but imagine you could recycle it like 5 times or so.
But I guess this only works if you add virgin material every time
There are some companies that do recycle filament, they usually throw in about 50% virgin plastic into the mix. The more you heat the plastic the more it breaks down the polymer chains causing it to be weaker. Ideally you would break down the polymers into monomers and reform the chains to create virgin material, would give a chance to remove any dyes as well from the plastic. But that would require a fairly large scale set up to break even on cost. Though the solvent used in creating PLA would be reusable so there wouldn't be much waste created apart from the energy requirements of the whole process.
This would probably be the dream of every small and large 3d print farm owners. Failures would become meaningless as you learn and then throw that into this machine which makes those filament again. How wonderful!
Would recycling CF materials be practical, or would the carbon fiber just mess things up?
It should be doable but the quality of the fibers might decrease if they get chopped up to even shorter bits.
Not sure if you will see this months later or not, but I work in the flour grinding industry and might know whats going on with the metal shaving. Even grinding flour, there is a small production of metal shavings from the grinding process that is usually captured with a magnet in the production line. Not sure how much of your system is ferrous versus not, but if its primarily steel then you can catch the metal shavings using a strong magnet over the ground product.
There really needs to be someone else than 3devo. That's just overpriced for what it is tbh. Grinder + Melter for 1000€ is something I'd accept
I don't have a lot of knowledge on crude oil and creating plastics, but I enjoyed watching the whole process. Thank you for the video and wish you the best.
recycle a bunch of milk cartons and run a comparison.
The cardboard in it would clog the nozzle. ... If we mean the same thing with the milk carton: A cardboard box which is covered on the inside with a thin film of plastic. And such a box contains 0.5L or 1L of milk.
When I'm not wrong on it, they still just burn that, because they still have not figured out how to separate the cardboard from the plastic for a clean recycling.
Or did you mean a cardboard tray with plastic bottles? Of course that could be separated very easy ;-)
@@richard--s I think they might mean HDPE milk jugs
This is awesome tech, closes the loop of 3D printing, aside from energy. THis is hopegiving!
You’re a German am I right
Yes he said guten tag
Fantastic, I usually use a toaster oven, And melt my failed prints into sheets. They can be used for small cutting boards or some wood working projects.
Would you like to have my 3D print leftovers? I could send you approximately 5 kilo worth of sorted PLA free of charge if you want.
Thanks, though I got plenty at the moment!
I will take them if you wish to unload them. I have a homemade filament maker of my own, but no PLA scrap. Please message me at the below gmail account.
"dandsmiths"
I’ve worked in several plastic industry for over 10 years and I can tell you for a fact a possibility of having inconsistencies is you probably didn’t strain out possible metal bits. Having worked both the Raw Materials and production here’s what I know. Failed parts are sorted (mostly color from clear) ground up into small chunks. Then ran through a metal detector which spits out more than just metal. My guess is some irregular chunks tripped the sensor or some times couldn’t handle the flow of the regrind. Then once done we would either mix it improperly mixed virgin material or leftover material that wasn’t used. Then to make it all one nice uniform color black pigment was added and mixed before being ready to ship out as new material.
sooooooo, basically it's not worth it for 99% of your viewers ^^
Though the 1% could make a difference.
It's not worth it for those 99% _yet!_
Remember that, 10 years ago, filament 3D printers cost $10k-$100k+ and only big companies and universities could afford one. Look where we are now, after a decade of work by the RepRap community (initiated by Adrian Bowyer, of course).
In theory the same thing could happen with filament recycling.
(Although I personally have my doubts about how many people would really bother, given the required effort, unless the process could somehow become a lot more automated.
And I have even greater doubts over it ever becoming economical - i.e. the average home 3D printer user actually _saving money_ by recycling failed prints/etc. Virgin PLA/PETG/ABS/etc pellets are just so cheap, and even manufactured spools of filament aren't expensive enough for most people to find recycling at home to be worth it. Just look at how much time Stefan spent in this video to end up with what looks like less than 1kg of PLA, which could have been bought for less than £/€/$20...
_I'd love to be proven wrong,_ but I'm not optimistic about it, sorry!)
You could check if there is a different type of screw available. When we're doing a lot of different colors we will often change out the screw flights with very aggressive mixing sections. This is very helpful when we need very homogeneous mixing of colors, fillers, additives.
Suggestion about moisture:
You mentioned that stringiness might have been caused by your filament being moist, then claimed it was bone dry. Can you really be sure of that?
After drying the chunks it took the machine hours to to re-melt the plastic into filament. During this time it was exposed to moist air and since the ground chunks are smaller and much rougher than commercial plastic beads they should experience greatly accelerated sorption while just waiting in the hopper of the machine to be re-melted.
I don't know about the plastic industry but in the chemical industry you typically add a hygroscopic desiccant into a closed space with your material when storing or even when working with it to ensure absolute dryness. If I didn't just miss something and your chunks really were exposed to moist air for hours while sitting in the hopper, I may suggest:
- actually testing the moisture levels in your recycled filament
- enclosing the hopper and using an air dryer or desiccant to keep it dry right up till it gets processed
I'd love to see a follow up on this where the filament is used, broken down, and re-extruded a few times to see how much degradation is from the recycling process itself, or if the integrity drop is just because there are different brands with different stabilizer/add-in ratios being blended together.
Grinding Benchies to make not only more Benchies... but also a MEGA Benchy!! I love it! XD
Great proof of concept here, I really like it! I do believe, however, that recycling 3D printing material would be much more viable for industrial or large-scale 3D printing farms. I think for most hobbyists that have one, maybe two 3D printers that are not constantly printing, recycling the material at home may be too far-fetched considering the equipment cost and the smaller amount of material to recycle.
It would be amazing, however, if there were easily-accessible services that could buy 3d printed waste (maybe $5-10 or so per kg of material?), turn it into usable filament, and resell the new spools for reuse.
I just wish the recyclers were more affordable for regular folks. 3 grand is quite a steep price for a reasonably simple machine. I had a giant bin of plastic waste just from 3 months of printing. (I made alot of mistakes in the beginning and I tend to print with supports and rafts as I print complex objects, so I have quite a bit of waste) I had to just put it out for the municipal recyclers because I couldn't find an economical way to recycle it back into filament.
Cant wait till this is cheap enough for the masses.
Seems like the gray recycle would be good for smaller parts due to the contamination. Still useful imo.
Great vid!
Mixing the grinded leftovers with pure pellets can improve extrusion quality, but dissolve a colour. You can use dying concentrate to dye your colorfull grind to black.
In addition, cooling extrusions with fans is not recommended, that causes rough texture, you should use water bath, but in vertical process it isn't possible.
Besides a filter for the liquid plastic, I would also recommend adding a magnet to the output of the hopper. Its just a cheap and easy way of getting rid of any ferrous material, and it will reduce the amount of times you need to change your filter mesh ;)
100% necessary and revolutionary in fact. The filament produced from waste would help offset the massive waste this hobby produces and also would stop people from throwing away money. It also makes it a lot easier to recycle in the future as well and make a product that can be converted into a limitless amount of others. If a company was able to pay people for plastic waste, preferably the homeless and needy people it could give them a voice that could be used to help the homeless crisis. There's so many options and opportunities to help the earth and the community while lining your pockets. It's insane how over looked this is.
Regarding removing contaminants and producing consistent sized chunks- would it make any sense to do a rough first run (with a simpler & faster process) that filters and extrudes through a wide nozzle (like 3 mm or something) which gets cut into pellets as it extrudes. Then you get a consistent-ish sized pellet that's already been filtered to put through the final extrusion process.
You know what...that black-ish benchie with a blue hat actually looks really good.
I think "Home recycling" of PLA is certainly an achievable goal within the next few years, With a machine that costs a similar amount to a standard 3D printer. I would love to be able to recycle test prints, failed prints and other plastic waste, and I think the home user is in a good position and motivated to sort his waste (big plastic bag stored with the reel?). If its necessary to use a proportion of new pellet material then that wouldn't be a problem, and would improve the quality of the resulting material.
Of course, if you have a CNC mill its relatively simple to melt down your 3D print waste to make blocks of plastic for those test millings, so for those who don't have the time or money to make new filament you still have the option of making plastic blocks or even sheet material for other projects.
I think its going to be important to be able to recycle our print waste, and it will be of economic benefit too.
Try making a magnet trap in the hooper to catch ferrous particles before they get into the blends 👍 Great vid.
I think the answer to getting consistent filament size with recycling prints is to take just one more step.
Run it through the extruder twice. At the extruder, Have rotating blades similar to a pasta maker, the first batch run through gets chopped into a MUCH more consistent size, you would get little pellets. Then run the pellets through the extruder the second time and since the pellets will go through the extruder much more evenly you should get a more consistent end product.
Would love to see more user-friendly machines that shred and extrude out filament.
I'm sure such a device will become a thing the more 3D printing becomes more wildly available to the everyday person.
This video was excellent! Best video on 3D printing recycling so far on TH-cam. This is an issue I think about a lot, since I feel somewhat guilty for all the plastic waste I create with 3D printing. A place to send in all my 3D print waste would be great, imo.
Strangely enough my biggest waste of plastic at home is from PET drinking bottles. For my use case these are great candidates for prototyping and for outdoor functional parts where appearance is not of great importance.
Love your content.
I hope that recycling of all plastics becomes a thing with 3D printing proving itself to be such a useful tool
Great video and experience as usual! All three colors are gorgeous!