3D Printing With Rice Might Be Nice

February 17, 2023 by Al Williams 36 Comments

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization recently pointed out a possible replacement for petrochemical-based polymers: rice resin. A Japanese company makes the material from inedible rice and also makes a biodegradable polymer known as Neoryza, which seems to contain some amount of rice as well. The rice resin contains 10 to 70% rice waste. You can see a video with English subtitles about the material below.

According to the video, there is plenty of waste rice. The resulting resin isn’t as toxic as petrochemical-based plastics and doesn’t consume food crops like other plant-based polymers. The video shows the rice resin being extruded like a normal polymer, so it should work like any other thermoplastic.

The video says the properties are similar to petrochemical-based plastics and no special equipment is required to handle it. They also claim that production is easier because, unlike other bioplastics, they don’t generate ethanol as the first part of the process. Waste rice should be cheap to obtain since it is essentially trash today. We aren’t sure what polymers are used in the 90 to 30% of the plastic that isn’t rice, but presumably, that is being brought in as a raw material.

We’ll be interested to see if anyone tries to make 3D printing filament from the stuff. We know that it is being used to replace polyethylene in furniture. We couldn’t help but think about using waste coffee grounds in 3D printing. If you want to compare this to PLA, we’ve talked quite a bit about the corny polymer.

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It’s Printable, It’s Programmable, It’s E. Coli

December 27, 2021 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

Well, whaddya know? It seems that E. coli, the bane of Romaine and spinach everywhere, has at least one practical use. Researchers at Harvard have created a kind of 3D-printable ink that is alive and made entirely of microbes produced by E. coli. Although this is not the first so-called living ink, it does hold the title of the first living ink that doesn’t need any additional polymers to provide structure.

Passing the pillar test up to 16mm. Image via Nature

Because the ink is alive, it is technically programmable in the sense that it can self-assemble proteins into nanofibers, and further assemble those into nanofiber networks that comprise hydrogels.

One of the researchers compared the ink to a seed, which has everything it needs to eventually grow into a glorious tree. In this way, the ink could be used as a renewable building material both on Earth and in space. Though the ink does not continue to grow after being printed, the resulting structure would be a living system that could theoretically heal itself.

The ink creation process begins when the researchers induce genetically-engineered bacteria cultures to grow the ink, which is also made of living cells. The ink is then harvested and becomes gelatin-like, holding its shape well enough to go through a 3D printer. It even passes the bridging test, supporting its own weight between pillars placed up to 16 mm apart. (We’d like to see a Benchie.)

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PLA: The Plastic That Grows

September 12, 2018 by Dan Maloney 67 Comments

If you’ve ever taken a coast-to-coast car trip across the United States, the one thing that’s sure to impress you is the mind-bogglingly immense amount of corn that we grow here. If you take the northern route — I’ve done it seven times, so I know it by heart — you’ll see almost nothing but corn from Ohio to Montana. The size of the fields is simply staggering, and you’re left wondering, “Do we really eat all this corn?”

The simple answer is no, we don’t. We grow way more corn than we can eat or, once turned into alcohol, drink. We do feed a lot to animals, many of which subsequently end up as burgers or pork chops. But even after all that, and after accounting for exports, we still have a heck of a lot of corn to put to work. There are lots of industrial uses for this surplus corn, though, and chances are pretty good you’ve got an ear or two worth coiled up next to your 3D-printer, in the form of polylactic acid, or PLA.

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