Print Your Own Filament

June 2, 2018 by Al Williams 25 Comments

Ask anyone with a 3D printer what they make the most. They’ll probably say “trash.” There are extra pieces, stuff that oozes out of the extruder, support material, parts that didn’t stick to the bed, or just parts that needed a little tweaking to get right. No matter what you do, you are going to wind up with a lot of scraps. It would be great if you could recycle all this, and [3D Printing Nerd] looks at the FelFil Evo Filament extruder that promises it can do just that. You can see the video below.

As you’d expect, the device is a motorized auger that extrudes filament through a hot end not dissimilar to your printer’s hot end. You have to run a bag of special material through it first to clean out the plastic path. After that, you can create filament from standard pellets or pieces of old plastic.

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Recycling And Casting Styrofoam With Solvents

May 1, 2018 by Lewin Day 31 Comments

Styrofoam is an ever-present waste material in modern society, being used to package everything from food to futons. It’s also not the easiest thing to deal with as a waste stream, either. With this in mind, [killbox] decided to have a go at recycling some styrofoam and putting it to better use.

The process starts by combining the EPS styrofoam with a solvent called D-limonene. This was specifically chosen due to its low toxicity and ease of use. The solvent liquifies the solid foam and the air bubbles are then allowed to make their way out of the solution. If it’s desired to create a coloured end product, it’s noted that this can be achieved by using other plastic items to provide colour at this stage, such as a red Solo cup.

It’s a slow process thanks to the choice of solvent, but it makes the process much more palatable to carry out in the average home lab setup. It’s possible to then perform casting operations or further work with the recovered material, which could have some interesting applications. It’s not the first plastics recycling project we’ve seen, either – check out this full setup.

[Thanks to Adric for the tip!]

Omaha Mini Maker Faire: Recycle All The Things

September 21, 2015 by Kristina Panos 13 Comments

A young maker named [Allie] drew a lot of attention at the 2nd annual Omaha Mini Maker Faire. Her booth was full of the various creations she has designed and built herself throughout the course of her short life. The biggest draw was her green design dollhouse, which focuses on environmentally friendly living. With the exception of the LEDs lighting the interior, some tape, and the requisite bit of hot glue, the entire structure and its contents were made from recycled materials.

The cardboard structure features a kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, and attic. Every piece of furniture and all the decorations are made from salvaged materials and packaging. One side of the roof holds a Snap Circuits board with a solar panel that powers some blue LEDs on the bedroom wall. [Allie] poured water down the other side of the roof to demonstrate the rain water collection system. The house’s rain barrel was made from a grated parmesan cheese container, which is perfectly designed for the airline tubing running into it from the recycled plastic guttering.

One of [Allie]’s other projects is a disagreeable owl fashioned from cardboard and a salvaged canister. Hidden away beneath the owl’s platform lies a simple gear system attached to a key on the front. Turning the key causes the owl’s head to swivel back and forth. We tried to make it spin all the way around, but the full range of motion is about 270 degrees. She also brought Mountain Dew, a hummingbird model made from a spark plug and other metal bits and bobs, including a pair of soda can wings.

In addition to her crafty skills, [Allie] is one well-spoken tween. She was more than happy to discuss her creations in detail to anyone who would listen, which included at least two local journalists and this impressed reporter. We learned through a bit of light research that a robot [Allie] built a few years ago inspired a British toy company to produce a new doll, the Robot Girl Lottie. She’s an inspiration to makers of all ages.

Recycled Factory Recycles Soda Bottles

September 2, 2015 by Dan Maloney 32 Comments

All over the world, mountains of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics are available for recycling in the form of soda bottles. And wherever there is enough cheap raw material, a market is sure to emerge for it. One brilliant inventor in Brazil has decided to capitalize on this market by building a magnificent factory to turn PET bottles into threads, rope, and other products.

Not a word of English is spoken in the video, and our Portuguese stops at obrigado, but you don’t really need to understand what’s being said to know what’s going on. Built from what looks to be the running gear of several bicycles and motors from various cast-off appliances, our nameless genius’ machines slit the PET bottles into fine threads, winds the thread onto spools, and braids the threads into heavier cords. We love the whole home-brew vibe of the machines; especially clever is the hacked desk calculator wired to a microswitch to count revolutions, and the salvaged auto jack used to build a press for forming the broom heads. All in all it’s a pretty amazing little factory cranking out useful products from zero-cost raw material.

We’d love to have more context about what’s being said in the video, so we’ll put this one out there for our Portuguese-speaking readers. Maybe we can get a partial translation in the comments? If so, then obrigado.

[Thanks W4RIS]

Super Simple Way To Re-use Plastic Bottles

June 20, 2014 by James Hobson 42 Comments

One of our tipsters just sent in a fascinatingly simple trick for re-using plastic bottles and turning them into useful plastic string. It’s in Russian but between the translated English subtitles and visual demonstration, it’s quite easy to understand.

YouTube DIY survivalist [Адвокат Егоров] makes a lot of really cool tutorial videos on anything from making knives, forming parts with heated PVC pipe, making rings out of coins, or even how to increase the yield of your potato farm (what?). In this one he shows us how to make a very simple jig using a small piece of aluminum extrusion which can slice a plastic bottle into long ribbons which can then be used for many different things.

The jig is adjustable and you can easily produce different widths of the ribbon with ease. Why would you want plastic ribbon? He uses it as twine for tying things (it’s very strong), as well as a grip for his tools — simply by wrapping it around the handle of something tightly, and then using a hot air gun, you can form it in place to create a plastic handle.

Again, the video is in Russian, but you can translate the subtitles — it kind of helps.

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Plastic Recycling At Home Promises A Revolution In Local Plastic Production

February 6, 2014 by James Hobson 72 Comments

[Dave Hakkens] graduated from the Design Academy of Eindhoven and decided to try his hand at making affordable plastic recycling machines.

His reasoning?

“We recycle just 10% [of waste plastic],” says Hakkens. “I wondered why we recycle so little so I investigated it. I went to all these companies and I realized that they don’t really want to use recycled plastic. So I wanted to make my own tools so I could use recycled plastic locally.”

Typical plastic production, like injection molding, uses very large and expensive machines — so expensive that most of the time, companies don’t want to risk using inferior recycled plastic, as it might damage the machine, or slow production time. Not convinced that recycled plastic is “inferior”, [Dave] has built his own line of machines capable of making recycled plastic parts.

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