We’ve all heard stories of the dangers of 3D printing, with fires from runaway hot ends or dodgy heated build plates being the main hazards. But what about the particulates? Can they actually…
You can get a pellet printer as a 2nd printer, either as a modification to an existing printer or as a complete printer, and then you don’t have to worry about most of the difficulties of recycling your waste. Just ensure your keep different types of plastic separate and stored in dry containers just like you would store filament. Then you just need a shredder, which are pretty cheap, and you can create small plastic chunks that will work in the place of pellets. This avoids most of the cost and difficulty associated with recycling, which largely comes from the extrusion process.
If you wind up needing to dry the pellets, its basically the same process as for filament and removing contaminants is less of a concern.
If you also do injection molding, the pellets can also be used for that.
While creating new filament on hobbyist scale is difficult, finding other ways to reuse the plastic at the hobbyist scale isn’t hard. Just requires being willing to do it and a little bit of creativity.
You can get a pellet printer as a 2nd printer, either as a modification to an existing printer or as a complete printer, and then you don’t have to worry about most of the difficulties of recycling your waste. Just ensure your keep different types of plastic separate and stored in dry containers just like you would store filament. Then you just need a shredder, which are pretty cheap, and you can create small plastic chunks that will work in the place of pellets. This avoids most of the cost and difficulty associated with recycling, which largely comes from the extrusion process.
If you wind up needing to dry the pellets, its basically the same process as for filament and removing contaminants is less of a concern.
If you also do injection molding, the pellets can also be used for that.
While creating new filament on hobbyist scale is difficult, finding other ways to reuse the plastic at the hobbyist scale isn’t hard. Just requires being willing to do it and a little bit of creativity.