Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

instructables.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–57 of 57 posts

Re: A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

#51

Post by bdcravens »

I save all waste from 3d printing with good intentions.

I did back the Creality shredder and filament maker that hasn't shipped yet, but I'm optimistic. (https://crowdfunding.creality.com/)

I also bought a pellet extruder kit, which can use shredded PLA waste, but haven't gotten around to putting it on a printer. (https://greenboy3d.de/)

I've had pretty good luck taking waste and melting it into silicone molds. Doable with a cheap toaster oven and purge waste and other scraps (though you need to break down larger waste)

For those who want to recycle filament without doing the work themselves, this person has such a project (and maybe there are others out there): https://erikaprintsshop.wordpress.com/

Re: A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

#52

Post by gia_ferrari »

For most people, waste -> filament recycling is a red herring (cost and time). Happy to see people thinking more laterally. I use an old toaster oven ($5 used) to fabricate round stock (fill old aluminum drink cans with waste, melt it down) and sheet stock (crush the melt between flat surfaces). I then use this material for all sorts of things (it makes beautiful marbled vases on the lathe, for example). There's almost zero net waste in this process (I recycle the cans).

More uses I have in mind:

- PLA drift sleeves for go karts (they're typically ABS, which, if you care about plastic in the environment, is a laughably bad choice for something which is intended to be ground to a fine powder in use)

- Stool (melt plastic into shallow cylindrical mold, push legs into melt)

- Decorative trim/picture frames (need a profiled router bit)

etc etc

Check Brothers Make on YT, they are the source of my inspiration.

Re: A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

#53

Post by s1artibartfast »

esquire_900 wrote: post #4

So the author recycled 10 pounds of plastic, but used 8.5 pounds of glue to do so (184 sticks at 0.74 oz which seems to be average for glue sticks). Cool project, but that ratio seems very ineffective. Especially since there is a realistic chance this ends up in landfill within some decades anyway.

What does that have to do with anything? The point is to do something cool with it.

It far more effective than building a collage with bought or new printed parts

Re: A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

#54

Post by s1artibartfast »

isoprophlex wrote: post #7
chneu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly wtf does the glue matter when people are going through plastic like it's nothing? Bringing up the glue is such a weird nitpick.

Do nothing: 10 pounds of filament poop has go to the landfill. Do this thing: 10 pounds of filament poop still exists, + 8 pounds of glue sticks (which is basically a thermoplastic) used, to create something that's eventually going to end up in a landfill. Are you being deliberately obtuse? Recycling or reuse is not as useful as just not creating waste in the first place.

Or do something entirely different and 100lbs go to the landfill.

Reuse is good if the activity replaces something that would generate more waste. This is the real benchmark, not the case where someone does nothing.

The most efficient thing is always to do nothing and/or kill oneself. This isnt practical, so reusing used materials instead of new when you do something is still net good.

Re: A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

#55

Post by ErroneousBosh »

rob74 wrote: post #48
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What you end up with to get there is lots of propane and butane, which is used as a fuel gas, but most of that ends up going up the flare stack because there's so much of it. We won't stop doing this while we still use plastics and fertiliser. The amount of gas flared globally adds up to little over 1% of global energy production. I know that doesn't sound like much but we're talking like terawatts. It truly is a mi…

If only all (or almost all) of it was flared! Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, and unfortunately there is still a lot of it escaping from oil installations unflared ( https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/potential-emi... ).

It's a pain in the arse to run vehicles on methane (CNG) because it has to be stored at around 250 bar (or, 3600psi in Old People Units), and it's really not very energy-dense so you need a lot of it.

Again though flaring it off in a gas turbine to generate electricity and heat would be ultimately less harmful than just letting it out into the air.

By contrast the tank in an LPG vehicle is at around 8 bar, not a hell of a lot more than the pressure in a truck's tyres. On my old Range Rover the LPG tank is considerably less spicy than the air suspension tank at 15 bar, which is getting into "this can injure you" territory.

Re: A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

#56

Post by lopis »

Tade0 wrote: post #27
lopis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like those "wood" tables that are 50% made of epoxy. It grinds my gears

I'm so glad that fad is over. My mother worked as a theatre artisan before retirement and it was, among other things, fumes from curing epoxy that caused numerous health issues down the line.

There's lots of YouTube carpeters that still do it in custom built tables. And these are very expensive custom builds too...

Re: A Koi Pond Mosaic Made from 10 Pounds of 3D Printer Waste

#57

Post by rob74 »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #55
rob74 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only all (or almost all) of it was flared! Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, and unfortunately there is still a lot of it escaping from oil installations unflared ( https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/potential-emi... ).

It's a pain in the arse to run vehicles on methane (CNG) because it has to be stored at around 250 bar (or, 3600psi in Old People Units), and it's really not very energy-dense so you need a lot of it. Again though flaring it off in a gas turbine to generate electricity and heat would be ultimately less harmful than just letting it out into the air. By contrast the tank in an LPG vehicle is at around 8 bar, not a hell…

That reminds me of the buses with huge CNG tanks on the roof that were driving around in Romania when I was younger: https://newsweek-ro.translate.goog/auto/foto-povestea-autove...

Of course, Romania had oil too, but it was exporting most of it, and there was a lot of natural gas left over.

Post reply on HN