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
@@GigsVT 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.
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
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
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.
@@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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Me and my friends honestly were talking about this not too long ago and we are all of the mindset that until it's able to be flawless doing it at home that company should have a service set up where you buy the filament from and maybe you can go and drop off your stuff they give you a credit for new filament or you get a discount on buying their recycled filament
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.
This would be a game changer for companies that make disposable products like plastic cutlery and such. Just recycle it, it goes back, gets made anew. It seems like a good idea on paper I think, only issue is you can’t expect everyone to recycle.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Thankfully, I learned about the limitations of recycling unneeded or failed prints before I started 3D printing. So I've been able to avoid failures, and I don't need to print as many prototypes simply by designing more efficiently. Also, I don't print toys and large pieces. Anything over 6 hours I make out of wood or metal.
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
I bet doing something like 50% virgin material and 50% recycled will greatly increase the quality and consistency of output! A price point of $5K just for the exturder isn't attainable for the average hobbyist, but hopefully some affordable solutions are around the corner. Being able to recycle plastic waste from failed/recycled prints and support material will be a big benefit.
After watching and nlistening i can only suggest that after the grind try running a magnet over the bins to get any metal shrapnel out so it wont go through the remelt
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.
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 :/
I wish there was a company that sold recycled filament, but they will send people a reusable container that should be sent back when filled with pla, or another material. Although the person would need to be charged for the container, if not returned, and shipping costs. The end filament would be very low quality, and would likely never work because the recycled fillament would get sued by the original fillament manufacturer but I think it is a good idea. CNCKitchen, what do you think?
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 consistency of the grind could be mitigated if it was passed through a burr grinder like a coffee grinder. Also you can get coffee grinders with replacabe grinding teeth.
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"
This was awesome man! I only just got my first 3d printer but my first thought after making the boat was how I could recycle all the test and failed prints I'll eventually make. Not something that is possible for me right now but hopefully one day.
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.
what we need is a 3d printer that uses shredded material to print with, have it so that it is the plate that moves instead of the extruder nozzel, have a screw system that pushed the shredded material into the extruder nozel, and prints from there,
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.
I love this man! I suspect this would be worth it or at least make even if it was streamlined and centralized, as in people accumulating PLA locally, then bulk ship it to somewhere else. Perhaps to a location that would confirm PLA and grind it up to a certain particle size then send it further. I would even pay for it without getting anything in return, as long as it is not a scam. I suspect several other people writing here would do the same. It can broker the way for better solutions for recycling 3d printing parts/failures, perhaps partially applicable to plastic recycling in general? From what I've gathered that is the major issues of recycling general plastic waste is the following : -Not cost effective -Hard to separate/differentiate plastics -Often custom plastic blends... -Easily contaminated plastic because of recycling mistakes, carelessness and/or assholeness. -Not enough demand for recycled plastics, willingness and/or knowledge to use it -Beliefs that certain plastics can't be recycled and/or has reduced effort at recycling (which might serve as insulation, park benches etc depending on plastic), both at households and at recycling/garbage plants -Difficulty using recycled plastics with current recycling methods and volume Some of these problems could be alleviated, but in the end, it comes down to money, logistics and legislation. And it could start with the following perhaps? : Plastics used for food containers, fruit etc in grocery stores, could be standardized in shape, color and/or size. As in having the same plastic, where it is ground up, washed and compacted into a specific identifying bag/box that are sent to recycling with the trash when full. Way this is done, is with a mass produced grinder and washing unit, that will only accept plastics that are intended for it. Sure, it most likely has to be subsidized in the beginning, but it might make sense socially and infrastructurally eventually, or perhaps never. But isn't this the same with garbage already now, as in we pay to get it removed one way or the other? If we eventually end up with a machine that can identify, grind, wash and separate plastics which is then compacted to be recycled at homes or elsewhere, it might alleviate several mentioned problems and perhaps some not mentioned? Perhaps it can even sort your trash entirely, as in just feed it general garbage, and it does the rest with recycling, sorting a wide variety of materials and biological matter correctly? :)
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.
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.
Wenn ich deine letzten Videos sehe, wirst du bestimmt bald nach Berlin in meine Werkstatt kommen wollen für ein wenig gemeinsames “Basteln”. Aber leider brauche ich noch einen Monat bis ich soweit bin. Auf jeden Fall bist du hiermit herzlich eingeladen 🙂
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.
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!)
have you considered creating a machine that evenly spreads or drops the ground material under or past a row of magnets to remove ferrous materials? something like a really wide funnel with a 4mm opening.
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!
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.
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 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.
i have no way of recycle my materials (yet) but i sort my throw-aways seperately until i find out what to do with them would like one of those recycle machines
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 ;-)
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.
Think would be cool to print 1 benchy grind it and see how much the percentage is loss in the recycling process. Then re print the benchy see where you run out
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. 😁
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.
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.
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!
This is great but out of reach for anyone not being offered such a machine. The real question, is where is the break even point. How many spools before the cost is neutral? I could see a maker space maybe pick one up if they can get the funding. But not too many homes are going to see one of these. Seeing something that is a bit more achievable would be cool.
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.
It's a shame machines like this cost so much. I'd love to be able to recycle my own filament, but realistically for me, I would have to start a 3d printing channel and hope one of those companies sends me a machine to review.
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
Hi CNC-Kitchen, Since a while we also have an extruder. In minute ten you explain something about a problem of the diameter. The material seems to stuck in the extruder and dieameter decreases fastly. I also have the problem. You are in contact with 3Deveo and they also offers you to send an example. that is cool I don't get an offer like this. So maybe you can tell me which configurations you set in for the blue and the red filament in the video. that would be realy nice. cheers.
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
@@GigsVT 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.
"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.
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!
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
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
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.
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 ☝
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..
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
"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.
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!!
We need more filament recycling options and I appreciate your exploring the problem and possible solutions.
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 love how you used your steamers trays as sieves. I'd recognize those anywhere!
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.
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.
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 UA-cam.
@@Joshua0689 and how would that help in any way?
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.
You recycled them and printed them back xD, I appreciate the comedy
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.
You should create a modified version of the 3D Benchy that actually floats a little better. Maybe a dual-hull vessel?
Me and my friends honestly were talking about this not too long ago and we are all of the mindset that until it's able to be flawless doing it at home that company should have a service set up where you buy the filament from and maybe you can go and drop off your stuff they give you a credit for new filament or you get a discount on buying their recycled filament
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.
This would be a game changer for companies that make disposable products like plastic cutlery and such. Just recycle it, it goes back, gets made anew. It seems like a good idea on paper I think, only issue is you can’t expect everyone to recycle.
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!
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
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!
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 :)
As someone who's wanted to get into 3d printing for a while now I must say I'm jealous of all the benchies
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
Thankfully, I learned about the limitations of recycling unneeded or failed prints before I started 3D printing. So I've been able to avoid failures, and I don't need to print as many prototypes simply by designing more efficiently.
Also, I don't print toys and large pieces. Anything over 6 hours I make out of wood or metal.
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
I bet doing something like 50% virgin material and 50% recycled will greatly increase the quality and consistency of output!
A price point of $5K just for the exturder isn't attainable for the average hobbyist, but hopefully some affordable solutions are around the corner. Being able to recycle plastic waste from failed/recycled prints and support material will be a big benefit.
You’re a German am I right
Yes he said guten tag
After watching and nlistening i can only suggest that after the grind try running a magnet over the bins to get any metal shrapnel out so it wont go through the remelt
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
I already have like .5 kilo of blue ABS and some PLA to be grinded for 2nd run...
Great idea/machine!
Like? Sure!
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.
This is lovely. I hope it gets even better.
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.
I wish there was a company that sold recycled filament, but they will send people a reusable container that should be sent back when filled with pla, or another material. Although the person would need to be charged for the container, if not returned, and shipping costs. The end filament would be very low quality, and would likely never work because the recycled fillament would get sued by the original fillament manufacturer but I think it is a good idea. CNCKitchen, what do you think?
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 consistency of the grind could be mitigated if it was passed through a burr grinder like a coffee grinder. Also you can get coffee grinders with replacabe grinding teeth.
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"
This was awesome man! I only just got my first 3d printer but my first thought after making the boat was how I could recycle all the test and failed prints I'll eventually make. Not something that is possible for me right now but hopefully one day.
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.
what we need is a 3d printer that uses shredded material to print with, have it so that it is the plate that moves instead of the extruder nozzel, have a screw system that pushed the shredded material into the extruder nozel, and prints from there,
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.
good video. I come to receive an 3devo extruder in vocational training and use your video to improve our recycling. THANK YOU
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 love this man! I suspect this would be worth it or at least make even if it was streamlined and centralized, as in people accumulating PLA locally, then bulk ship it to somewhere else. Perhaps to a location that would confirm PLA and grind it up to a certain particle size then send it further. I would even pay for it without getting anything in return, as long as it is not a scam. I suspect several other people writing here would do the same.
It can broker the way for better solutions for recycling 3d printing parts/failures, perhaps partially applicable to plastic recycling in general?
From what I've gathered that is the major issues of recycling general plastic waste is the following :
-Not cost effective
-Hard to separate/differentiate plastics
-Often custom plastic blends...
-Easily contaminated plastic because of recycling mistakes, carelessness and/or assholeness.
-Not enough demand for recycled plastics, willingness and/or knowledge to use it
-Beliefs that certain plastics can't be recycled and/or has reduced effort at recycling (which might serve as insulation, park benches etc depending on plastic), both at households and at recycling/garbage plants
-Difficulty using recycled plastics with current recycling methods and volume
Some of these problems could be alleviated, but in the end, it comes down to money, logistics and legislation.
And it could start with the following perhaps? :
Plastics used for food containers, fruit etc in grocery stores, could be standardized in shape, color and/or size. As in having the same plastic, where it is ground up, washed and compacted into a specific identifying bag/box that are sent to recycling with the trash when full. Way this is done, is with a mass produced grinder and washing unit, that will only accept plastics that are intended for it.
Sure, it most likely has to be subsidized in the beginning, but it might make sense socially and infrastructurally eventually, or perhaps never. But isn't this the same with garbage already now, as in we pay to get it removed one way or the other?
If we eventually end up with a machine that can identify, grind, wash and separate plastics which is then compacted to be recycled at homes or elsewhere, it might alleviate several mentioned problems and perhaps some not mentioned? Perhaps it can even sort your trash entirely, as in just feed it general garbage, and it does the rest with recycling, sorting a wide variety of materials and biological matter correctly? :)
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 HAVE to try for us if it‘s possible to create filament out of good ol’ Bügelperlen!
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.
Wenn ich deine letzten Videos sehe, wirst du bestimmt bald nach Berlin in meine Werkstatt kommen wollen für ein wenig gemeinsames “Basteln”. Aber leider brauche ich noch einen Monat bis ich soweit bin. Auf jeden Fall bist du hiermit herzlich eingeladen 🙂
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?
the temperature properties might have changed with the recycling, that could be why it's suddenly stringing
Greeeeeaaaaaat one 🤩!
Thank you! 😊
@@CNCKitchen I’ll send all my failed Speedbenchies to you for recycling 😬
Please make sure they are "sortenrein" ;-)
A great test would be if you recycle the 10x more expensive chopped fiber/nylon mixes. Might be a practical application for material that expensive.
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!)
have you considered creating a machine that evenly spreads or drops the ground material under or past a row of magnets to remove ferrous materials? something like a really wide funnel with a 4mm opening.
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!
Nice. Here's to hoping the recycling machines will come down in price from 5000 to 500 in the next couple of years.
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.
I think it may interesting if try recycling pla straws into new Filament
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.
great video as always 👍
thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀
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'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 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.
i have no way of recycle my materials (yet)
but i sort my throw-aways seperately
until i find out what to do with them
would like one of those recycle machines
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
All that energy and time 😂 just to turn 100 small benchy's into one giant......... oh boy, very useful 😂
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.
Think would be cool to print 1 benchy grind it and see how much the percentage is loss in the recycling process. Then re print the benchy see where you run out
"it works on our machine" An eternal R&D classics.
It might pay to save the recycled filament for use with a larger nozzle. I also quite like that recycled grey colour....
I can't wait for them to become more affordable so we can all have them! Great video as always
0:15 "Guten Tag" 😂🤣😇
Nice video
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
shorten the top, widen the base, they float upside down because their center of gravity is above the hull, near the bridge.
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.
try shed plastic bags ,, i'm going to some recycling and i crochet
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.
Try to use tpu for 3d benchys to make it float
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
The solution to the problem is more simple - there should be a new standard of 3DBenchys that actually floats :D
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!
This is great but out of reach for anyone not being offered such a machine. The real question, is where is the break even point. How many spools before the cost is neutral? I could see a maker space maybe pick one up if they can get the funding. But not too many homes are going to see one of these. Seeing something that is a bit more achievable would be cool.
Dang, that cherry red filament looks so good🤤
It does 😍
Ich finde es voll Lustig wie alles in Englisch ist aber am anfang "Guten Tag" ist 🤣😂
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.
Yet another great video with so much amazing info. Great job Stephan. (Hope I spelled your name correctly)
We are just printing failure, a benchey. A boat which cannot float😁
Was I the only one who got an ad about 3D printing filament and thought it was the video?
It's a shame machines like this cost so much. I'd love to be able to recycle my own filament, but realistically for me, I would have to start a 3d printing channel and hope one of those companies sends me a machine to review.
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
Hi CNC-Kitchen,
Since a while we also have an extruder. In minute ten you explain something about a problem of the diameter. The material seems to stuck in the extruder and dieameter decreases fastly. I also have the problem. You are in contact with 3Deveo and they also offers you to send an example. that is cool I don't get an offer like this.
So maybe you can tell me which configurations you set in for the blue and the red filament in the video. that would be realy nice.
cheers.
What if you cut up the newly extruded filament into a more consistent size and reextrude it!