Filament Waste - What to do with it?

[MessierGoal]

I've been doing a lot of larger products and there has been quite a bit of filament waste. I don't know what to do with it. I hate just throwing it out, but I can't come up with any other idea. What do you guys typically do with your wasted filament?

[3dkarma]

Save it so that when I eventually build a filament shredder and extruder I'll be able to recycle it. I have a large bucket I keep underneath the desk the printers are on - all the waste gets dumped into the bucket. It's overflowing at the moment.

[old man emu]

Filament waste is going to be a big, big problem for practitioners of 3D printing, especially hobbyists who see it as money going from wallet to scrap bin.

The simple answer is to obtain a filament recycler like Filabot (at $US1340 for a recyler and grinder), or to study various designs published on the Net and cobble something together from stuff scavenged from a junk yard. You just have to stockpile your filament waste and process it every now and then, like you do with aluminium cans.

(PS. I have no affiliation with the people who make the Filabot)

Old Man Emu

[RobH2]

I think there is going to be as big of a market for RepRap scrap reprocessors as for printers. If someone can come up with a sub-$500 scrap reprocessor they'll make a lot of cash. Should we start putting our heads together?

[3dkarma]

The Lyman filament extruder already takes us most of the way there. The original requires some woodwork, but there's a variant on Thingiverse that replaces the wood with printable parts.

The shredder is the difficult bit. It needs to be significantly more robust due to the forces involved. I believe the shredder teeth are the only specialist parts required, but I'm not sure about the cost of these.

In terms of what's already out there commercially available, the filastruder is $299.99, but you'll need a separate shredder. There's also the filamaker, which combines shredder and extruder, but I don't know if/when it will be available, or the eventual price point.

[Kryptonit3]

This guys shredder is awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmbzks1RXBM

[3dkarma]

This guys shredder is awesome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmbzks1RXBM

That's the Filamaker.

[CaptainObvious]

If it's PLA, bin it to save the environment!.

Hey, I'm not crazy...

Since it is made from vegetable matter, which in turn is "made" by extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, using and dumping PLA is in fact a form of Carbon Sequestration.
If all plastic in use today would be replaced with PLA or other plant based plastics and after use it would be buried (not recycled), according to some figures I just looked up it would reduce CO2 emissions (or rather offset them) by about 10 to 15%.

[RobH2]

Here is some interesting information. Bottom line, don't throw away any of your plastic if you can help it. We all need to find a way to recycle it.

PLA decomposes into water and carbon dioxide in 47 to 90 days -- four times faster than a PET-based bag floating in the ocean. But conditions have to be just right to achieve these kinds of results. PLA breaks down most efficiently in commercial composting facilities at high temperatures. When buried in a landfill, a plastic bag made from corn may remain intact just as long as a plastic bag made from oil or natural gas. Exerpt from: http://science.howstuffworks.com/sci...biodegrade.htm

Here is everything you ever wanted to know about ABS, and then a few thousand other things, but were afraid to ask. Caution, almost requires a PHD to interpret: http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire86/PDF/f86017.pdf the decomposition rate may be in here but I could not spot it.

I searched for an hour and could not find specifically how long ABS takes to degrade when buried or left floating in the ocean but here is a (truncated by me) familiar list from: http://des.nh.gov/organization/divis...ine_debris.pdf

One thing I did find is that plastics in the ocean do finally degrade but they don't decompose to inert molecules. They just get pulverized to micro plastics smaller than sand grains and then get ingested. They are always there and toxic to marine life.

Time it takes for garbage to decompose in the environment:

Glass Bottle.......................... 1 million years
Monofilament Fishing Line... 600 years
Plastic Beverage Bottles...... 450 years
Foamed Plastic Buoy......... 80 years
Foamed Plastic Cups......... 50 years
Nylon Fabric............30-40 years
Plastic Film Container........ 20-30 years
Plastic Bag......................... 10-20 years

I'm surprised to see that all those balls of fishing line you see in the lake will take 600 years to decompose.....wow!

Ok, that was sort of a downer. Let's go have a beer and figure out a cheap and easy extruder that we can all get our hands on tomorrow.