Same, and I believe cardboard is a lot easier to recycle as well. Although whenever I look at the social media accounts of those who make cardboard spools, there's always a lot of complaints from the Bambu AMS crowd. Bambu needs to make their AMS work better with cardboard spools.
@@logicalfundybambu took the approach of using Reusable spools. You just buy refills. It's actually weird to me that people with bambu AMS systems would complain about cardboard spools when you can just slide the filament onto a bambu spool and call it a day... And if you bought their printer but never their filament, for whatever reason, print a reusable spool... there are so many designs out there. There's basically 0 reason to be asking any filament makers to move away from cardboard.
@@logicalfundy Then send them to print a brim around the cardboard spool. I own an AMS and there are no problems with that. The main problem that I have is that cardboard spools seem to hold quite a bit of moisture or something because the filament on cardboard spools a lot more often has to be dried before use, otherwise it can give horrible results. Imo refills with no spools are a better idea. If you don't have a reusable spool you can just print one. Wish more companies would do refills but there would probably be a fair bit of knots before they figure that stuff out...
@@SquintyGears Well, there are some good reasons for why cardboard is not so great. Tbh it's not just as easy as 'sliding' the filament unto another spool. I don't browse these 'groups' but I have an AMS and there are dedicated brims that you pop around the cardboard spool. People just love complaining about everything... My only complaint about cardboard is that it holds moisture and the filament that arrives on them seems to be more often wet which leads to complains about quality. But that is only because I don't have a proper filament dryer... I don't know how much better the cardboard is in the long run but I wouldn't mind if the companies switched to the refill style with only that cardboard core that you slide unto the reusable spool etc. Feels like that would be the best of both worlds.
I recently read a paper "Mechanical properties of ternary blends of ABS, HIPS and PETG". It's from research in South Africa where there is a substantial purge volume from sheet extrusion when they change material, and they really would like to use the intermediate materials somehow and not let them go to waste. What i learned is that ABS and PETG are compatible with each other and produce a cohesive plastic. But how does it print? It could have really interesting properties, don't you think? And also that adding any amount of HIPS destroys cohesion. Which is funny since HIPS is not a copolymer but a blend itself. One should be really careful with what garbage polymer ends up in the mix, for example any amount of PP would be very much not OK. The other thing i learned is that one can use SBS (Styroflex 2g66) as a universal cohesion agent which may make bad polymers and dumb mixtures workable.
Trash-grade polymers aren't a good idea for recycling into 3D print filament. They can work well when pressed into sheets, however. You can then use those sheets to make a bunch of things. Teaching Tech has a nice video on using a t shirt press for this.
HIPS is not a blend. HIPS is made by polymerization of styrenic solution of polybutadiene (rubber). During the polymerization, polystyrene chains are attached covalently to the polybutadiene molecules.
@@vojtator Wait that's vaguely the manufacturing method of ABS, SBS and similar graft copolymers. I was somehow under the impression that HIPS is not a co-polymer but a blend. Thanks.
@@SianaGearz Yes, its very similar, ABS can be produced just like HIPS but with acrylonitrile and styrene mixture instead of pure styrene. HIPS as a blend can be prepared as well but the properties are terrible so its basically never used.
Years ago, when I worked at a plastics molding company, they would recycle 'waste' plastics. Sprues, purges etc. They would never use it without adding virgin pellets to the mix. In fact I think it was less than 10% of recycle to virgin material. This was blended in the mixing department. As you found out, keeping the different types of plastic apart was key!
This. I have worked with multiple injection molders and the most regrind used was 23%. Also of note, some plastics can't be used as regrind at all because they don't melt good more than once or twice which excludes regrinding prints as the plastic has already been melted a couple of times already.
@mechanoid5739 I just started working at a plastics compounding company. If the "start up" material is clean (this is the first bit we extrude and pelletize to evaluate the consistency) we just dump it back into the process. Occasionally we even have jobs that mix poorly (when we look at the pellets in the microscope we see chunks unmixed, unmelted colorant, we just run it through a second time to get it to full consistency.
You should try out regular household plastic waste. PET printing (from bottles) has been explored before, but it could be further refined and there are other kinds of plastics out there as well.
It's pretty hard for me to collect PET bottles to shred into filament - Germany with their "Pfand" system makes bottles worth 25ct each, which is more than buying fresh granulate..
@@MadeWithLayers Could you try it with Polypropylene (PP, marked with nr. 5)? It is the second most used plastic and is generally used for food containers. You can also clean PP items by simply throwing them in the dishwasher and it doesn't absorb moisture, which should make recycling quite straightforward.
PET bottles are not waste in many countries. They have dedicated recycling systems. You pay a fee when buying the bottled product and get it back when you return the bottle. PET bottle printing videos are only for the group of countries that aren't making that basic recycling effort.
HDPE Milk jugs, water jugs, clean petrol (oil) containers. They're everywhere. Not exactly ideal for anything too specific. But from personal experience they seem to make decent zip-ties.
@@WarkWarbly Again, all not here in Germany. Usually milk comes in Tetra Paks. Thats mostly paper with plastic liners. Water, again in PET bottles with deposit. Only oil might work, but cleaning that is a mess .
@@DeltreeZero3D print farm at mid to large scale is my guess. The user needs to use large amount of filament and have ability to control the quality and purity of thr material. Recycler's biggest issue will be the purity of material; having contaminated such as PLA, PETG can ruined the batch
@@kullwarrior I don't think it's for print farms either. The effort is too high for the process to make any economic sense. Like Thomas said in the video, these are for material science (plastics, colorings, other additives - i.e. where new filaments are developed).
Couple years back, I had the delight to work with 3devo products, the shredder and what was then their top of the line extruder. The shredder kept jamming, and when asked about it, their support had no idea how it actually worked, and (I am NOT kidding about this), they took pictures of themselves shoving plastic bits into it with thick wooden boards, and suggested we try the same. Their extruder promised something like 0,5/1kg of filament an hour, but it barely managed to do about 2-3kg a day, that is when it worked at all. An utterly miserable experience, and all those terrible memories of endless lost time came to me when Thomas mentioned 3devo. ...now to watch the rest of the video! :D
@@ares395 It was :D The shredder here seems like a new version and seem much more capable than what we used, but the extruder seems to be the same (on the outside), ours was just a darker color, the "pro" version. The whole project lasted about a year, we had professors from local engineering college get involved in it, one of them even made an addition for the extruder's hopper so it wouldn't get stuck so often. Eventually everyone just kind of gave up on it, and we all went to do our own things. Mind you, this was in 2017-2018, when the whole 3D printing was starting to boom, if they're still using the same extruder as they did back then, that's just horrible.
@@elizabethbenialgy3982 As in, they don't actually keep or interact with any of their own products on location. Shipped directly from a supplier rather than from the company itself. Which I said because that makes sense for customer support that clearly doesn't have any real experience with using the product.
What I want to use recycled filament for, on the Prusa XL: use recycled material with a 0.8/1.0/1.2mm nozzle, and make the inside of every model and all infill out of any color. Tool change for the outer layers to be new material through 0.4mm nozzles. How much print time and filament would it save? Can it get close to regular surface quality? Can you ignore more contaminants with huge nozzles?
I worked a bit with injection molding during the summer, and yeah... we had 3 different purging compounds to satisfy the temperature ranges of all the different plastics we ran (prototyping machine). It sure is important!
I found out the hard way - probably the biggest factor in why hobbyist-level filament extrusion has never really taken off. When you need to invest more time and material for purging than for actually extruding filament, the value trying to recycle failed prints yourself quickly becomes very questionable.
I love the lizard doggo in the background! I have been so hooked on Satisfactory that I didn't even bat an eye when I noticed it but then towards the end of the video it hit me - Thomas loves Satisfactory too!
You don't have to make filament with the shredded material. Teaching Tech used shredded prints to make sheets of abstract colored plastic that can be used in DIY craft projects. I would imagine you would have less issues with slightly contaminated shreds. In my opinion, that's probably a much better use for empty spools and leftover/failed prints.
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Perfect way to make plastic payther bricks or some funky tie dye looking tiles.
In commercial recycling they will mix like materials together, but the systems are quite a bit different. The sprue size is WAY bigger than our tiny hot ends. This allows for inconsistencies. Place by me makes plastic pallets and plastic barrel carriers out of recycled resins. The machine is sloppy as all get out, not precision at all. The feed sprue is at least 10mm in diamater...yea, they are huge. You are 100% that when you see "recycled content" it is generally scraps from their own manufacturing. Funny thing there? SO many places where I live have been doing this for a LONG time, but now they are putting in their specifications...AND CHARGING for it. Genius on them, but when I used to negotiate with these shoot and ship houses they were all "Oh this is so complex". I was always "So, please, take me through it, 2 years ago, before your "Recycled Content" resins you had a grinder, drier and dust separator on all your injection mold presses. You took the sprue(s) and runners and put them into the shredder, it then went to the dryer, then to the dust separator. There it was metered into the resin. What changed". Of course...NOTHING. Except they charged MORE because "it requires more process". Yea...and so many people ate that up as fact. :(
Interesting, trying to create intentionally bad filament. Maybe with different ratios you could control how well it sticks to the main print material, too
Thomas, it's great to see that even a veteran like you is still learning the hard way! I remember watching you build a Printrbot about 10 years ago, which inspired me to buy my own and get into 3D printing. The printer had its technical challenges, much like what you're facing now. Do you think in another 10 years we'll have a disruptive brand similar to Bambu Lab making 3D recycling as simple as tossing in plastic and getting filament out? We're not there yet, but who would’ve thought 3D printing would be this easy today? Just an interesting thought. Keep doing what you do!
Tom, this was fascinating. Recycling 3D printing waste (and their spools!) is a much more challenging task than most people think and your experience shows how complex getting quality, useable filament can be. It was interesting seeing the whole process with the 3devo products. Also, I just love how you had a handy engine hoist to lift the grinder!
Given how heavy that part was, I'm disappointed that it didn't come with a lifting point to hook a hoist to. I've been testing some beefy pumps here in my hardware test lab and am grateful for the lifting point to hook my jib crane to for packing and unpacking.
Way back in the day we bought protocycler serial number 8 from Kickstarter and actually made about 20kg of petg abs and asa with it. Dry time is about 80C for 4 hours and no food dehydrator is gonna do that better a convection oven. You found out the hard way that is the second biggest factor behind mixed plastic types. Petg is almost infinitely recyclable where abs gets brittle a few cycles in due to butadiene and chain breaks.
Please shred PET bottles. Pulltrusion recycling already exists, but only uses the middle part of the bottle. I love my pulltrusion recycler, but i always feel bad about throwing the top and bottom parts away
You only throw them away because it's more complicated to adjust for the varying thickness and it requires more manual speed tuning. But you could use most of the bottle if you baby the process at the start and at the end. you'd only be left with the screw part for the cap. Too thick to get cut on the blade from being pulled. Because even inconsistent thickness can be fixed by running the filament output through the setup again with a tuned setting.
He is based in Germany, You pay a deposit on the bottle in Germany (0.25€ for a plastic one), which you get back when you bring it back for recycling. Not sure it makes sense to recycle bottles to filament in Germany.
@@Rok_Satanas There are several non-deposit PET sources in Germany. Drink syrup/concentrate bottles. Cosmetics and food packaging, packaging of non-food items.
@@Rok_Satanas even bottles themselves. The average 1,5l pet bottle weighs only 30g, so 33 are needed for a kilo of material, given that you can use every bit. I can only talk for myself, but i maybe use 20 of such bottles a month, so every one and a half months enough for 1 kilo of filament if i shred and extrude it. Those pet bottle recycler cant use the top and bottom of a bottle, lets say 2/3 of the material is usable. 50 bottles are now needed for a kilo of material.
There are devices that can identify the type of plastic a thing is using spectroscopy but I'm not sure how accurate they are with identifying co-polymers and such. This might help with sorting stuff before it gets shredded. Also, the contaminated shredded plastic isn't necessarily a lost cause. It can still be melted and molded into other things. The Brothers Make channel has some good ideas on ways to recycle plastics.
Contamination is nearly always VERY bad. Same Brothers Make are very very meticulous, they have to be. If even a little bit of PP gets into a batch of PE or vice versa, you can throw away the whole batch, it's not going to make a cohesive casting. HIPS quickly destroys adhesion of ABS, lots of other examples.
I just send my failed prints to a recycler, where I get credits and can buy new filament. Haven't bought virgin filament in years. And no grinder needed :)
We have a 3Devo extruder and shredder. We like it so much, because we can make a lots of different blends and filled filaments. Only downside is the srew. It is not the best at homogenous extrudes.
The Filament Maker Two will have a new screw design with a dedicated mixer section towards the end - maybe they'll eventually offer it as an upgrade part for the One as well.
All very interesting I enjoyed the video. As somebody else mentioned though, I'm starting to see more cardboard spools. One problem with those on my Prusa MK4S, is the spool holder is on top of the printer above the bed. And as the cardboard spool turns on the peg of the spool holder, it snows cardboard dust just a little down on the bed. So I made some PLA spool inserts that I press into the spools when I get them to eliminate that problem.
There have been plenty of filament brands that offer refills or use cardboard spools for years, but it's not cost-effective. If you can wind straight onto the spool and require no post-processing it's much cheaper than having to then move the length of filament off the spool (without it tangling), and the spools are much less likely to tangle due to user error than refills. Cardboard spools aren't nearly as easy to produce and aren't as sturdy, so plastic is used.
@@daylen577 Not cost effective? their filament is some of the cheapest quality filament and only had a thin cardboard roll and the RFID tag. Its also one of the better reattach enter systems (Other ones I've used had thumb screws for instance). Also confused why cardboard spools were brought up. I'm talking about refills for plastic spools.
Ive been buying refills, but sadly the variety of filaments are not great. Its basically Das Filament, and they have only PLA and PETG. I am printing 90% hard TPU these days, so....
Wow, I am blown away by how much the small amount of contamination affected your prints! I would love to see more videos just exploring shredding/recycling different plastics or waste 3D prints in more detail. Some ideas that come to mind: - Do a bunch of testing and find a good "recipe" for recycling PLA or PETG or ASA waste prints, to show the difficulty level of recycling your 3D prints. Is it possible to do it without using any virgin material at all? - Try making a batch of filament from virgin pellets. Then, print it all and recycle it. Repeat this process and see how the plastic is affected by each cycle of recycling. How many cycles are possible for PLA, for example? - What is the percentage of ABS required to ruin a batch of recycled PLA parts? Or percentage of PLA required to ruin PETG or ASA parts? - Try to get your shredded product into a finer size - how does that affect your results? Is it difficult? Does it make the resulting 3D prints much better? How viable is it for people to do? - Can a sander or Dremel remove the stickers on spools more effectively so you don't need to use solvents to clean the plastic? - Go more into detail about how mixing plastics from different manufacturers such as PLA or PETG affects the resulting batch of filament? Is it a big effect? Can it ruin a batch of plastic? - Does printing with a larger diameter nozzle make recycled filament more viable? Since contaminants will have a higher chance of being able to pass through it. - There maybe chemical tests you can do on spools or samples of plastic you want to recycle to gauge their grade or quality. Can any plastics be judged in this way to see if they're good enough for recycling? Thanks for a great video! I love how you're always trying to branch out on your ideas
One thing that I learned working for a company that prints with pellets is absolutely NEVER re-mix material. Treat the material that came out of the machine as “purge” or waste material. There could be metal contamination, other plastics, purge material, dust or other material like hair or wood shaving etc. And Glass filled materials are superior cleaning resins over HDPE. Use GF ABS as a high temp purge material, and GF pla as a mid range purge, and HDPE as a low range purge and make sure it’s milky when it extrudes. If it’s molten and clear it doesn’t grab the waste bits left in the extruder
I've found the prospect of being able to recycle or create my own filament so attractive and appealing since I started 3D printing like 10 years ago. It's a shame that it's still a big hassle and expensive for fairly inconsistent results. The PET pullstrusion technique seems to be the most practical way for normal people to recycle.
I find extruding your own often produces out-of-spec filament, which is generally unusable if it is less than 1.5mm or more than 2mm. I find Bambulabs x1c cannot feed filament out of this range, does Peopoly or Prusa XL have a better tolerance? Can you add the InFiDEL to one of those open source printers to show how well it improves the print quality when using such spools?
Far more expensive machines, like engines, get lifted every day with similar engine hoists. The lifting straps are a bit dodgy, but I've seen far worse done by people who are supposed to know a lot more about rigging.
I know, the straps explicitly say "not for lifting" - but they are rated for so much more force than what they're seeing in this setup, so they should be totally fine. Still had the engine hoist from maneuvering my lathe into position, and considering how often it has already made impossible jobs possible for me, I'd say it was well worth the 200 bucks I bought it for.
Hybrid plastics. Mixing them to find new properties. 3d print era version of the movable type alloys. Would be crazy if you ended up as the Gutenberg of 3d printing.
Even in normal production environment, we are also using some virgin material together with shraded one. It gives more cosistent injection moulding and less chance for defects
i work at a company that makes large scale extruders and filters for plastics recycling. it really is super important to have good starting material. Even when recycling, if you put garbage in, you will get garbage out. thats especially why plastic bottles are nice to recycle. you know what it is, so you can seperate the different plastics from the lid, lid liner and bottle using a sink-swim seperation, or even camera, or laser guided seperation. it just gives you a nicer starting point. when just recycling from the plastic bin, you just cant get it up to the same quality results. I remember a test we ran a few weeks back that used mainly candy wrappers and yoghurt lids as a starting material. Almost all of it had aluminium gassed onto it on one side. even when filtering that pretty fine, you will get a material that you cant extrude well enough to feed it into a mill to granulate. It will pass the extruder just fine, but the small remaining contamination will change the material properties, making it brittle. And filtering it with finer sieves would require too much pressure for the sieves to hold up. so, sometimes you just need to add virgin material, or wont be able to recycle stuff. this is also why it kinda sucks if you have parts made from a bunch of different materials. if your one plastic part uses 5 different kinds of plastic, or if your Tshirt is half cotton half plastic... it just gets harder and harder to recycle. luckily if the starting material is ruff, our extruders de-gas using a vacuum system, so its always dry and free of oils and glue, but it clogs the filter sieves so you need to change them more frequently. worst case it may cause the line to shut down from pressure build up, if the contaminates are way too much for the system to take. oh also, we always flush using PP. You really only need to disassemble a whole extruder once to always remember to flush ;D
Personally I want to start a filament recycling centre. But I need funding. Love the 3devo machines. CNC kitchen has one also. I go through about 30 spools a year at present. Much is support material and rafts. Would love to turn that back into filament.
At your scale I wouldn't worry too much about it. I have a 3D printing company (Takween 3D) and we use around 2 tons of filament (estimated for this year). Even at our scale it seems too expensive to go down the recycling route. We estimate we will be extruding 5 tons of material in 2027. Maybe by then we may consider recycling.
4:25 Use hexane to remove the stickers/labels. It's usually sold in pharmacies to remove adhesive bandages from the skin, but, should you not be able to get it, WD-40 contains a lot of it, so just use WD-40 then rinse with rubbing alcohol or wash with dish-soap.
Thomas, how do you speak so naturally and fluently? I tried making a video once- I could barely remember a couple of lines at a time even with practice, and when I used a teleprompter it didn't sound natural. Now I notice that in the videos I watch, and I'm impressed with yours.
We own a 3devo Precision extruder and a small shredder by QiTech (built like a tank!). The recycling process is fiddly, but it's actually possible to recycle PLA and to print with no issues with produced rPLA. Our experiments with HDPE filament production (our actual goal) were not successful though.
@@MadeWithLayers Besides the lovely smell while printing it warps way too much even in an enclosed heated chamber. So possible to extrude with 3devo: sure. Possible to print with: less so.
One experiment i'd be interested in is how much performance of pla degrades as it is re-recycled. How is the plastic affected by several runs of extruding, printing, shredding and extruding again. How many cycles does it take for it to be not usable anymore.
Companies that recycle used prints on a larger scale claim in the range of a 2% degradation in material strength when comparing filament made with recycled material mixed in vs. material made from 100% virgin material. So one cycle most likely won't be noticeable, and because, in practice, there's virgin material being mixed in every time anyway, I don't think it's something that needs to be worried about (yet).
Entertaining to watch, and a good reminder of why "oh just recycle it all" isn't a very usable solution to the plastic problem - both in and out of the 3d printing hobby.
The machine and assembly itself, while not for your average home hobbyist, could prove useful for smaller recycling operations! But - as you said - you run into the issues of impure / unsorted materials and cutting an entire batch from 1 contaminant, or the breakdown of polymers. There is a filament recycling company here in Canada that does accept smaller shipments, which is nice for someone like myself who does this as a hobby, but they're very strict with what you get for your batches of scrap material (Points system towards filament purchase, I believe). They even go as far as saying that PLA and PLA+ must be separated.
When you truly think it all through, with the exception of perhaps PET, I seriously doubt that it is truly possible to reuse filament AS-IS. The evidence behind this is that the polymer “cooks” if left at temp for any period of time, which means that it cooks (degrades) to some degree no matter how long it is at temperature. The recycled filament needs something to either reverse the degredation during its first use and the additional degradation that you are going to put it through, or something that can reduce/dilute that degradation. By adding virgin material, you are effectively doing the latter. The exception with PET is crystallization. Once it crystalizes, it is done, unless you do something to reverse the creation of crystals and turn it back into a polymer. Anywho, I don’t know if you are following the law suits here in the US, but the oil/plastics industry is being sued by several states for making false claims in regard to the recyclability of plastics. With over 50 years of data, they have basically proven that recycling plastics is nothing more than a pipe dream. BEST
For your contaminated PLA material you can try using The density of the material as a separation method, or you can use some sort of solvent to melt out the ABS
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There's more TPU composites coming out all the time and I would love to see an attempt at combining all the typical plastics with TPU and TPE because really TPU is the best filament overall. It has perfect layer adhesion, it doesn't warp and is completely shatter proof unless it's cold (under 60f). What we need is a TPU which can match the stiffness of PLA and we'd have the perfect material. I've tested every available TPU composite and so far Nylon + TPU has been a real winner but it requires excessive time to dry.
Can you try some household materials, like shredded yoghurt cups or so? Just to see, if there is a point in recycling this kind of waste by yourself... Or maybe housings of broken appliances or devices like radios tv remotes etc. isn't there the possibility to identify the material with infrared light or so? I vaguely remember seeing something like that...
Yes you saw that on Brothers Make channel, probably, they use one of those IR gadgets. But it only works on translucent colours, doesn't work on black. Also we do usually have polymer ID marks.
the best solution are cardboard rolls or perfect would be if 3D printing will evolve into directly printing from small pellets that are packaged in a lightweight bag. But as previous projects have shown, printing directly from pellets comes with a ton of new compromises.
The first thing that popped to my mind when your first ABS batch went wrong was "Don't they usually add virgin material into the mix to lessen the polymer degradation?". And the answer is yes, usually the mix is 70% recycled and 30% virgin to make pretty much mechanically and chemically identical polymer as it would be 100% virgin material. The polymer degradation is quite fast thing, like everyone with some old cars knows the trick to give sunburn black plastic parts some torch or heatgun to turn them back to true black but you can do it only once and even after it the parts will be a lot weaker, that's polymer degradation and one heat cycle is already quite big thing. You can make 100% recycled plastic but then you need to chemically treat the material for that polymer degradation. Also the clean is the word. Probably many have and will comment about PET bottles and you really need to clean them well, like there must be nothing in them especially sugar (or sweeteners in general, they're all sugars but some are more sweet than others so you need less of them).
I'd like to see if there's a way to recreate PLA+/Pro blends. Most of them are a secrete blend of additives that make them stronger than regular PLA, and it'd be neat if you could try making something comparable to something like Polymaker's PLA Pro (I mention them specifically, since they have a standardized testing method they use for their filaments). It'd also be fun and interesting to learn what additives are possibly being added to make them strong.
Best thing I can think of is grinding them down and then instead of an extrusion process, use a compression process like you're pressing the material into something like a brick or some other kind of simple/useful shape.
I - love that safety feature. I cannot afford these machines, but If I could - I would consider that a huge bonus when comparing machines. To help test spools you can also use some basic chemicals to see if they melt or discolor, ABS as we all know will melt down with Acetone, so a few drops on one - and see if it begins to melt. If so - probably ABS spool. Others have other chemicals, but starting with ABS (probably one of the most common) helps eliminate the need for riskier chemicals or methods.
It might be possible to separate the contamination out using a saltwater bath. (Dial in the salt concentration to a point where one material floats and the other sinks)
I know the owner of a plastics factory. They recycle their waste in some products where color isn't important. Sure they shred and add to virgin pellets not extruding it. But he told me the recycled plastic is degraded and they only use it at around 25% recycled and 75% virgin pellets to ensure a good end product. He also said 50/50 would likely be fine but they don't produce that much waste. Maybe if those ABS spools were mixed with new pellets it would work ok. It would be great if you get a chance to try that. Cheers!
I think you've missed that there's plasticizers in fresh filament/fresh material. 50:50 mix worked because you had the plasticizer in 50% of it. Recycled PLA are a thing not because of perfect conditions, but because of additives. I assume we're burning out the plasticizers during printing and that's some of the fumes and smell we get.
This is a misconception, nothing we print with uses plasticisers. If it did, it'd knock you out with stink. PVC is a common plasticised material, but please don't experiment, just ask someone or take my word, very dangerous. Polymers we print with have limited cycle life because they experience some cleaving when molten. But adding some virgin polymer results in a cohesive material where not too much of it is cleaved in total.
@11:57 that's the same color that our shoes would end up colored as when working in automotive paint booths. I suppose it raised some eyebrows out in the public. We also did ABS regrind onsite at Saturn (Saturns had the plastic panels of course). IIRC, the mix of old to new (virgin) was 10% old, 90% virgin plastic. Our silos were ~27.5 meters tall though... :)
I wonder if used PE bottles (milk, though they maybe have different material as a liner inside?), laundry detergent or other cleaning supplies bottles would print well?
Tom, it'd be cool to see you make carbon or glass fiber reinforced abs. I've seen these powders or chopped fibers available to purchase for a pretty low cost but i am not aware of a good way to mix them consistently in the hopper.
I suspect when manufacturers use them, they get them pelletised with EVA binder, aka hot melt glue. A little bit of EVA doesn't outright ruin any plastic. But that's just a hunch.
Abs is almost the same density of water and PLA is heavier. Maybe you could separate them by throwing into salt walter and removing everything that floats
05:58 looks to be inefficient for reducing 3mm filament. Are there any more straight forward ways to reduce 3mm filament to 1.75mm filament? I have several spools of 3mm TPU like filament and I want to reduce it for my 1.75mm printer.
At 3:14 there are two things being done wrong: 1. Ratchet straps according to EN 12195-2 are not to be used for lifting. Better thing to use would be something like round slings. I'm aware not everyone has them laying around, but if you own an engine hoist, you should probably get some proper lifting gear. 2. You should not be putting these hooks into each other. It will cause the hooks to widen and form hairline cracs, which can lead them to break far below their load capacity.
Despite the use, I'm pretty positive he was now where near the lift capacity of either the hoist or the straps. While not according to regulations, home gamers really don't know anything about rigging and the regulations that go with it, (nor are they covered by such regulations). So unless you want to ban all sales of such lifting devices and/or require training and licensure to even purchase and own such things, this will never be prevented.
trash printing all kinds of containers and lids would be a nice thing, or graphene infused material nice editing and filming, and now you have a setup straight out of everyones early 3d printing dreams
I think the really interesting part of extruding your own filament is the potential for creating custom blends. I wonder how you would get on with your virgin abs with some added chopped carbon fibre or glass fibre?
I don't have a filament extruder, but I still shred my failed prints. The failed prints are used as ballast for situations where I need the weight but not the strength. (think paperweights and stands)
I try to buy refill / spool-less filament. I then print the spools I need and reuse them as often as possible. (3D printed spools do break down after a lot of uses)
I wonder about how efficiently you are actually drying out your ground plastic. It seems to me that simply putting the ground plastic in a glass tray and then immersing it into a hot air bath drying box won't encourage the moisture from the middle and bottom of the grinds to escape. As a first step, maybe a fine mesh sifting sieve with a PC fan under it inside the dry box would help encourage an exchange of the warm moist air within the volume of the grinds with the warm dry air of the hot air bath. May have to play with the speed of the fan and the distance between the fan and the bottom of the sieve to get some airflow (doesn't need to be much) through the volume of the grinds without blowing the grinds everywhere. What I use for drying loose desiccant beads in my food dehydrator that I use for filament drying (I don't use for food) is a 6" round 40 Mesh sifter for baking (I also don't use for food). A quick look through Amazon and I see up to 12" diameter, similarly mesh sized.
I would love to see a continuation of this filament extruder for specialty need filaments which are either expensive or difficult to source. Say, flame retardant nylon or similar!
Spools ought to be made with re-inforced cardboard, and a removable plastic ring insert so ragged edges and rough surfaces don't hold anything up. At least if the cardboard is binned it'll decompose or cook nicely.
They sell you a huge grinder that generates microplastics when all they needed to do was have a pre-heat chamber to make your source material able to blend together. The auger that feeds the extrusion can be preceded by a mixing system using arms or motion, etc...but grinding doesn't need to happen, I guess they'd have to include a precision controller and more sensors but it would take up far less space, make far less impact on environment, be much less expensive, and a huge piece of equipment made by consuming and/or contaminating a lot of natural resources completely avoided. The extrusion is working okay, though. That in itself is pretty impressive! But careful - if you turn all your spools into filament, you'll have to print a spool to keep it on.
There should be a use to weak filament like house insulation, or bricks/sheets made for just house insulation. Just think of something to use weak materials for that would help.
I've personally tested to mix some PETG and TPC (and some ABS and PA contamination) with my 3devo Precision 350 extruder. The resulting diameter was all over the place and required some re-cutting by hand to get it down to size. The mix itself is very durable and slightly flexible with an insanely good print bed adhesion, strong enough to rip out pieces of glass as the printbed cools. It is possible, but not really worth it in my opinion
Perhaps you could try making your own wood, glitter or even metal filament? By metal I mean the types that have some amount of metal (dust/flakes?) mixed in for a metallic look.
HDPE was used as a purge material, but I wonder how it could work as a printed material? (Or a blend with HDPE?) it’s very common as a household plastic. I think it would work well as a material for containers or working pets like gears or cams.
Could you use the difference in density of PLA and ABS to separate the ABS from the PLA. Perhaps using a salt water solution with a density of about 1.1g/cc so that the ABS will float and the PLA will sink?
PP is the most difficult to print material I have ever tried. It warps so badly that it pulls the PP tape used to make it stick. I'd be curious to try some PP blends that would retain its bending properties and reduce the warp (or make it stick to PEI). One thing I'd try would be to add some virgin ABS to it (hopefully without causing the issues you faced). Another idea would be to try creating a flexible blend.
Now that you’ve played with the 3devo, I’d love to hear your insights after another inspection of industrial grade compounders! As you pointed out, it’s tough to get a good mix with shredded plastic in such a small extrusion system like the one in the video. Reach out to me if you need access to a research compounder!
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
Most of mine are cardboard these days
same. I can't even remember the last time I got a plastic spoil.
Same, and I believe cardboard is a lot easier to recycle as well. Although whenever I look at the social media accounts of those who make cardboard spools, there's always a lot of complaints from the Bambu AMS crowd. Bambu needs to make their AMS work better with cardboard spools.
@@logicalfundybambu took the approach of using Reusable spools. You just buy refills. It's actually weird to me that people with bambu AMS systems would complain about cardboard spools when you can just slide the filament onto a bambu spool and call it a day...
And if you bought their printer but never their filament, for whatever reason, print a reusable spool... there are so many designs out there.
There's basically 0 reason to be asking any filament makers to move away from cardboard.
@@logicalfundy Then send them to print a brim around the cardboard spool. I own an AMS and there are no problems with that. The main problem that I have is that cardboard spools seem to hold quite a bit of moisture or something because the filament on cardboard spools a lot more often has to be dried before use, otherwise it can give horrible results.
Imo refills with no spools are a better idea. If you don't have a reusable spool you can just print one. Wish more companies would do refills but there would probably be a fair bit of knots before they figure that stuff out...
@@SquintyGears Well, there are some good reasons for why cardboard is not so great. Tbh it's not just as easy as 'sliding' the filament unto another spool. I don't browse these 'groups' but I have an AMS and there are dedicated brims that you pop around the cardboard spool. People just love complaining about everything... My only complaint about cardboard is that it holds moisture and the filament that arrives on them seems to be more often wet which leads to complains about quality. But that is only because I don't have a proper filament dryer...
I don't know how much better the cardboard is in the long run but I wouldn't mind if the companies switched to the refill style with only that cardboard core that you slide unto the reusable spool etc. Feels like that would be the best of both worlds.
I recently read a paper "Mechanical properties of ternary blends of ABS, HIPS and PETG". It's from research in South Africa where there is a substantial purge volume from sheet extrusion when they change material, and they really would like to use the intermediate materials somehow and not let them go to waste.
What i learned is that ABS and PETG are compatible with each other and produce a cohesive plastic. But how does it print? It could have really interesting properties, don't you think? And also that adding any amount of HIPS destroys cohesion. Which is funny since HIPS is not a copolymer but a blend itself. One should be really careful with what garbage polymer ends up in the mix, for example any amount of PP would be very much not OK.
The other thing i learned is that one can use SBS (Styroflex 2g66) as a universal cohesion agent which may make bad polymers and dumb mixtures workable.
ive seen panels of consumer electronics enclosures made from ABS+PETG. looks very normal and ABS-ey, but has a suspiciously high bend endurance
Trash-grade polymers aren't a good idea for recycling into 3D print filament. They can work well when pressed into sheets, however. You can then use those sheets to make a bunch of things. Teaching Tech has a nice video on using a t shirt press for this.
HIPS is not a blend. HIPS is made by polymerization of styrenic solution of polybutadiene (rubber). During the polymerization, polystyrene chains are attached covalently to the polybutadiene molecules.
@@vojtator Wait that's vaguely the manufacturing method of ABS, SBS and similar graft copolymers. I was somehow under the impression that HIPS is not a co-polymer but a blend. Thanks.
@@SianaGearz Yes, its very similar, ABS can be produced just like HIPS but with acrylonitrile and styrene mixture instead of pure styrene.
HIPS as a blend can be prepared as well but the properties are terrible so its basically never used.
Great Video. Alot of people think it's so easy to just recycle your filaments. Thanks for fully explaining how hard it really is.
Years ago, when I worked at a plastics molding company, they would recycle 'waste' plastics. Sprues, purges etc. They would never use it without adding virgin pellets to the mix. In fact I think it was less than 10% of recycle to virgin material. This was blended in the mixing department. As you found out, keeping the different types of plastic apart was key!
This. I have worked with multiple injection molders and the most regrind used was 23%. Also of note, some plastics can't be used as regrind at all because they don't melt good more than once or twice which excludes regrinding prints as the plastic has already been melted a couple of times already.
@mechanoid5739 I just started working at a plastics compounding company. If the "start up" material is clean (this is the first bit we extrude and pelletize to evaluate the consistency) we just dump it back into the process.
Occasionally we even have jobs that mix poorly (when we look at the pellets in the microscope we see chunks unmixed, unmelted colorant, we just run it through a second time to get it to full consistency.
You should try out regular household plastic waste. PET printing (from bottles) has been explored before, but it could be further refined and there are other kinds of plastics out there as well.
It's pretty hard for me to collect PET bottles to shred into filament - Germany with their "Pfand" system makes bottles worth 25ct each, which is more than buying fresh granulate..
@@MadeWithLayers Could you try it with Polypropylene (PP, marked with nr. 5)? It is the second most used plastic and is generally used for food containers. You can also clean PP items by simply throwing them in the dishwasher and it doesn't absorb moisture, which should make recycling quite straightforward.
PET bottles are not waste in many countries. They have dedicated recycling systems. You pay a fee when buying the bottled product and get it back when you return the bottle.
PET bottle printing videos are only for the group of countries that aren't making that basic recycling effort.
HDPE
Milk jugs, water jugs, clean petrol (oil) containers. They're everywhere.
Not exactly ideal for anything too specific. But from personal experience they seem to make decent zip-ties.
@@WarkWarbly Again, all not here in Germany. Usually milk comes in Tetra Paks. Thats mostly paper with plastic liners. Water, again in PET bottles with deposit. Only oil might work, but cleaning that is a mess .
17K €, certainly not for the hobbyist.
who tf is this thing for? its not for me, thats for certain. boring
@@DeltreeZero3D print farm at mid to large scale is my guess. The user needs to use large amount of filament and have ability to control the quality and purity of thr material. Recycler's biggest issue will be the purity of material; having contaminated such as PLA, PETG can ruined the batch
@@kullwarrior I don't think it's for print farms either. The effort is too high for the process to make any economic sense. Like Thomas said in the video, these are for material science (plastics, colorings, other additives - i.e. where new filaments are developed).
*laughts in boat*
I dont even see enough there to cost that much
Couple years back, I had the delight to work with 3devo products, the shredder and what was then their top of the line extruder. The shredder kept jamming, and when asked about it, their support had no idea how it actually worked, and (I am NOT kidding about this), they took pictures of themselves shoving plastic bits into it with thick wooden boards, and suggested we try the same. Their extruder promised something like 0,5/1kg of filament an hour, but it barely managed to do about 2-3kg a day, that is when it worked at all. An utterly miserable experience, and all those terrible memories of endless lost time came to me when Thomas mentioned 3devo. ...now to watch the rest of the video! :D
That sounds horrible haha
@@ares395 It was :D The shredder here seems like a new version and seem much more capable than what we used, but the extruder seems to be the same (on the outside), ours was just a darker color, the "pro" version. The whole project lasted about a year, we had professors from local engineering college get involved in it, one of them even made an addition for the extruder's hopper so it wouldn't get stuck so often. Eventually everyone just kind of gave up on it, and we all went to do our own things. Mind you, this was in 2017-2018, when the whole 3D printing was starting to boom, if they're still using the same extruder as they did back then, that's just horrible.
Oh good grief. That sounds a lot like a company rebranding products and drop shipping to customers without actually knowing how it works. lol.
@@BRUXXUSI don’t think you know what drop shipping means… you can’t drop ship products like that
@@elizabethbenialgy3982 As in, they don't actually keep or interact with any of their own products on location. Shipped directly from a supplier rather than from the company itself. Which I said because that makes sense for customer support that clearly doesn't have any real experience with using the product.
What I want to use recycled filament for, on the Prusa XL: use recycled material with a 0.8/1.0/1.2mm nozzle, and make the inside of every model and all infill out of any color. Tool change for the outer layers to be new material through 0.4mm nozzles. How much print time and filament would it save? Can it get close to regular surface quality? Can you ignore more contaminants with huge nozzles?
This is a neat idea! Shredded failed prints etc for infil sounds like a great use
I worked a bit with injection molding during the summer, and yeah... we had 3 different purging compounds to satisfy the temperature ranges of all the different plastics we ran (prototyping machine). It sure is important!
I found out the hard way - probably the biggest factor in why hobbyist-level filament extrusion has never really taken off. When you need to invest more time and material for purging than for actually extruding filament, the value trying to recycle failed prints yourself quickly becomes very questionable.
It's kinda cute how excited you were about the mechanically coded safety switches. I work with them so much, I never gave them a second thought.
I love the lizard doggo in the background! I have been so hooked on Satisfactory that I didn't even bat an eye when I noticed it but then towards the end of the video it hit me - Thomas loves Satisfactory too!
i just started playing the 1.0 update as i was watching this video lol
satisfactory is great
Definitely a wonderful game❤
Been playing since early access update 5 and started a new playthrough with a friend when 1.0 came out - it's awesome to see how far they've come!
I forgot they made a plush and I needed to pause the video to rectify that mistake.
You don't have to make filament with the shredded material. Teaching Tech used shredded prints to make sheets of abstract colored plastic that can be used in DIY craft projects. I would imagine you would have less issues with slightly contaminated shreds. In my opinion, that's probably a much better use for empty spools and leftover/failed prints.
Perfect way to make plastic payther bricks or some funky tie dye looking tiles.
In commercial recycling they will mix like materials together, but the systems are quite a bit different. The sprue size is WAY bigger than our tiny hot ends. This allows for inconsistencies. Place by me makes plastic pallets and plastic barrel carriers out of recycled resins. The machine is sloppy as all get out, not precision at all. The feed sprue is at least 10mm in diamater...yea, they are huge.
You are 100% that when you see "recycled content" it is generally scraps from their own manufacturing. Funny thing there? SO many places where I live have been doing this for a LONG time, but now they are putting in their specifications...AND CHARGING for it. Genius on them, but when I used to negotiate with these shoot and ship houses they were all "Oh this is so complex". I was always "So, please, take me through it, 2 years ago, before your "Recycled Content" resins you had a grinder, drier and dust separator on all your injection mold presses. You took the sprue(s) and runners and put them into the shredder, it then went to the dryer, then to the dust separator. There it was metered into the resin. What changed". Of course...NOTHING. Except they charged MORE because "it requires more process". Yea...and so many people ate that up as fact. :(
Toss up some 80-20 mix of PETG+PLA, to create a weak support filament that prints but then easily crumbles away when it's done with its job.
Interesting, trying to create intentionally bad filament. Maybe with different ratios you could control how well it sticks to the main print material, too
Thomas, it's great to see that even a veteran like you is still learning the hard way! I remember watching you build a Printrbot about 10 years ago, which inspired me to buy my own and get into 3D printing. The printer had its technical challenges, much like what you're facing now. Do you think in another 10 years we'll have a disruptive brand similar to Bambu Lab making 3D recycling as simple as tossing in plastic and getting filament out? We're not there yet, but who would’ve thought 3D printing would be this easy today? Just an interesting thought. Keep doing what you do!
Tom, this was fascinating. Recycling 3D printing waste (and their spools!) is a much more challenging task than most people think and your experience shows how complex getting quality, useable filament can be. It was interesting seeing the whole process with the 3devo products. Also, I just love how you had a handy engine hoist to lift the grinder!
Given how heavy that part was, I'm disappointed that it didn't come with a lifting point to hook a hoist to. I've been testing some beefy pumps here in my hardware test lab and am grateful for the lifting point to hook my jib crane to for packing and unpacking.
Way back in the day we bought protocycler serial number 8 from Kickstarter and actually made about 20kg of petg abs and asa with it. Dry time is about 80C for 4 hours and no food dehydrator is gonna do that better a convection oven. You found out the hard way that is the second biggest factor behind mixed plastic types. Petg is almost infinitely recyclable where abs gets brittle a few cycles in due to butadiene and chain breaks.
Please shred PET bottles. Pulltrusion recycling already exists, but only uses the middle part of the bottle. I love my pulltrusion recycler, but i always feel bad about throwing the top and bottom parts away
You only throw them away because it's more complicated to adjust for the varying thickness and it requires more manual speed tuning. But you could use most of the bottle if you baby the process at the start and at the end. you'd only be left with the screw part for the cap. Too thick to get cut on the blade from being pulled.
Because even inconsistent thickness can be fixed by running the filament output through the setup again with a tuned setting.
He is based in Germany, You pay a deposit on the bottle in Germany (0.25€ for a plastic one), which you get back when you bring it back for recycling. Not sure it makes sense to recycle bottles to filament in Germany.
@@Rok_Satanas There are several non-deposit PET sources in Germany. Drink syrup/concentrate bottles. Cosmetics and food packaging, packaging of non-food items.
@@SianaGearz sure, but how many of those you use every month, it could take a year to get enough for a single print.
@@Rok_Satanas even bottles themselves. The average 1,5l pet bottle weighs only 30g, so 33 are needed for a kilo of material, given that you can use every bit. I can only talk for myself, but i maybe use 20 of such bottles a month, so every one and a half months enough for 1 kilo of filament if i shred and extrude it. Those pet bottle recycler cant use the top and bottom of a bottle, lets say 2/3 of the material is usable. 50 bottles are now needed for a kilo of material.
There are devices that can identify the type of plastic a thing is using spectroscopy but I'm not sure how accurate they are with identifying co-polymers and such. This might help with sorting stuff before it gets shredded.
Also, the contaminated shredded plastic isn't necessarily a lost cause. It can still be melted and molded into other things. The Brothers Make channel has some good ideas on ways to recycle plastics.
Contamination is nearly always VERY bad. Same Brothers Make are very very meticulous, they have to be. If even a little bit of PP gets into a batch of PE or vice versa, you can throw away the whole batch, it's not going to make a cohesive casting. HIPS quickly destroys adhesion of ABS, lots of other examples.
I just send my failed prints to a recycler, where I get credits and can buy new filament.
Haven't bought virgin filament in years. And no grinder needed :)
We have a 3Devo extruder and shredder. We like it so much, because we can make a lots of different blends and filled filaments. Only downside is the srew. It is not the best at homogenous extrudes.
The Filament Maker Two will have a new screw design with a dedicated mixer section towards the end - maybe they'll eventually offer it as an upgrade part for the One as well.
what a genius idea, i always hated the waste generated by spools
All very interesting I enjoyed the video. As somebody else mentioned though, I'm starting to see more cardboard spools.
One problem with those on my Prusa MK4S, is the spool holder is on top of the printer above the bed. And as the cardboard spool turns on the peg of the spool holder, it snows cardboard dust just a little down on the bed. So I made some PLA spool inserts that I press into the spools when I get them to eliminate that problem.
7:40 The term "copolymer" doesn't refer to how well polymers mix, a copolymer is a polymer consisting of several covalently bonded monomers
What I don't get is why everyone hasn't just adopted a similar refill system to Bambulab spools. Reuse is the best part of the 3 rs
There have been plenty of filament brands that offer refills or use cardboard spools for years, but it's not cost-effective. If you can wind straight onto the spool and require no post-processing it's much cheaper than having to then move the length of filament off the spool (without it tangling), and the spools are much less likely to tangle due to user error than refills. Cardboard spools aren't nearly as easy to produce and aren't as sturdy, so plastic is used.
@@daylen577 Not cost effective? their filament is some of the cheapest quality filament and only had a thin cardboard roll and the RFID tag.
Its also one of the better reattach enter systems (Other ones I've used had thumb screws for instance).
Also confused why cardboard spools were brought up. I'm talking about refills for plastic spools.
Or sometimes called spooless spools.
Ive been buying refills, but sadly the variety of filaments are not great. Its basically Das Filament, and they have only PLA and PETG. I am printing 90% hard TPU these days, so....
Wow, I am blown away by how much the small amount of contamination affected your prints! I would love to see more videos just exploring shredding/recycling different plastics or waste 3D prints in more detail. Some ideas that come to mind:
- Do a bunch of testing and find a good "recipe" for recycling PLA or PETG or ASA waste prints, to show the difficulty level of recycling your 3D prints. Is it possible to do it without using any virgin material at all?
- Try making a batch of filament from virgin pellets. Then, print it all and recycle it. Repeat this process and see how the plastic is affected by each cycle of recycling. How many cycles are possible for PLA, for example?
- What is the percentage of ABS required to ruin a batch of recycled PLA parts? Or percentage of PLA required to ruin PETG or ASA parts?
- Try to get your shredded product into a finer size - how does that affect your results? Is it difficult? Does it make the resulting 3D prints much better? How viable is it for people to do?
- Can a sander or Dremel remove the stickers on spools more effectively so you don't need to use solvents to clean the plastic?
- Go more into detail about how mixing plastics from different manufacturers such as PLA or PETG affects the resulting batch of filament? Is it a big effect? Can it ruin a batch of plastic?
- Does printing with a larger diameter nozzle make recycled filament more viable? Since contaminants will have a higher chance of being able to pass through it.
- There maybe chemical tests you can do on spools or samples of plastic you want to recycle to gauge their grade or quality. Can any plastics be judged in this way to see if they're good enough for recycling?
Thanks for a great video! I love how you're always trying to branch out on your ideas
This reminds me a lot of CNCKitchen's video about the recycling of old 3D-printed parts using a self-built reextrusion line.
One thing that I learned working for a company that prints with pellets is absolutely NEVER re-mix material. Treat the material that came out of the machine as “purge” or waste material. There could be metal contamination, other plastics, purge material, dust or other material like hair or wood shaving etc. And Glass filled materials are superior cleaning resins over HDPE. Use GF ABS as a high temp purge material, and GF pla as a mid range purge, and HDPE as a low range purge and make sure it’s milky when it extrudes. If it’s molten and clear it doesn’t grab the waste bits left in the extruder
Do retro reflective like Reflect-O-Lay, but with translucent PETG and translucent TPU
I've found the prospect of being able to recycle or create my own filament so attractive and appealing since I started 3D printing like 10 years ago.
It's a shame that it's still a big hassle and expensive for fairly inconsistent results.
The PET pullstrusion technique seems to be the most practical way for normal people to recycle.
I find extruding your own often produces out-of-spec filament, which is generally unusable if it is less than 1.5mm or more than 2mm. I find Bambulabs x1c cannot feed filament out of this range, does Peopoly or Prusa XL have a better tolerance? Can you add the InFiDEL to one of those open source printers to show how well it improves the print quality when using such spools?
Step 1) have an expensive machine
Step 2) have an engine hoist
Step 3) ????
Step 4) profit
Far more expensive machines, like engines, get lifted every day with similar engine hoists. The lifting straps are a bit dodgy, but I've seen far worse done by people who are supposed to know a lot more about rigging.
I know, the straps explicitly say "not for lifting" - but they are rated for so much more force than what they're seeing in this setup, so they should be totally fine.
Still had the engine hoist from maneuvering my lathe into position, and considering how often it has already made impossible jobs possible for me, I'd say it was well worth the 200 bucks I bought it for.
Sehr interessant! 👍Werde das bald auf jeden Fall mit meinem Pellet Extruder ausprobieren
Try to make blends of filaments e.g. PC-ABS. Obviously need to overlap temperatures a bit but would be interesting to see what's possible
Hybrid plastics. Mixing them to find new properties.
3d print era version of the movable type alloys. Would be crazy if you ended up as the Gutenberg of 3d printing.
Even in normal production environment, we are also using some virgin material together with shraded one. It gives more cosistent injection moulding and less chance for defects
i work at a company that makes large scale extruders and filters for plastics recycling. it really is super important to have good starting material. Even when recycling, if you put garbage in, you will get garbage out.
thats especially why plastic bottles are nice to recycle. you know what it is, so you can seperate the different plastics from the lid, lid liner and bottle using a sink-swim seperation, or even camera, or laser guided seperation. it just gives you a nicer starting point. when just recycling from the plastic bin, you just cant get it up to the same quality results.
I remember a test we ran a few weeks back that used mainly candy wrappers and yoghurt lids as a starting material. Almost all of it had aluminium gassed onto it on one side. even when filtering that pretty fine, you will get a material that you cant extrude well enough to feed it into a mill to granulate. It will pass the extruder just fine, but the small remaining contamination will change the material properties, making it brittle. And filtering it with finer sieves would require too much pressure for the sieves to hold up. so, sometimes you just need to add virgin material, or wont be able to recycle stuff.
this is also why it kinda sucks if you have parts made from a bunch of different materials. if your one plastic part uses 5 different kinds of plastic, or if your Tshirt is half cotton half plastic... it just gets harder and harder to recycle.
luckily if the starting material is ruff, our extruders de-gas using a vacuum system, so its always dry and free of oils and glue, but it clogs the filter sieves so you need to change them more frequently. worst case it may cause the line to shut down from pressure build up, if the contaminates are way too much for the system to take.
oh also, we always flush using PP. You really only need to disassemble a whole extruder once to always remember to flush ;D
Personally I want to start a filament recycling centre. But I need funding.
Love the 3devo machines.
CNC kitchen has one also.
I go through about 30 spools a year at present.
Much is support material and rafts.
Would love to turn that back into filament.
At your scale I wouldn't worry too much about it. I have a 3D printing company (Takween 3D) and we use around 2 tons of filament (estimated for this year). Even at our scale it seems too expensive to go down the recycling route. We estimate we will be extruding 5 tons of material in 2027. Maybe by then we may consider recycling.
4:25 Use hexane to remove the stickers/labels. It's usually sold in pharmacies to remove adhesive bandages from the skin, but, should you not be able to get it, WD-40 contains a lot of it, so just use WD-40 then rinse with rubbing alcohol or wash with dish-soap.
Thomas, how do you speak so naturally and fluently? I tried making a video once- I could barely remember a couple of lines at a time even with practice, and when I used a teleprompter it didn't sound natural. Now I notice that in the videos I watch, and I'm impressed with yours.
Try to recycle PET from bottles! I’m really curious how that would work
We own a 3devo Precision extruder and a small shredder by QiTech (built like a tank!). The recycling process is fiddly, but it's actually possible to recycle PLA and to print with no issues with produced rPLA. Our experiments with HDPE filament production (our actual goal) were not successful though.
Trying PE for filament making was one of the things I still wanted to try, too - what issues did you run into?
@@MadeWithLayers Besides the lovely smell while printing it warps way too much even in an enclosed heated chamber. So possible to extrude with 3devo: sure. Possible to print with: less so.
One experiment i'd be interested in is how much performance of pla degrades as it is re-recycled. How is the plastic affected by several runs of extruding, printing, shredding and extruding again. How many cycles does it take for it to be not usable anymore.
Companies that recycle used prints on a larger scale claim in the range of a 2% degradation in material strength when comparing filament made with recycled material mixed in vs. material made from 100% virgin material. So one cycle most likely won't be noticeable, and because, in practice, there's virgin material being mixed in every time anyway, I don't think it's something that needs to be worried about (yet).
Entertaining to watch, and a good reminder of why "oh just recycle it all" isn't a very usable solution to the plastic problem - both in and out of the 3d printing hobby.
I've seen this machine it's a beauty
The machine and assembly itself, while not for your average home hobbyist, could prove useful for smaller recycling operations!
But - as you said - you run into the issues of impure / unsorted materials and cutting an entire batch from 1 contaminant, or the breakdown of polymers.
There is a filament recycling company here in Canada that does accept smaller shipments, which is nice for someone like myself who does this as a hobby, but they're very strict with what you get for your batches of scrap material (Points system towards filament purchase, I believe). They even go as far as saying that PLA and PLA+ must be separated.
When you truly think it all through, with the exception of perhaps PET, I seriously doubt that it is truly possible to reuse filament AS-IS. The evidence behind this is that the polymer “cooks” if left at temp for any period of time, which means that it cooks (degrades) to some degree no matter how long it is at temperature.
The recycled filament needs something to either reverse the degredation during its first use and the additional degradation that you are going to put it through, or something that can reduce/dilute that degradation. By adding virgin material, you are effectively doing the latter.
The exception with PET is crystallization. Once it crystalizes, it is done, unless you do something to reverse the creation of crystals and turn it back into a polymer. Anywho, I don’t know if you are following the law suits here in the US, but the oil/plastics industry is being sued by several states for making false claims in regard to the recyclability of plastics. With over 50 years of data, they have basically proven that recycling plastics is nothing more than a pipe dream.
BEST
For your contaminated PLA material you can try using The density of the material as a separation method, or you can use some sort of solvent to melt out the ABS
There's more TPU composites coming out all the time and I would love to see an attempt at combining all the typical plastics with TPU and TPE because really TPU is the best filament overall.
It has perfect layer adhesion, it doesn't warp and is completely shatter proof unless it's cold (under 60f).
What we need is a TPU which can match the stiffness of PLA and we'd have the perfect material.
I've tested every available TPU composite and so far Nylon + TPU has been a real winner but it requires excessive time to dry.
Can you try some household materials, like shredded yoghurt cups or so? Just to see, if there is a point in recycling this kind of waste by yourself... Or maybe housings of broken appliances or devices like radios tv remotes etc. isn't there the possibility to identify the material with infrared light or so? I vaguely remember seeing something like that...
Yes you saw that on Brothers Make channel, probably, they use one of those IR gadgets. But it only works on translucent colours, doesn't work on black. Also we do usually have polymer ID marks.
the best solution are cardboard rolls or perfect would be if 3D printing will evolve into directly printing from small pellets that are packaged in a lightweight bag. But as previous projects have shown, printing directly from pellets comes with a ton of new compromises.
What about PET bottles shredded up and mixed with PETG filament?
The first thing that popped to my mind when your first ABS batch went wrong was "Don't they usually add virgin material into the mix to lessen the polymer degradation?". And the answer is yes, usually the mix is 70% recycled and 30% virgin to make pretty much mechanically and chemically identical polymer as it would be 100% virgin material. The polymer degradation is quite fast thing, like everyone with some old cars knows the trick to give sunburn black plastic parts some torch or heatgun to turn them back to true black but you can do it only once and even after it the parts will be a lot weaker, that's polymer degradation and one heat cycle is already quite big thing. You can make 100% recycled plastic but then you need to chemically treat the material for that polymer degradation.
Also the clean is the word. Probably many have and will comment about PET bottles and you really need to clean them well, like there must be nothing in them especially sugar (or sweeteners in general, they're all sugars but some are more sweet than others so you need less of them).
I'd like to see if there's a way to recreate PLA+/Pro blends. Most of them are a secrete blend of additives that make them stronger than regular PLA, and it'd be neat if you could try making something comparable to something like Polymaker's PLA Pro (I mention them specifically, since they have a standardized testing method they use for their filaments). It'd also be fun and interesting to learn what additives are possibly being added to make them strong.
Best thing I can think of is grinding them down and then instead of an extrusion process, use a compression process like you're pressing the material into something like a brick or some other kind of simple/useful shape.
I - love that safety feature. I cannot afford these machines, but If I could - I would consider that a huge bonus when comparing machines.
To help test spools you can also use some basic chemicals to see if they melt or discolor, ABS as we all know will melt down with Acetone, so a few drops on one - and see if it begins to melt. If so - probably ABS spool. Others have other chemicals, but starting with ABS (probably one of the most common) helps eliminate the need for riskier chemicals or methods.
It might be possible to separate the contamination out using a saltwater bath. (Dial in the salt concentration to a point where one material floats and the other sinks)
I know the owner of a plastics factory. They recycle their waste in some products where color isn't important.
Sure they shred and add to virgin pellets not extruding it. But he told me the recycled plastic is degraded and they only use it at around 25% recycled and 75% virgin pellets to ensure a good end product. He also said 50/50 would likely be fine but they don't produce that much waste.
Maybe if those ABS spools were mixed with new pellets it would work ok. It would be great if you get a chance to try that. Cheers!
You have 'garden' in the name but not noticed no branch cutting tools were used in this episode. A pity, I bet they could be put to good use.
I have a couple of master spools that I reload. I need to get more. That eliminates spool waste completely.
I think you've missed that there's plasticizers in fresh filament/fresh material. 50:50 mix worked because you had the plasticizer in 50% of it. Recycled PLA are a thing not because of perfect conditions, but because of additives. I assume we're burning out the plasticizers during printing and that's some of the fumes and smell we get.
This is a misconception, nothing we print with uses plasticisers. If it did, it'd knock you out with stink. PVC is a common plasticised material, but please don't experiment, just ask someone or take my word, very dangerous.
Polymers we print with have limited cycle life because they experience some cleaving when molten. But adding some virgin polymer results in a cohesive material where not too much of it is cleaved in total.
adding glass beads (like the stuff they dust paint lines on the roads with) to make reflective items
Hey I have a few kg of polystyrene spools I shredded about a year ago just in a bag. I was waiting for this video.
@11:57 that's the same color that our shoes would end up colored as when working in automotive paint booths. I suppose it raised some eyebrows out in the public.
We also did ABS regrind onsite at Saturn (Saturns had the plastic panels of course). IIRC, the mix of old to new (virgin) was 10% old, 90% virgin plastic. Our silos were ~27.5 meters tall though... :)
How much filament would you need to extrude to offset the cost of recycling machine?
Pearl pigment for car paint/plasti dip could look cool. It's what they use to make cars that seem to change color based on the light direction.
I wonder if used PE bottles (milk, though they maybe have different material as a liner inside?), laundry detergent or other cleaning supplies bottles would print well?
Nice lizard doggo. I like it.
You should shred an old 3d printer itself. Then reprint it 😬.
Bru wat
Are you able to try some other additives, say carbon fibre or glass filled filaments?
Tom, it'd be cool to see you make carbon or glass fiber reinforced abs. I've seen these powders or chopped fibers available to purchase for a pretty low cost but i am not aware of a good way to mix them consistently in the hopper.
I suspect when manufacturers use them, they get them pelletised with EVA binder, aka hot melt glue. A little bit of EVA doesn't outright ruin any plastic. But that's just a hunch.
I'd love to see someone try making wood filament from this process. Odd wood species like padauk, purple heart, ebony etc.. would be fun to see.
Abs is almost the same density of water and PLA is heavier. Maybe you could separate them by throwing into salt walter and removing everything that floats
For drying your ground plastic you might want to integrate some sort of agitator or stirrer into your drying setup
05:58 looks to be inefficient for reducing 3mm filament. Are there any more straight forward ways to reduce 3mm filament to 1.75mm filament? I have several spools of 3mm TPU like filament and I want to reduce it for my 1.75mm printer.
At 3:14 there are two things being done wrong:
1. Ratchet straps according to EN 12195-2 are not to be used for lifting. Better thing to use would be something like round slings. I'm aware not everyone has them laying around, but if you own an engine hoist, you should probably get some proper lifting gear.
2. You should not be putting these hooks into each other. It will cause the hooks to widen and form hairline cracs, which can lead them to break far below their load capacity.
Despite the use, I'm pretty positive he was now where near the lift capacity of either the hoist or the straps. While not according to regulations, home gamers really don't know anything about rigging and the regulations that go with it, (nor are they covered by such regulations). So unless you want to ban all sales of such lifting devices and/or require training and licensure to even purchase and own such things, this will never be prevented.
@@ringding1000 I think informing him of the risks is a good alternative to that, which is what they did
Nice Pulp Fiction throwback.
You can order refill for the bambulab spools, it's cheaper than normally
PET bottles ofc!!! :D these take the most amount of space in a regular household.
i just saw the lizzard doggo in the background. good to know that you like satisfactory
trash printing all kinds of containers and lids would be a nice thing, or graphene infused material
nice editing and filming, and now you have a setup straight out of everyones early 3d printing dreams
I think the really interesting part of extruding your own filament is the potential for creating custom blends. I wonder how you would get on with your virgin abs with some added chopped carbon fibre or glass fibre?
I don't have a filament extruder, but I still shred my failed prints. The failed prints are used as ballast for situations where I need the weight but not the strength. (think paperweights and stands)
I try to buy refill / spool-less filament. I then print the spools I need and reuse them as often as possible. (3D printed spools do break down after a lot of uses)
I just use my old spools to hold custom multi color filaments and sometimes to transfer filament to from messed up cardboard ones.
I wonder about how efficiently you are actually drying out your ground plastic. It seems to me that simply putting the ground plastic in a glass tray and then immersing it into a hot air bath drying box won't encourage the moisture from the middle and bottom of the grinds to escape. As a first step, maybe a fine mesh sifting sieve with a PC fan under it inside the dry box would help encourage an exchange of the warm moist air within the volume of the grinds with the warm dry air of the hot air bath. May have to play with the speed of the fan and the distance between the fan and the bottom of the sieve to get some airflow (doesn't need to be much) through the volume of the grinds without blowing the grinds everywhere.
What I use for drying loose desiccant beads in my food dehydrator that I use for filament drying (I don't use for food) is a 6" round 40 Mesh sifter for baking (I also don't use for food). A quick look through Amazon and I see up to 12" diameter, similarly mesh sized.
I would love to see a continuation of this filament extruder for specialty need filaments which are either expensive or difficult to source. Say, flame retardant nylon or similar!
LIZZARDDOGGOOOOOOO!!!!! 🙂
I bougth the build gun electronics and plan to print the build gun.
Spools ought to be made with re-inforced cardboard, and a removable plastic ring insert so ragged edges and rough surfaces don't hold anything up. At least if the cardboard is binned it'll decompose or cook nicely.
Contamination is a big problem when you need the result to melt through a 0.4mm nozzle. Flat sheets for CNC are a more realistic target for recycling.
Do the materials have a different density? If so, you could separate them submerging it in a particular dense liquid. Sink vs. float.
They sell you a huge grinder that generates microplastics when all they needed to do was have a pre-heat chamber to make your source material able to blend together. The auger that feeds the extrusion can be preceded by a mixing system using arms or motion, etc...but grinding doesn't need to happen, I guess they'd have to include a precision controller and more sensors but it would take up far less space, make far less impact on environment, be much less expensive, and a huge piece of equipment made by consuming and/or contaminating a lot of natural resources completely avoided.
The extrusion is working okay, though. That in itself is pretty impressive!
But careful - if you turn all your spools into filament, you'll have to print a spool to keep it on.
There should be a use to weak filament like house insulation, or bricks/sheets made for just house insulation.
Just think of something to use weak materials for that would help.
Can you do a material mix of something flexible and something rigid?
I've personally tested to mix some PETG and TPC (and some ABS and PA contamination) with my 3devo Precision 350 extruder. The resulting diameter was all over the place and required some re-cutting by hand to get it down to size. The mix itself is very durable and slightly flexible with an insanely good print bed adhesion, strong enough to rip out pieces of glass as the printbed cools.
It is possible, but not really worth it in my opinion
Perhaps you could try making your own wood, glitter or even metal filament? By metal I mean the types that have some amount of metal (dust/flakes?) mixed in for a metallic look.
HDPE was used as a purge material, but I wonder how it could work as a printed material? (Or a blend with HDPE?) it’s very common as a household plastic. I think it would work well as a material for containers or working pets like gears or cams.
Hot Glue filament Would be really cool!
Could you use the difference in density of PLA and ABS to separate the ABS from the PLA. Perhaps using a salt water solution with a density of about 1.1g/cc so that the ABS will float and the PLA will sink?
I accidentally bought some recycled fillament tried printing and it was garbage, all bendy and not stiff. I wish it would work better.
PP is the most difficult to print material I have ever tried. It warps so badly that it pulls the PP tape used to make it stick. I'd be curious to try some PP blends that would retain its bending properties and reduce the warp (or make it stick to PEI). One thing I'd try would be to add some virgin ABS to it (hopefully without causing the issues you faced).
Another idea would be to try creating a flexible blend.
Now that you’ve played with the 3devo, I’d love to hear your insights after another inspection of industrial grade compounders! As you pointed out, it’s tough to get a good mix with shredded plastic in such a small extrusion system like the one in the video. Reach out to me if you need access to a research compounder!