3D printing no longer belongs to a few hardcore geeks. It’s become a popular tool among the mildly nerdy and artistically inclined makers. Cheap 3D printers and cheaper filament are making it easier than ever for people to crank out functional parts, toys, and buckets of silly knick-knacks. But the thrill of having one of the best budget 3D printers in every home workshop has come at an unexpected price: overflowing bins of wasted filament and scrapped prints.
The rise of Bambu Lab’s AMS system made four-color 3D printing the norm for casual makers. Why spend time painting your models when you can have the printer do it for you? But despite recent innovations in tool changers and swappable nozzles, many budget-minded makers find it cheaper to throw spools at their ravenous 3D printers than upgrade to a filament-sipping Snapmaker U1 or Bambu Lab H2C.
On top of it all, 3D printed plastic is notoriously difficult to recycle. Even though common PLA and PETG could be easily recycled, home-manufactured parts aren’t labeled with resin codes. That means sorting facilities can’t identify the plastic and will reject it outright. Tossing failed prints into your little blue bin is only going to contaminate the recycling stream and doom your failed prints to the landfill. And even when plastic is properly labeled, many U.S. cities still struggle to find buyers or processing plants for low-value plastics, with some programs quietly stuffing local landfills full of recycling.
What can we do with 3D Printer waste?
Your options are limited if you want to avoid dumping 3D printing scraps in the landfill. If you’re crafty, you can melt your PLA scraps into silicone molds using a heat gun or toaster oven, but results will vary. And honestly, there’s not much of a market for 3D printer poop art .
Many filament companies offer “recycled” PLA or PETG, but they are typically recapturing waste generated by their own system. Protopasta offers an inexpensive Black Recycled PLA for $20 a kilogram that is a mix of scraps from every black they make, including those with glitter. Very few take scraps from the community due to the concern that the plastic isn’t carefully sorted. One PETG print in a batch of PLA will cause lumps that don’t melt at the same temperature, which can cause jams and clogs in your 3D printer.
Printerior , in St. Louis, MO , is one of the few filament manufacturers that accepts consumer 3D printed PLA and PETG scraps. The program is free, but if you don’t live nearby, you’ll have to pay to mail your scraps.
A basic industrial filament extrusion line easily starts at $15,000 and goes up astronomically from there. They also take up massive amounts of space and energy, and simply aren’t practical for individual use.
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The notion that a desktop machine can do the same job as a 75-foot industrial extrusion line sounds far-fetched. But a couple of Italian makers developed a working prototype from plywood and old computer parts back in 2014. You would think that twelve years later, we’d all have our own little “Mr. Filament” machines right next to our printers.
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