This is all interesting stuff. I think that there are many challenges here and it’s best to separate out the issues. Firstly, I think we need to decouple shredding from extruding.
Shredding has its advantages, which are mainly environmental, rather than financial. Realistically, I think a semi-centralised shredding function is most practical.
Extruding is financially very attractive. As Marius says, granulated plastic is cheaper than filament, except that the actual difference in cost is enormous. I heard that the World market for filament is less than 100 Tonnes. The market for granulated plastic is in the Millions of Tonnes per year so the potential difference is very high - think 1-2 Cents per kilo for granulated plastic. Now THAT concentrates the mind!
There are one or two granule-fed print heads surfacing. TBH, I think it’s only a matter of time before the technical challenges are met. Perhaps it’s been done already.
most of those machines don’t have a closed loop control of the filament… What they all lack mostly are a sensor that measures the filament width and then adjusts according to that.
and then you simply adjust the speed of the puller so the diameter matches… it will take a bit for the width to be stable, but once you reach that stage you simple cut the filament and the first bit you can cut in small bits and melt them again
I am American I just sometimes don’t write a word down correctly. And you can I have chemists around me and you can make a polymer that can turn a polymer into another polymer. I don’t really care what you think about me and my words, but you can manufacture the spool into a polymer and then manufacture some kind of plastic and It wold really help everywhere to go green.
Kevparang, the topic is about what you do with your empty spools, please explain me how you turn a spool (which is allready a polymer, to be specific it is Polycarbonate) into any other polymer like ABS or PLA just by blending it with some other polymers.
The key discussion in this topic is how to recycle spools. Is there a method with that you produced filament or something similar just by using a spool as input material ?
I have no problem with it, if you do not want to explain your words so that I or others can understand them but i guess it would help everyone if you make clear what you want to say and how that benefits others.
We are in the middle of setting up a spool recycling program here in the UK. We have already connected to a few retailers. The basic idea is, you send us your box of empty spools and we purchase them off you…
For those outside the UK, unfortunately, at this present moment we cannot pay for postage from outside the UK, however we will still credit your account with a set amount per spool.
The spools will be turned in to circular products and reused rather than sent to landfill. We to vet members wishing to join the program and there must be a set of spools with a minimum amount in the package to make it worth while. Nether the less…
Interested? Like to find out more? We are especially interested in Makerhubs and Retailers specialising in 3D Printing tech joining our program.
At $2.99 they hang around for a while - slow sell.
At $1.99 they move quicker.
Have a great day.
If there were a supplier that offered $2 return off next purchase I’d happily use it.
(I have 9 machines running 24/7 and go thru a lot of filament)
Good solution would be to use them again for the reason they where created I think. This means no resources are needed. Many people forget that recycling is a process that needs resources. What would you think if you new that your spools are being recycled using electricity power produced by coals?
Return programs set up by the producers of filament would also be a good solution.
I am building my own filament extruder and keep my spools to make new ones with the 10kg pellets I have here.
of course if filament extruders would be available to anyone, then even shipping back empty spools would not be needed anymore as everybody could reuse their own empty spools!
