How to recycle 3d printer filament

How To Recycle 3D Printing Filament [Simple And Easy Guide]

Want to learn you can recycle your 3D printing filament and save a lot of money? This simple and easy guide shows you exactly how.

By Justin Evans

May 26, 2022

It’s often said that 3D printing is an expensive hobby to get into, but the majority of the long-term costs come from buying replacement filament. What if there was a way to decrease these costs and also decrease your environmental impact? Well, guess what? There is, and it’s easier than you might think.

Now, for the time being, there is a decent upfront cost. However, by recycling old filament, you’ll be able to reclaim any materials used in prints that didn’t come out just right. Think about how much filament you’ve wasted since you began. How much money could you have saved?

Table of ContentsShow

Equipment Needed

Before you can begin reclaiming old materials, you first need two pieces of equipment: a shredder and an extruder (this is different from the one on your 3D printer). Essentially, you feed your old print into the shredder, which, as you might expect, shreds it. Then, once you have your shards, these are fed into the extruder, which heats and shapes them into something you can actually use.

So what kind of upfront costs can you expect? Well, a cheap plastic shredder costs around $250 and a basic extruder is around $300. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even make your own. These DIY solutions cost less but are fairly labor-intensive to create. So, what should you keep in mind before recycling filament?

Rules For Recycling Filament

There are a few golden rules you must follow in order to produce usable filament. First and foremost, make sure you only shred one type of material at a time. Each filament type has diverse characteristics like melting temperature and viscosity. In fact, even combining different brands of the same material can have unexpected results.

By using only one type of filament, you lower the chance of creating unstable materials that fall apart when printing. That’s not all, though: you should also be aware that the recycled filament might have a different diameter. Really, this is all up to which type of extruder you buy.

If you find your new materials to be slightly larger or smaller, you’ll likely need to swap out your printer’s extruder for one that will accept the new filament. It’s crucial that you test each batch for quality though, as outlined in the graphic below.

Finally, in order to prolong the life of your shredder, don’t just throw large objects into it. Try breaking them down first – a hammer usually does the work perfectly. If you find the plastic chunks are still too large, there’s no shame in putting them through a second time.

Conclusion

While it might seem like a lot of work, recycling filament is a far more economical way to print in the long term. This is the main advantage 3D printing has over other kinds of manufacturing; if you mess up during carpentry work, your wood is likely useless. Not so with the filament.

By following our instructions, you can achieve the impossible – creating high-quality models with almost zero waste and minimal impact on the environment. If that’s not a sign that this technology is the way forward, we don’t know what is.

How To Print On TurboSquid

♻️ How can I recycle my 3D printing plastic?

If you’ve been in 3D printing for a while, you’ve certainly gone through all the phases of recycling 3D printing plastic. Over the years, a lot of new projects have appeared that promised to give us the ability to recycle the plastic from our failed prints, media, rafts or purge blocks but, to this day, which of these projects are still standing?

If you want to know the alternatives available in 2020 to recycle the 3D printed plastic, stick around, we’re getting started.

📖 What do you want to read?

What alternatives are there?

There are numerous ways in which we can recycle this plastic, so we are going to explain the main ones and some examples of each one of them so you can delve into the projects that catch your eye.

The two main alternatives we have are: to recycle the plastic from our prints to turn it back into usable material or to use it to make plastic objects using other technologies such as injection molding.

Converting 3D print remainders into new print material

If you want to turn the material left over from your 3D prints back into material you can print on, there are currently three ways to do it: create your own filament, use a special extruder that allows you to print directly using recycled plastic pieces, or buy filament rolls made from recycled material.

Create your own filament

To create your own filament using the remains of other 3D prints there are several machine projects known as filament extruders. Each of these machines works slightly differently, but basically they feed on crushed 3D print debris and melt it down, extruding new filament through a 1.75mm diameter nozzle.

Filastruder

Filastruder is a kit that you can buy for $299 in its most basic version. This product has been releasing new versions and improving for several years, so it is a quite refined equipment and one that can be expected not to give us many problems. If we want to coil this plastic we will also have to buy its filawinder accessory for 169 extra dollars.

Felfil Evo

Felfil Evo is a much more expensive but also more premium and open source kit. It is available in 3 different kits, a fully assembled and functional one for 719€, a kit for you to assemble for 599€, and a “barebone” kit that only contains the mechanical components but does not include chassis or electronics for 299€. This last option, in addition to the fact that it is open source, is an excellent choice for the more professional makers looking to create their own filament extruder adapted to the needs of their workshop.

They also have a premium pack with the assembled version that comes with a plastic coiling accessory for 1199€.

Filabot

Filabot is a brand with a line of products designed to create a complete filament coiling and manufacturing system. These equipments, even in their most basic version, are much more expensive than the previous ones, since they are thought for professionals and not for makers. All equipment comes pre-assembled and tested to ensure a quick and smooth start-up without unexpected complications

There are two product ranges, the Filabot ex2 and the Filabot ex6. The first is the simplest and most affordable, starting from $2699 for the extruder and $4559 for the complete kit including the coiler.

The second one is even more professional and starts at 9899 dollars for the extruder or 10899 dollars for the complete combo.

Buy recycled material

If this sounds a bit complicated to you (which it is) but you still want to contribute to the recycling of plastic for 3D printing, then you can buy filament that has been professionally manufactured using recycled material.

Some examples of filaments you can buy made from recycled material are 3RPLAfil or Sakata RE-850.

Directly extrude recycled material

An intermediate solution is to use special extruders that you can attach to your 3D printer to print directly using recycled print pieces, without having to go through extruding a new filament. In this field, Spain is the world leader, as a Spanish extruder is the best and most popular extruder of pellets and recycled plastic: the Mahor-xyz Pellet extruder.

This is actually an extruder-melter kit that is placed in our 3D printer replacing the traditional extruder and hotend. It is one of the best solutions, if not the best, as it allows direct extrusion of virtually any type of material from shredded failed prints or pellets that we buy made from recycled material. The list of materials includes: PLA, ABS, TPU, TPE, EVA, PC… In addition, we can incorporate additives such as carbon fiber, glass fiber or kevlar to improve the properties of the material.

In a future article we will talk at length about this project, as it is a true masterpiece of engineering that will delight the most professional makers in Bitfab.

Making plastic objects

An alternative option to give a second life to the leftovers of our 3D prints is to manufacture objects using techniques such as mold injection. In this respect there is an initiative that stands out: Precious Plastic.

Precious Plastic manufactures everyday objects such as chairs, benches, carabiners, coasters, socket covers or many other things from plastic left over from 3D printing processes.

In addition to these objects, they also sell kits with machinery so that you can recycle them yourself.

If you want to give a second life to the plastic you print but don’t want to use it to print more things, this is the option that suits you best.

Contact Bitfab

Recycling plastic from 3D printing is a very powerful application and Bitfab can also help you with it.

If you need advice on how to recycle your surplus material or you are thinking of starting a project using recycled plastic, do not hesitate to contact us.

Contact Bitfab

Recycling plastic for 3D printing, PET.

Reviews

Follow author

Don't want

The article refers to Re-fill (recycled PET plastic for 3D printing).

This time we're looking at converting plastic into 3D printing filament.

Recycling is not as easy as it seems, and many companies have tried before and now to start using recycled filament for their 3D printers. Anyone who has tried to make their own filament on a small scale will understand how difficult it is, even with newer plastic pellets.

Last year I was very lucky: I got 3DFilaprint and it was a big recycling project, it taught me that making quality filament is very, very difficult.

I produced several batches of recycled ABS for a local shop. I have even tried to recycle some polypropylene and PET, with limited success.

Of course, the easiest way is to use ready-made PET, PLA and WoodFill granules. Making my own colored WoodFill yarn was a lot of fun and exciting. Doing it professionally - for your home 3d printer, to make it from plastic scrap, having previously cleaned it, melted it and squeezed it out, is not at all an easy task.

I posted this photo of the failed print above - the print failed due to a mechanical printer error - it's not the fault of the poor quality filament.

I was very happy to win a Refil PET reel. It contains up to 90% recycled plastic bottles. The team has been working on this plastic for the last 3 years. How much you get is 750 grams of thread, while the total weight including packaging is about 900 grams. What it looks like -

I had a full roll of clear PET and a sample of black ABS filament, which is made from recycled car panels. PET is indeed very transparent. It's so transparent, in fact, that I'm even a little concerned that it's really recycled material and not new. I was expecting bubbles and maybe even a few slight color casts or a slight opacity.

PET plastic bottles and recycling symbol.

The most important aspect is dimensional accuracy. My spool was 1.75mm and I'm more picky about it than 2.85mm thread. I measured about 50 times at the beginning, middle and end. The whole spool was 1.76mm - almost negligible deviation. How do they print? I started printing at a normal PET temperature of 230 degrees C and printed a simple single layer vase for optical clarity testing.

Singvers classic bottle.

Printed in actual size - for comparison - glass on the left, PET on the middle and white PLA on the right. It was once a PET bottle, and now, after being recycled and 3D printed, it's a PET bottle again :) But printing at 230 is not very good for this particular type of PET material -

Bubbles as far as I can tell not moisture content. Lowering the print temperature corrects this issue.

You won't get sharp prints even with good PET, the layering process causes a slightly translucent final print.

I love all types of PET and use Taulman t-glass and ColorfabbXT regularly. In the image above, you can see the same print with these different PET materials.

You can print whatever you want with PET, although it will be very slow.

Follow author

Don't want

PET plastic recycling and how 3D printing can change the lives of each of us

Before we start, I draw your attention to the fact that several topics will be raised in the article, and for a convenient guide, I will indicate the name of the topics LARGE FONT)

WHERE IT ALL STARTED:

How can 3D printing change not only the lives of those around you, but also yours? Stupid question, but for me it is rather ironic.

It all started many years ago, when I became interested in tank modeling, while playing one well-known game, I accidentally stumbled upon the news about paper modeling, they offered to make a simple MC1 tank out of paper, I immediately liked the idea, because I liked to do it from childhood something with your own hands.

I won't go into details, but I can say that with time the quality of my work has increased, the paper hobby has ousted everything superfluous from my life, including computer games.

Such a hobby greatly developed thinking, ingenuity and fine motor skills, because it was necessary to create durable paper structures, carry out fine work with small details, and this is not quite the same as buying a ready-made assembly kit. (The big challenge was assembling Bismarck out of paper)

Everything about it was perfect, except for one BUT! This time, for 1 tank model, it took from 5 to 9 months, over the years, time became less and less, work, study, family .. And I really wanted to do what I loved.

I found out about 3D printing by chance and immediately the idea appeared that many components and assemblies of tanks can simply be printed, while eliminating the routine, especially for tracks and rollers, making them out of paper is still a pleasure.

An obsessive idea firmly settled in my soul and did not give me rest, but the high cost of the printer cooled my hot ardor. And yet, with confidence, I continued to monitor prices and the situation in general.

After a couple of years, the decisive moment arrived! I decided to buy, spending all the accumulated money! at that time, 22 thousand was a rather large amount for me and many others around me, so when I spent it on such a toy, many condemned me.

This miracle was printer Pryusha ah 4, at that time the top model, but now, of course, it's not the best option.

Printing did not work right away, it took a lot of time to set up, understand the operation of the printer, slicer, and upgrade it. He printed all sorts of little things that were not quite necessary, and then he completely cooled off.

A year later I was asked an important question - You bought a printer for a hobby, but you print anything, but not the target product, Why?

I answered that there are no ready-made models, and to create your own, you need knowledge of 3D modeling.

My opponent said that everything can be learned if you are busy doing what you like and made me promise to make at least one model.

More than one year has passed since then, a lot of effort has been invested, a lot of trial and error, experience gave an understanding of what and how to model, what and how to print better, here are a few examples of printing

And there was one nuance in this whole story, it was plastic. At some point it was expensive, after that I found a place to buy a cheap one.

But walking along the street, and seeing bottles everywhere, thoughts involuntarily began to appear that all the material was underfoot.

In addition, the environmental situation with plastic in our cities, and throughout the world, is quite terrible, which, accordingly, also influenced my idea.

There were attempts to create an extruder for plastic recycling, but the ideas were in vain, the implementation failed.

However, the idea of recycling PEK bottles seemed to me very simple and feasible in practice. As a result, it turned out that I was very mistaken about this.

RECYCLING OF PET BOTTLES (5L BAGS)

I will try to briefly and concisely describe the essence of the work process, there are a lot of articles on this topic, but there is one BUT !!! In my implementation, they unfortunately almost did not help!

The bottom line is that everyone in the examples of videos and articles printed well, but all my attempts failed ...

There were many reasons for printing failure: plug formation, nozzle clogging, under-extrusion - the printer simply could not push the PET filament or the feed gear simply slid along the bar.

In addition, the length of the rod is always limited, it is necessary to constantly change the filament, but this problem was also solved.

Let's not pull the printer by the bar and start in order:

PREPARATION OF THE BOTTLE

It is very difficult to find an ideally even bottle, and it is not necessary.

First of all, we need:

Plastic plug - we make a hole in it for the valve, the valve is sold at any tire shop or can be ordered on Aliexpress

http://alli. pub/5s0hyt

we get the following: bottle or vial with a cork. Do not forget to add a couple of drops of water to the bottle, then pump it up. You need to pump up quite a bit, without fanaticism, a bicycle pump can do just fine.

Next is the most dangerous and important moment

Our goal is to level the bottle and not to blow it up, there is no need for a lot of pressure!

We heat the bottle on a gas burner or with a building hair dryer (there are a lot of videos on YouTube on this topic, I advise you to read it), do not forget to scroll it, water drops will give steam, which will further expand the walls.

Do not forget about safety, goggles are required!! Breaking a bottle can burn, cotton itself is not very dangerous, but you can get scared from surprise (remove women, children, old people and a mentally unhealthy cat from the house).

Again!!!! our goal is to align, to align the bottle a little, and not to explode, so without fanaticism!

Let's skip the irony and get down to business. Here is a good example:

And now it’s already dangerous, the bottom of the bottle began to fall out, an early sign of a rupture, but this is not a 100% danger indicator, do not forget about the cork, it may also not withstand, especially for bottles, the walls of the cork are very thin there , strength is low!

After heating, immediately release the pressure, carefully press the valve, for example with a screwdriver, I warn you, a little steam will come out from there, take care of your eyes. And only after that we remove the cork.

Do not leave an inflated and heated bottle, after cooling it will collapse and lose its shape.

Well, we have passed the most dangerous section, let's move on! BOTTLE CUTTER

I must say right away that the bearing bottle cutter is by. Too confused, too complicated and incomprehensible, but the choice is yours.

Printing on a printer is also not an option! The PET tape will cut it like a knife through butter.

Our choice is only metal

or something similar

http://alli.pub/5s0i24

It's very easy to make, in the hardware store, buy a corner, M4 screws, nuts and washers for it. Well, do not forget about the clerical blade.

here is the result:

The number of washers adjusts the width of the PET strip, and the nuts clamp the knife blade. At the bottle, we cut off exactly the bottom, align it with scissors and make a small incision.

Slowly pull and cut, holding the bottle at an angle, keeping the width of the tape constant.

its width should be approximately 0.9 mm, but in the process of work you select individually.

The first time you most likely will not be able to cut as needed, be patient and bottles, everything will come with experience.

Here is the result:

AUTOMATIC FILAMING EXTRUDER

I will say right away that the engine, driver and generator are not the most important, I pulled the bar by hand, it is rather a moment of convenience and for the future. (links to relevant parts are below)

Most important node

example

https://youtu.be/BsdvdI-L3Vo

I think you recognized him, this is a fuser from a printer. We fix it on the corners, insert the heater.

http://alli.pub/5s0igw

I think they also recognized the nozzle, but it needs to be prepared.

At the exit, drill through a hole with a 1.7-2 mm drill (this will give about 1.7 bars at the exit) , but to a shallower depth of 3 mm.

And at the very entrance 4-5 mm, to a depth even less

As a result, we will get a hole in the form of a cone, this is necessary so that the PET tape is better and easier to roll into a rod, it is wide at the entrance, but moving along the nozzle, it begins to roll up due to the heat shrink and the tapered shape of the nozzle.

If you have a drill, then I advise you to slightly smooth out all the irregularities based on what we have drilled with a cone-shaped cutter.

The power supply controls the heating temperature. (blocks are just a super indispensable thing in the household, I advise you to take 2, 1-1 to adjust the heating of the nozzle, the 2nd will go to power the broach motor)

http://alli.pub/5s0ie6

We burn the end of the tape a little with a lighter, the tape will become stronger due to shrinkage, cut it with scissors and pull the rod at the exit with tweezers.

We pull manually or with the help of electronics, I’ll say right away that skill is needed here, it won’t work the first time

and here is the result

If you want to automate the work, then here are the necessary details:

Generator

http://alli.pub/5s0esv

TB6600 stepper motor driver

http://alli.pub/5s0i7k

EXTRUDER

What can I say, I tried the standard version, I tried the titanium extruder - and all in vain ... this does not mean that you will not succeed, it means that I very tired of dealing with the problem for 1 year and found the ideal.

Meet the perfect extruder that eliminated most of my problems! http://alli.pub/5s0i9w

Its advantage is that 2 gears rotate simultaneously and have notches, even a smooth and hard bar will not stand a chance. The same extruder is needed for pulling the filament, at the output the rod will turn out with notches, which will be well displayed during printing

FILEMENT TUBE

http://alli.pub/5s0f6v

The inner diameter must be as large as possible !!

In my case, the inner diameter is 3mm, the outer diameter is 4mm, otherwise the filament will get stuck, due to expansion and variable size

much more, as a result of which, when cooling, a cork forms in the fuser - as a result, a print failure

THERMAL BARRIER (THROAT)

must be taken as in example 1, with a through hole, for the reason described above,

Option 2 will not work - there will be a jam

RADIATOR

Here I advise you to take something larger, here is an example

http://alli. pub/5s0g80

If the heatsink is too small, there is a risk that there will be a filament crease as a result of overheating

COOLING

In my case with a large heatsink, cooling is not needed!

Explain:

The hot radiator dries the bar as it travels to the nozzle, in addition, the bar is already heated and easier to melt.

For the experiment, I decided to install a cooler and here the extruder clicks began, the printer did not have time to melt the bar, as a result - the bar was crumpled and printing failed.

In general - if you decide on cooling - take care of the possibility of its regulation!

NOZZLE

This is no less important moment!!!

We use any, but it needs to be drilled, as I described earlier, but you can immediately use a 3mm drill, not naturally through.

The bottom line is that the plastic will melt, as it were, in the nozzle chamber that you drill, and not in the thermal block, as it was provided for by the design, and there will be no plug during retraction, the molten mass will remain in the nozzle chamber.

PRINT SPEED AND PLASTIC FEED

Change the bar size from 1.7 to 1.4 or 1.5 in the slicer settings. This is due to the fact that the homemade bar inside will not be hollow, so its feed should be greater! Otherwise, the walls of the part will be thin.

The print speed, on the contrary, must be reduced, in addition, the print speed of the supports, and the fill must be equal to the print speed of the walls.

print example

https://youtu.be/jIWRY24LOf8

ALLOYING THE ROD INTO A SINGLE WHOLE

Experience and skill are needed here! Be patient !

Tried a lot of things, all without success. I give you a working method right away

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-nrcfdk44Y

We set it on fire and melt it until it burns, carefully, I got a serious burn!

We extinguish, connect, blow (or better with some water).

I cut off the excess with wire cutters and clean it with sandpaper to the ideal.

Gently twist into a coil, the connection is not perfect and is destroyed when pressed hard, but in general it keeps its shape.

Total

I consider this processing method to be one of the best. Yes, it is not perfect, it is a little confused, there are flaws, not the whole bottle is recycled. But still, as an initial start, this method can and should be applied, just imagine how you can reduce the amount of plastic in the environment if every second person who has a printer uses a similar approach.

Here is an example of printing and here is a preview of the 3D model that I prepared for printing, so to speak - expectation and reality.

As you can see, I am still at the printing stage, I will print all the knots with a bottle as much as possible, I will finish off all the little things that the pryusha cannot handle with a photopolymer printer, and after priming and painting, everything will look no worse than a sketch.

You can see more photos, follow the complete assembly and my work at the link

https://vk.com/public_model_hends

It will also be important to say that parts made of such plastic are practically indestructible, it is difficult and sometimes even impossible to break by hand.

It can be used to print durable parts or children's toys, which is in the plans.

Or collectible toys

You don't want to throw away such a thing, you can also give a toy to another child as you don't need it. (Nemesis does not count, not every child wants this, although I would be very happy about this as a child)

A lot of time has passed since I collected the first paper model and a lot of effort has been spent, since then I have mastered 3D modeling, painting, 3D printing.

Small hobby - gave direction and understanding to what I want to do in life and how to earn a living.

Mastering 3D modeling has opened up the prospects for developing models for Game Dev / but even here 3D printing does not stand apart, because I use the Hipoly model for printing, so to speak - waste-free production in everything.

Here is an example of a model I created for printing, which was ordered by a modeler from Rome

and here is the same model, but already Low Poly and for Game dev.

How to recycle 3d printer filament

How To Recycle 3D Printing Filament [Simple And Easy Guide]

Equipment Needed

Rules For Recycling Filament

Conclusion

♻️ How can I recycle my 3D printing plastic?

What alternatives are there?

Converting 3D print remainders into new print material

Create your own filament

Filastruder

Felfil Evo

Filabot

Buy recycled material

Directly extrude recycled material

Making plastic objects

Contact Bitfab

Recycling plastic for 3D printing, PET.

Follow author

Follow author

More interesting articles

Subscribe to the author

Subscribe to the author

Subscribe to the author

PET plastic recycling and how 3D printing can change the lives of each of us

Learn more