We’ve all heard stories of the dangers of 3D printing, with fires from runaway hot ends or dodgy heated build plates being the main hazards. But what about the particulates? Can they actually…
Well, it isn’t so much as that. It’s more of a “crap, my bed isn’t leveled”, or “my nozzle got clogged”, or “the filament wasn’t dry enough and broke”, or the filament got tangled, or some other random print fart issue that causes multiple printing issues sometimes. There’s also some situations where the design doesn’t work and you have to go back and make another design change or iteration. All those attempts create waste plastic, and while I recycle my scraps, I’m not sure how many who are going into this hobby do.
It goes beyond this to the things people print. There’s a lot of… low shelf life dudads turned out by a subset of our community. For example, a coworker printed each of the ten of us a 4" tall Groot as a holiday present pre-covid. I bet most of those wound up in the bin. I totally get the hobby of collecting trinkets, but often wonder about the end state - it will all eventually need a new home or will end up in a landfil.
Plastic recycling is a fine idea, but in many cases the material winds up getting shipped overseas and burned. It’s also the least preferred option of reduce, reuse, recycle. It is cool that some filament companies are now accepting scraps, but that’s not very common (yet?). I also wonder how they deal with contamination. Sorting the different plastic types is difficult today from my understanding. That and low resale value is why plastics recycling is struggling.
All that said, I am a massive believer in functional prints. You can breathe new life into existing things and the things you create can be here for a long time.
Well, it isn’t so much as that. It’s more of a “crap, my bed isn’t leveled”, or “my nozzle got clogged”, or “the filament wasn’t dry enough and broke”, or the filament got tangled, or some other random print fart issue that causes multiple printing issues sometimes. There’s also some situations where the design doesn’t work and you have to go back and make another design change or iteration. All those attempts create waste plastic, and while I recycle my scraps, I’m not sure how many who are going into this hobby do.
It goes beyond this to the things people print. There’s a lot of… low shelf life dudads turned out by a subset of our community. For example, a coworker printed each of the ten of us a 4" tall Groot as a holiday present pre-covid. I bet most of those wound up in the bin. I totally get the hobby of collecting trinkets, but often wonder about the end state - it will all eventually need a new home or will end up in a landfil.
Plastic recycling is a fine idea, but in many cases the material winds up getting shipped overseas and burned. It’s also the least preferred option of reduce, reuse, recycle. It is cool that some filament companies are now accepting scraps, but that’s not very common (yet?). I also wonder how they deal with contamination. Sorting the different plastic types is difficult today from my understanding. That and low resale value is why plastics recycling is struggling.
All that said, I am a massive believer in functional prints. You can breathe new life into existing things and the things you create can be here for a long time.