3 ms·

A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

69 points by sudo_cowsay 3mo ago

o0void0o 3mo ago
next week my kids arts and crafts project is top news.
- thih9 3mo ago
  Share it now; I'm sure many people (with me included) would find it interesting, just like this post.
bogometer 3mo ago
bravo! so much better than a landfill
atonse 3mo ago
The only comforting thing to me about the waste (apart from the fact that our personal 3d printer waste is a margin of error compared to industrial waste so honestly, just don’t worry about it), is that at least PLA is biodegradable.
- ofrzeta 3mo ago
  "the term biodegradable used by manufacturers and distributors can be somewhat misleading for the final consumer" https://www.beease.com.hk/post/how-long-does-pla-take-to-decompose-is-pla-making-the-plastic-crisis-worse https://www.beease.com.hk/post/how-long-does-pla-take-to-dec...
  - atonse 3mo ago
    Interesting. I will do more research on this, thanks. But at the end of the day, even though it's tough for us to see the PLA poop, etc from our prints (I still generally don't like it), my point is that hobbyist plastic waste is basically negligible and making nearly zero difference. I don't want people to see plastic waste from 3D printing and be discouraged to try it out as a hobby. I just got my first 3d printer 6 months ago (and I did all this biodegradable research mostly so my wife would feel comfortable with it). But the benefits of rewiring your brain in a manufacturing mindset, having the ability to create things, solve custom problems, etc, far outweigh the negligible (in the grand scheme of things) amount of waste compared to all the other plastic shit (toys, etc) the masses buy on amazon. That was my main point. But it's good to know that it could still take 80 years, and is not as quickly biodegradable as originally thought.
    - drupe 3mo ago
      Have you tried PHA? Supposedly it's truly biodegradable and a viable alternative to PLA in many cases.
  - cyberax 3mo ago
    This is also misleading. PLA plastic degrades slowly in the environment because it's highly crystalline and mechanically robust. But once it's fragmented, it's rapidly degraded. So it doesn't contribute to persistent microplastics. It also does not take 80 years in normal environmnets.
    - ofrzeta 3mo ago
      Well, my source (quoting some "Federal Environment Agency") says it does contribute to microplastics. Some googling seems to confirm this.
      - cyberax 3mo ago
        It depends on what you mean by "contribute". Multiple studies put half-life of PLA microplastics at a range between weeks to a month (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749124017536 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697... ), so they can't create a persistent hazard.
      - vablings 3mo ago
        It is likely a fraction of a fraction of an already small fraction. Textiles, tires and food packaging are the biggest contributors. It has yet to be proven that microplastics are directly linked to any harm, it is mostly unknown. If you care about that kind of stuff the best thing you could do is stop driving.
esquire_900 3mo ago
So the author recycled 10 pounds of plastic, but used 8.5 pounds of glue to do so (184 sticks at 0.74 oz which seems to be average for glue sticks). Cool project, but that ratio seems very ineffective. Especially since there is a realistic chance this ends up in landfill within some decades anyway.
- chneu 3mo ago
  Honestly wtf does the glue matter when people are going through plastic like it's nothing? Bringing up the glue is such a weird nitpick.
  - ofrzeta 3mo ago
    When the ratio is almost 1:1 it is a bit more than a nit.
  - isoprophlex 3mo ago
    Do nothing: 10 pounds of filament poop has go to the landfill. Do this thing: 10 pounds of filament poop still exists, + 8 pounds of glue sticks (which is basically a thermoplastic) used, to create something that's eventually going to end up in a landfill. Are you being deliberately obtuse? Recycling or reuse is not as useful as just not creating waste in the first place.
    - sudo_cowsay 3mo ago
      So... don't 3D print anything?
      - tonyedgecombe 3mo ago
        Reduce, reuse, recycle.
    - rz2k 3mo ago
      Maybe it looks more amazing in person than in pictures. If not, and the point is a message about waste, then the 80% increase could be cast as part of the message. Let’s say every month the artist repurposes the last pile of plastic with more glue. At the end of one year, the 10lbs would turn into 1100lbs. At the end of two years the original 10lbs would have turned into 1.3 million lbs of plastic waste. Surely that would frame a very powerful message about plastic waste and green washing misleading public policy.
voidUpdate 3mo ago
It's really annoying to me that shredders and filament makers are so expensive. I probably generate less waste than average from my printer, but it still pains me to have to just throw it away because I can't do anything productive with it
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago
  If you heated with wood you could just burn it (and a whole lot of other things). Obviously not ideal above a certain population density...
- t-3 3mo ago
  A filament extruder is essentially an injection molding extruder head without the press and mold - it's pretty advanced technology that requires integrating thermal design, mechanical components, and precise electronic monitoring and control. To get anything close to consistent output you're probably going to need a lot of special cutting and extrusion screws and probably some kind of additional pressurization system, and then the user still has to be disciplined about sorting and cleaning their plastics to get a probably mediocre output. Something like: https://www.instructables.com/Recycled-PLA-Sheets-From-3D-Printer-Waste/ https://www.instructables.com/Recycled-PLA-Sheets-From-3D-Pr... might be a more practical recycling paradigm for 3D printer waste.
repeekad 3mo ago
Why is the primary image blurry on mobile but high res if I rotate my phone horizontal?...
- abanana 3mo ago
  I took a quick look because that sounds odd. They've made a mess of the article's image sizing - only 270px wide if the viewport is <768px. (That top image is 1024px wide on desktop.) There's so much wrong with that decision, regardless of the huge difference between 270 and 768, e.g. apparently not being aware of hardware pixel density on smartphones.
thih9 3mo ago
I guess this is meaningful recycling also because it occupied the author. Otherwise the author would have started a different project and likely would have consumed more material. Sibling comments focus on the end result and that it might end up in trash - but that was always the plan.
segh 3mo ago
Does no one else notice the LLM-speak tone of this article? Does no one else mind?
__MatrixMan__ 3mo ago
Using the prints themselves as glue rather than buying glue for them would make this a more interesting form of recycling. I wonder if you could make a large hand-driven low-resolution 3d printer which, rather than running on filament, had a hopper that you fill with failed prints. Really just a giant hot glue gun.
lardosaurusrex 3mo ago
>generating an ima-- barf vomit even.
joshmarlow 3mo ago
A couple of years ago I listened to a Lex Fridman podcast with a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. I don't know the status of it, but the researcher spoke about how people in developing countries were experimenting with using local resources as 3D printer feedstock - things like ground-up sea shells - as a way of using local supply lines. One of the most interesting things he said was that the current waste from 3D printing (and other technology) is really a sign of technical immaturity; nature repurposes everything - there is no trash in an ecosystem, only food for something else. Maybe we'll eventually learn to build infrastructure like that.
is_true 3mo ago
Is this just delayed trash? At some point someone will throw it out. It would be great to be able to create "art" and add something that degrades it.
- syntheticnature 3mo ago
  In the end everything is delayed trash. Some trash is recyclable/compostable/etc.
bdcravens 3mo ago
I save all waste from 3d printing with good intentions. I did back the Creality shredder and filament maker that hasn't shipped yet, but I'm optimistic. (https://crowdfunding.creality.com/ https://crowdfunding.creality.com/) I also bought a pellet extruder kit, which can use shredded PLA waste, but haven't gotten around to putting it on a printer. (https://greenboy3d.de/ https://greenboy3d.de/) I've had pretty good luck taking waste and melting it into silicone molds. Doable with a cheap toaster oven and purge waste and other scraps (though you need to break down larger waste) For those who want to recycle filament without doing the work themselves, this person has such a project (and maybe there are others out there): https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/ https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/
gia_ferrari 3mo ago
For most people, waste -> filament recycling is a red herring (cost and time). Happy to see people thinking more laterally. I use an old toaster oven ($5 used) to fabricate round stock (fill old aluminum drink cans with waste, melt it down) and sheet stock (crush the melt between flat surfaces). I then use this material for all sorts of things (it makes beautiful marbled vases on the lathe, for example). There's almost zero net waste in this process (I recycle the cans). More uses I have in mind: - PLA drift sleeves for go karts (they're typically ABS, which, if you care about plastic in the environment, is a laughably bad choice for something which is intended to be ground to a fine powder in use) - Stool (melt plastic into shallow cylindrical mold, push legs into melt) - Decorative trim/picture frames (need a profiled router bit) etc etc Check Brothers Make on YT, they are the source of my inspiration.

69 points by sudo_cowsay 3mo ago

o0void0o 3mo ago

next week my kids arts and crafts project is top news.

thih9 3mo ago
Share it now; I'm sure many people (with me included) would find it interesting, just like this post.

bogometer 3mo ago

bravo! so much better than a landfill

atonse 3mo ago

The only comforting thing to me about the waste (apart from the fact that our personal 3d printer waste is a margin of error compared to industrial waste so honestly, just don’t worry about it), is that at least PLA is biodegradable.

ofrzeta 3mo ago
"the term biodegradable used by manufacturers and distributors can be somewhat misleading for the final consumer" https://www.beease.com.hk/post/how-long-does-pla-take-to-decompose-is-pla-making-the-plastic-crisis-worse https://www.beease.com.hk/post/how-long-does-pla-take-to-dec...
- atonse 3mo ago
  Interesting. I will do more research on this, thanks. But at the end of the day, even though it's tough for us to see the PLA poop, etc from our prints (I still generally don't like it), my point is that hobbyist plastic waste is basically negligible and making nearly zero difference. I don't want people to see plastic waste from 3D printing and be discouraged to try it out as a hobby. I just got my first 3d printer 6 months ago (and I did all this biodegradable research mostly so my wife would feel comfortable with it). But the benefits of rewiring your brain in a manufacturing mindset, having the ability to create things, solve custom problems, etc, far outweigh the negligible (in the grand scheme of things) amount of waste compared to all the other plastic shit (toys, etc) the masses buy on amazon. That was my main point. But it's good to know that it could still take 80 years, and is not as quickly biodegradable as originally thought.
  - drupe 3mo ago
    Have you tried PHA? Supposedly it's truly biodegradable and a viable alternative to PLA in many cases.
- cyberax 3mo ago
  This is also misleading. PLA plastic degrades slowly in the environment because it's highly crystalline and mechanically robust. But once it's fragmented, it's rapidly degraded. So it doesn't contribute to persistent microplastics. It also does not take 80 years in normal environmnets.
  - ofrzeta 3mo ago
    Well, my source (quoting some "Federal Environment Agency") says it does contribute to microplastics. Some googling seems to confirm this.
    - cyberax 3mo ago
      It depends on what you mean by "contribute". Multiple studies put half-life of PLA microplastics at a range between weeks to a month (e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749124017536 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697... ), so they can't create a persistent hazard.
    - vablings 3mo ago
      It is likely a fraction of a fraction of an already small fraction. Textiles, tires and food packaging are the biggest contributors. It has yet to be proven that microplastics are directly linked to any harm, it is mostly unknown. If you care about that kind of stuff the best thing you could do is stop driving.

esquire_900 3mo ago

So the author recycled 10 pounds of plastic, but used 8.5 pounds of glue to do so (184 sticks at 0.74 oz which seems to be average for glue sticks). Cool project, but that ratio seems very ineffective. Especially since there is a realistic chance this ends up in landfill within some decades anyway.

chneu 3mo ago
Honestly wtf does the glue matter when people are going through plastic like it's nothing? Bringing up the glue is such a weird nitpick.
- ofrzeta 3mo ago
  When the ratio is almost 1:1 it is a bit more than a nit.
- isoprophlex 3mo ago
  Do nothing: 10 pounds of filament poop has go to the landfill. Do this thing: 10 pounds of filament poop still exists, + 8 pounds of glue sticks (which is basically a thermoplastic) used, to create something that's eventually going to end up in a landfill. Are you being deliberately obtuse? Recycling or reuse is not as useful as just not creating waste in the first place.
  - sudo_cowsay 3mo ago
    So... don't 3D print anything?
    - tonyedgecombe 3mo ago
      Reduce, reuse, recycle.
  - rz2k 3mo ago
    Maybe it looks more amazing in person than in pictures. If not, and the point is a message about waste, then the 80% increase could be cast as part of the message. Let’s say every month the artist repurposes the last pile of plastic with more glue. At the end of one year, the 10lbs would turn into 1100lbs. At the end of two years the original 10lbs would have turned into 1.3 million lbs of plastic waste. Surely that would frame a very powerful message about plastic waste and green washing misleading public policy.

voidUpdate 3mo ago

It's really annoying to me that shredders and filament makers are so expensive. I probably generate less waste than average from my printer, but it still pains me to have to just throw it away because I can't do anything productive with it

cucumber3732842 3mo ago
If you heated with wood you could just burn it (and a whole lot of other things). Obviously not ideal above a certain population density...
t-3 3mo ago
A filament extruder is essentially an injection molding extruder head without the press and mold - it's pretty advanced technology that requires integrating thermal design, mechanical components, and precise electronic monitoring and control. To get anything close to consistent output you're probably going to need a lot of special cutting and extrusion screws and probably some kind of additional pressurization system, and then the user still has to be disciplined about sorting and cleaning their plastics to get a probably mediocre output. Something like: https://www.instructables.com/Recycled-PLA-Sheets-From-3D-Printer-Waste/ https://www.instructables.com/Recycled-PLA-Sheets-From-3D-Pr... might be a more practical recycling paradigm for 3D printer waste.

repeekad 3mo ago

Why is the primary image blurry on mobile but high res if I rotate my phone horizontal?...

abanana 3mo ago
I took a quick look because that sounds odd. They've made a mess of the article's image sizing - only 270px wide if the viewport is <768px. (That top image is 1024px wide on desktop.) There's so much wrong with that decision, regardless of the huge difference between 270 and 768, e.g. apparently not being aware of hardware pixel density on smartphones.

thih9 3mo ago

I guess this is meaningful recycling also because it occupied the author. Otherwise the author would have started a different project and likely would have consumed more material. Sibling comments focus on the end result and that it might end up in trash - but that was always the plan.

segh 3mo ago

Does no one else notice the LLM-speak tone of this article? Does no one else mind?

__MatrixMan__ 3mo ago

Using the prints themselves as glue rather than buying glue for them would make this a more interesting form of recycling. I wonder if you could make a large hand-driven low-resolution 3d printer which, rather than running on filament, had a hopper that you fill with failed prints. Really just a giant hot glue gun.

lardosaurusrex 3mo ago

>generating an ima-- barf vomit even.

joshmarlow 3mo ago

A couple of years ago I listened to a Lex Fridman podcast with a researcher at the MIT Media Lab. I don't know the status of it, but the researcher spoke about how people in developing countries were experimenting with using local resources as 3D printer feedstock - things like ground-up sea shells - as a way of using local supply lines. One of the most interesting things he said was that the current waste from 3D printing (and other technology) is really a sign of technical immaturity; nature repurposes everything - there is no trash in an ecosystem, only food for something else. Maybe we'll eventually learn to build infrastructure like that.

is_true 3mo ago

Is this just delayed trash? At some point someone will throw it out. It would be great to be able to create "art" and add something that degrades it.

syntheticnature 3mo ago
In the end everything is delayed trash. Some trash is recyclable/compostable/etc.

bdcravens 3mo ago

I save all waste from 3d printing with good intentions. I did back the Creality shredder and filament maker that hasn't shipped yet, but I'm optimistic. (https://crowdfunding.creality.com/ https://crowdfunding.creality.com/) I also bought a pellet extruder kit, which can use shredded PLA waste, but haven't gotten around to putting it on a printer. (https://greenboy3d.de/ https://greenboy3d.de/) I've had pretty good luck taking waste and melting it into silicone molds. Doable with a cheap toaster oven and purge waste and other scraps (though you need to break down larger waste) For those who want to recycle filament without doing the work themselves, this person has such a project (and maybe there are others out there): https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/ https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/

gia_ferrari 3mo ago

For most people, waste -> filament recycling is a red herring (cost and time). Happy to see people thinking more laterally. I use an old toaster oven ($5 used) to fabricate round stock (fill old aluminum drink cans with waste, melt it down) and sheet stock (crush the melt between flat surfaces). I then use this material for all sorts of things (it makes beautiful marbled vases on the lathe, for example). There's almost zero net waste in this process (I recycle the cans). More uses I have in mind: - PLA drift sleeves for go karts (they're typically ABS, which, if you care about plastic in the environment, is a laughably bad choice for something which is intended to be ground to a fine powder in use) - Stool (melt plastic into shallow cylindrical mold, push legs into melt) - Decorative trim/picture frames (need a profiled router bit) etc etc Check Brothers Make on YT, they are the source of my inspiration.