Is there a viable method or company to recycle failed prints or prototypes? I’ve been keeping all of my PETG stuff in a box, still a way to go before it’s full but was curious if anyone had any experience here whether it be something diy or shipping them to a company.
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I don’t think there are any USA-based companies or programs that are truly worth it. I feel like the extra carbon burned to ship the scraps to the ones that do exist does more harm to the planet than whatever we may gain from recycling the plastic.
And also the companies that sell recycled spools of plastic aren’t selling them for less than the price of virgin material, and those rolls will be a mishmash of plastics that aren’t the same quality. I can’t imagine that they will print well enough to do much other than prototype something with them.
It’s a shame, and I wish things were different. Your best bet is to recycle it at home, but that’s not cheap. Stefan at CNC Kitchen talks about and demonstrates this in his videos: https://www.cnckitchen.com/blog/recycling-old-3d-prints-into-new-filament
Add:north has a recycling program for PLA, but there’s a minimum of 5kg material + 5 filament spools. They also only accept their own PLA and there’s a large warning on the site that you can sabotage the recycling process if you mix in material from other manufacturers, since they will likely have different additives.
There’s also some more generic info which implies that you shouldn’t put PLA in the general plastics recycling (at least not in Sweden) since they can’t take care of it, and that PLA can contaminate other polymers that the recycling plant could otherwise handle.
To be honest: not really. The plastic can be recycled well enough, but there’s no good way to turn it back into a filament. There’s a few products out there that purport to, but none do a great job so far.
I’ve played with extruding my own- basically using chips from failed prints and heater cartridges in what’s basically a giant hot end.
The problem I have is consistency of diameter. my set up was a vertical extruder using 2” black pipe that had a melt zone of around six inches before hitting a tapered out brass “heat block” that came down to the 3mm nozzle.
It was almost impossible to maintain a consistent extrusion.
People are playing with it more now, so it’s possible I’m missing solutions
I have no doubt we’ll get there, and when we do I’ve got a big box of failed prints even sorted by color and material waiting for it.
Just saying we’re not there now.
There is no way for 99% of us to recycle any of our pla or petg. There are a few pilot programs one in Germany. They have you ship them your scrap and give you credit towards a recycled spool.
