#FilamentFriday: Updates on Extrusion

#FilamentFriday: Updates on Extrusion

Filabot in Print Reading #FilamentFriday: Updates on Extrusion 2 minutes Next #TechTuesday: Airpath in Action

Hello everyone! Happy Friday! We're hoping that your day is filled with less work and more joy. Lately, we've been making a marked effort to develop new materials and extrude a wider variety of plastics. And on Fridays, we share what we've been up to! 

The Filabot was designed to recycle the large amounts of waste plastics generated by 3D printing. That's great, we're doing that. But there is so much plastic out there that needs to be recycled and used properly, we can't just limit ourselves to failed prints and select grades. 

We've been working on tackling the nemesis of pollution: water bottles. Water bottles are made out of blow grade plastics that normally don't extrude well. Too runny, not fun, it can't hold. However, we've been seriously pursuing the possibilities of recycling water bottles and other household plastics, plastics that are more relevant to everyday lives and are more likely to be found clogging the arteries of the ocean.

The picture up there? A test our Warehouse Manager Josh did earlier this week. In it you see some unusable filament. It's a 50/50 mixture of PEG and PETG+ with waste plastic from Parley for the Oceans, a non-profit we've been talking to about closed loop recycling solutions.

In this particular test, with one particular machine, PET compounding has occurred. But wait: other tests and mixtures we've been working on have been more promising! Some cool stuff going down that I can't share yet, but want to! 

Thanks for checking out what we're up to! Stay tuned for more recycling news about plastics and pollution. We're gearing up to make a bigger impact on small plastic waste streams all over the world and we're glad you're following along. If you've got ideas, tests you've run yourself, etc. please don't hesitate to reach out. 

Best,
The Filabot Team

Leave a comment

All comments are moderated before being published.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.