The additive manufacturing (AM) industry is still relatively new, but growing at a great pace. The capabilities of 3D printing/rapid prototyping/additive manufacturing is very exciting to me yet I am concerned about all the new types of polymers that are being used in this industry and some are not biodegradable. With powder-based AM (PA2200 for example), I have been told that a large portion of the excess powder not used in the printed part, cannot be reused. With fused deposition modeling (FDM), a large amount of support material is often required which also goes to waste. I have read many studies on the impact of non-biodegradable plastics/polymers on our environment and I am avraid that this exciting new technology will contribute so much more to this environmental problem. So I want to find out if this issue has been investigated and if there are ways in which we can reduce (or even eliminate) the plastic/polymer waste generated by the AM industry.
Well concern from Janine regarding AM waste. Actually waste of ABS material can be recycled by reproducing the filament wire for 3D printer types FDM using wire extruder.
Here in INTI, people from Polymer Center developed PET filament starting from the water bottles of the dining room.
There seems to be a number of publications going in this direction, see the attached ones.
@Mohd, I'm sceptical on the quality that will result from (unmixed) previously used ABS material. Also the recycling of FDM printer waste will probably require more specialised equipment besides a wire extrude, e.g. for shredding the material.
Article Material and energy loss due to human and machine error in c...
Article Carbon Emissions Quantitative Methodology of Product Fused D...
Article Development of filaments using selective laser sintering waste powder
Hello,
Hybrid Layer Manufacturing (HLM) is one such approach. Prof K.P.Karunakaran from IIT Bombay (Karunakaran K.P. ) is one of the stalwarts in this domain.
Refer:
Hybrid adaptive layer manufacturing: An Intelligent art of direct metal rapid tooling process, Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, Volume 22, Issue 2, April 2006, Pages 113-123
In FDM process support material can be used to fabricate recycled filament of material, and it can be further used on FDM machine.
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