Here’s a pretty awesome idea: a team of students from the Victoria University of Wellington are working on a device to turn plastic trash into 3d printable plastic stock! Their website doesn’t seem to have much information about the process, but it appears that the process involves grinding up HDPE plastic, then pushing them into a heated pipe to create plastic cord.
MakerBot has revolutionized open source printing by bringing it straight to your home at an affordable cost. But what if you could also supply your own material for 3D printing by using recycled materials? The creators of this blog represent a group of students working to build an attachment for the MakeBot that will allow for just this.
Our RecycleBOT will grind and melt your milk bottles, then extrude them at an appropriate circumference for use with the Makerbot. Let’s get to printing.
[via makerbot]
4 thoughts on “Turning plastic trash into 3d printable material”
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Greetings,
For a very long time I have been desperately searching for a way to recycle plastic bottles at home. Machines for doing so do not exist. There are only expensive industrial grinders.
I hope they come up with a solution.
Thanks
It would be cool if someone could come up with a machine that could go out into that big junk heap in the pacific and harvest plastic from it. That could then be printed into new machines that could go out in the ocean…
…or if someone could come up with a combined grinder/printer that could be available at some kind of community center. Empty HDPE bottles could be dropped into it and turned into new useful stuff, for example plastic cutlery, cups and plates, collectible figures, iPhone-shells or rep rap parts.