reuse ABS, recycling, rebuild
-
I am currently thinking about whether it is possible to reuse ABS like Lego(r), i.e.
- sort ABS by color
- shredder and/or melt them
- make filament or pellets from them
- 3D print or injection molding them again
1 kg of stones is about 20 EUR, so the cost for 1 kg filament is about the same price. The questions I have:
- how many times ABS can be recycled
- does it keep its properties and is it reusable (maybe drying as additional step)
- does ABS keep its color or does it become gray all and how fast?
Does someone have experience with this? Another interesting question would be how to identify ABS in the household easily so it can be reused.
-
undefined Phaedrux moved this topic from General Discussion
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwlr2yKlq6w
It's doable, though I don't think it's worth it, other than for hobby sake.
You need a good shredder, and you'd likely need to do two extrusion passes to get good consistency. The first one to take the shredded mess and turn it into something close to homogeneous, and then chop that up into pellet size for consistency and extrude again to get final filament.
Thermoplastics should be reusable many times, though contamination becomes an issue. You may have to wash and dry the inputs to get commercial grade. Adding virgin plastic to the mix is recommended.
Household ABS should be labeled with a recycling number, but you have no idea of the grade or if there are additives. For this reason many municipal recycling systems won't accept anything but white or clear plastics.
-
@phaedrux Thank you for your hints, washing and mixing with virgin plastics is a good idea.
-
@joergs5 As an aside, I've noticed that more and more filament manufacturers have "made from recycled plastic" in their line ups. If you are concerned about the environment, it might be a cheaper option than buying the machinery to do it yourself.
Or maybe there is a business opportunity here. Something along the lines of a cooperative where people donate their failed or redundant prints and receive credits which they can then use as partial payment for new reels of filament. -
@deckingman many years ago I supported Filastruder on Kickstarter to recycle and make filament.
The thread here is more about the idea to experiment with injection molding to speed up object creation. Making the molds by 3D printing, eg. A typical injection molding is factor 5000 faster than SuperVolcano.
My concern is whether ABS (and other thermoplastics) can be recycled as often as I want or whether it transforms into something worse over time. Maybe nobody have tried and I have to test it.
-
@joergs5 Ahh, maybe "Re-use ABS for injection molding" would have been a better title for this thread.
-
@deckingman I didn't want to limit the topic so much, recycling is also interesting for 3D printing. But for me, the current idea is for injection molding. It would be very interesting if recycling is possible multiple times. Especially for prototyping.
-
@joergs5 There is plenty of information on the internet - e.g. https://3drific.com/abs-plastic-recycling-everything-you-need-know/
-
@deckingman thank you for the link the article is good as a start, and interesting in respect of other aspects like acetone.
I hoped someone has personal experience how many times recycling is possible.
Experience with factors like:- contamination
- decomposition at higher temperatures *)
- effects of the colors
- effects of water content
- how to separate plastics by spectroscopy, density
- are other thermoplastics better suited
*) is it 0% if staying at normal melting temperature, or is it e.g. 5%, which limits the number of cycles it can be recycled?
