Many plastic part manufacturers do reuse pre-consumer waste. They call it ‘regrind’. They grind the post-injected plastics and mix it with some new plastic.
If I remember right, many don’t want to use over 15% regrind because some of the properties of the plastics change. At least that is what I was told.
Can it be recycled indefinitely, I assume it is possible, but recycling it into lower ‘value’ products is better than not recycling.
‘Higher Value’ components I would consider items that have or need fine features (medical devices? small parts that must have known properties with little/no deviation from designed specifications, etc) ‘Lower Value’ could be use in non-critical applications, like pallets for transport, buckets, bricks, even furniture, even toys (Lego like?), or other things that do not REQUIRE a super fine fit and finish as many retail goods.
If large amounts of plastics are available cheaply enough, even recycling into ‘boards’, like 1x4inch (25×100 mm or so) and as long as is reasonable 2.5M (8 feet?) could be used in building decks or other items instead of wood.
A commercial venture near Corpus Christi, Texas makes these and they stand up to weather very well. But theirs is mainly new feed stock of plastic, not recycled.
Even recycled sheet goods (replace particle board or OSB) would be good and water resistant.
The problem with either of these is the size of the press and volume of plastic that is needed at temperature under pressure. But those are the kids of problems OpenSource initiatives solve so well!
Nice project you are working on @demarroquin. I guess the best way we could help out is by using the machines we are developing… Build a set of your own, currently we are working on a new version of the machines, this will work better and easier to build. I highly recommend to wait for them, and start working with plastic!
Hello, first of all I want to say that I really like the vision of the initiative. I think we all need to contribute on pushing toward developing a change in the way the industry and markets have oriented the consuming culture.
I am an architect from Guatemala, central america currently living in the US. I have been working in the private and public fields of architecture and land development. Also in social initiatives working for scavengers communities around the Guatemala City dump… We have been trying to develop a project with recycling plastic to make social housing… trying to find the most cost effective way of doing this, we were thinking in shredding the plastic, mixing with new resins and casting into molds… trying to avoid the heating and extrusion in the process.
This is a short video of the project:
The project seeks to develop community recycling centers that would provide an opportunity to this communities to work on the manufacturing of the construction system based on recycled plastic, and also other options of reusing this material… We are currently seeking contacts that would contribute to reaching this goal… If there is a way that you could help us with the idea, the shredding and casting process, crow funding, etc. If you are interested in knowing more of our initiative or visiting Guatemala let me know.
Your vision and dynamic approach on your projects is very inspiring…
Well, there is a possibility to use ” old” plastic in new prints: thats incorporate it in prints without melting the old plastic. Just use the filament as a glue to bond old plastic shrapnels together. You can think of a grinding apparatus to reduce the waist to little parts just big enoegh to add to the filament support ( the prints would be not as precise as regular prints but very usefull as a basic building material like fundament support for buildings) you only need to make a new form of filament that is flattened out, folded in the print print nozzle while at the same time the granulates are added. The ( lower) temperature filament will melt and bond the plastic granulates together with the filament and hey presto: a solution for getting rid of all kind of old plastic.
I have heaps of new ideas about 3d printing, im working at the moment to design a mass product 3d printing device to print huge amounts of objects instantely. Something what the industry is craving for since de development of 3d printing, those guys will not wait a hour or more a single object to print, and i found the solution, a obvious one, but no one has come up with this idea.