Would You be Interested in a Plastic Shredder to Recycle Plastics for 3D Printing?

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Originally Posted by richardphat

Because you would barely help the environment, and you will spent an ammount of energy to process it. That energy isn't free and they come from coil/fuel power plant most of the time. Pollution will be made into another form.

On top of that, you would have to separate the plastic which takes times and ressource, because people tend to mix stupid stuff when they are told otherwise, as an industrial perspective.

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The amount of energy to power a plastic shredder will more then be made up when you can grind 50 lbs of PLA into pellets to be used again. I havent done the math, but a very slow high torque motor, assuming thats what is being used to shred the stuff, will not need that much electricity.

Sorting is part of what I do anyway when prints fail. Would you rather people throw away the plastic and just buy new rolls? How about shipping those rolls to your house? And where is the failed print going to go? Into the ocean probably. Pick your poison, I pick to recycle the plastic because I am a little optimistic.
As 3D printing emerges more and more, there will be tons more plastic being thrown out, and that is more wasteful then the 60watts of electricity used to grind the plastic back into pellets. Just my thoughts.

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Originally Posted by LambdaFF

My point exactly : seen the price tag on that one ?

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Yes. About the cost of 10-20 spools of filament.

Its a tool. You have to weigh the cost of the tool against what it produces.

Lets look at it from another similar point of view....
http://3dprintboard.com/attachment.p...tid=5395&stc=1== $1100
Caliber Conversion for 9mm == $300
Throw in another $200 for various tools.

So, investment in hardware runs about $1600.

All that to produce this:
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...TmhIc2h98DYh9g

Average price for those is $18 for a box of 50 off the shelf making each one cost about 36c each. 36c each time I pull the trigger.

Its ok, its worth it because I get quality time with my granddaughters..
http://cdn.ipernity.com/133/34/11/23...7cb7d0.500.jpg

And it makes her smile and be happy...
http://cdn.ipernity.com/133/33/13/23...994362.500.jpg
(Yes, she shot that)

Now, remember all that equipment? Yea, it lets me load the SAME round with better accuracy and precisely loaded for MY gun and it lets me do it for 15c a round instead of 36c. So, every IDPA shoot I go to with my granddaughter burns about 400rds between the two of us, thats $144 of retail ammo. The same match only costs me $60 with MY ammo saving my $84 every weekend. And using that press, I can churn out 400 per hour. So you do the math whether the $1600 price tag was worth it. My math says that in 20 weekends the hardware is paid for, less than half a year.

Now you want to talk expensive?
http://cdn.ipernity.com/116/55/59/35...bb02c1.500.jpg

Thats a $6000 rifle (without the scope) and my granddaughter shooting it. It shoots ammo that runs $2.40 per round. Each trigger pull costs $2.40. Reloading only costs me $0.55 each round. So tell me if you think reloading saves money even with the cost.

So, lets draw from that for filament. Raw filament costs money. And some of that turns into scrap failed prints, rafts, supports, brims, etc. I have a choice, I can contribute to the plastic disposal problem and piss money down the drain by simply throwing it in the trash or I can spend some money, like in reloading, and convert that waste into usable materials.

And I am fully aware that I wont be producing a product as good as I can buy unlike in reloading where I can produce a superior product. I know its not going to be the best product unless I drop thousands (very plural) which I am not willing to do nor do I have the space. But for a modest investment (pretty close to the cost of the reloading rig) of a shredder and extruder I can produce a material that will be perfectly suitable for infill or rapid prototypes for testing prior to using virgin filament. I am also aware that filament use will be substantially less than round use from reloading and thus take far longer to recoop the investment.

A side benefit is that I can produce my own colors from raw virgin ABS pellets as well. So there is that aspect as well. It will provide me the ability to do something that would cost a hell of a lot of money to get MakerGeeks or MatterHackers to custom produce a color to my specs.

An additional benefit is being able to utilize totally free PET, ABS and HDPE as well as PP from waste materials used every day around the house. Soda and juice bottles. Shampoo bottles. Old abs toys. Food containers. Its free plastic. And without recycling into filament it all would be guaranteed to go out in the garbage. Some would end in landfill while others would be shipped to china as scrap.

So, is it cheap to recycle the spent plastic and turn it back into filament? No. Never said it would be. But if spools average $35, then at 40 spools its paid for. Thats a LOOOOONG time of printing. Likely years for me. So thats why I have not pulled the trigger yet. If I was a business doing prints and wanted quick cheap material for fill and test prings where I might have several printers going 24/7. Yes, it makes sense. As an individual running only one printer..no its not worth it. Yet. My volume would have to go way up or the equipment price would have to come way down.

I would totally be interested, if the price point was very reasonable and the quality would be good enough to run through a printer. That's just not out yet. Quality, maybe. Price point, no.

Even if it was something that was very slow, but could still eventually turn your old scrap back into usable filament. I'm sure one day it will be there. Not sure when.

I just watched a documentary on Netflix about all the plastic floating around in the ocean's and such. Just imagine when 3D printer's are as common as a regular printer.

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Originally Posted by Bassna

I would totally be interested, if the price point was very reasonable and the quality would be good enough to run through a printer. That's just not out yet. Quality, maybe. Price point, no.

Even if it was something that was very slow, but could still eventually turn your old scrap back into usable filament. I'm sure one day it will be there. Not sure when.

I just watched a documentary on Netflix about all the plastic floating around in the ocean's and such. Just imagine when 3D printer's are as common as a regular printer.

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Rofl! I think I just watched the same thing. Plastic Paradise or something like that? Totally not what I expected it to be.

I am not a treehugger by any stretch but I don't go out of my way to pollute either. The documentary was rather revealing about the problem and the lack of a solution for it.

I think that 3D printing will be a genesis for a change. Not in a bad way either. See, here is my thinking on this. Are we, as 3D enthusiasts, going to sit down and design a thing. Maybe take hours to develop it. Then spend hours waiting for our printer to print it. Then finally use it once and then throw it out the car window? I think not. We have personal time and value invested in that item and we are unlikely to go through the motions for a simple one use item. We are going to make something we can continue to use and reuse over time.

Hopefully these multi-use items will replace the single use items we consume and opt to dispose of now.

Additionally, if we can leverage spent items (single use or not) to produce supplies for the printers, then I see that as a contribution to the solution. We are then at that point, removing waste from the output stream instead of generating it.

We can do that now with the available equipment. Our problem is the same one the silly Prius has. Its more expensive and the manufacturing burden is higher than any potential cost or environmental savings it can provide. People driving Prius's are completely delusional if they think they are saving money or the planet if thats the sole reason for their car. The same holds true of the current crop of shredders and extruders. They are simply too expensive to be actually worth it. ROI in terms of a decade is completely unreasonable for an individual to absorb. Until the shredders and filament extruders become financially viable, only the rare few are going to use them.

When a shredder/extruder combo is down to $300-$500 then the typical 3D print enthusiast can and probably would look at it as a serious solution.