What to do with obsolete/failed prints?  

A problem more prevalent printing toys

A lot of filament sells to print that flexy lizard, the gooch boy helmet, and other such "collectables" that collect endlessly in drawers, on shelves, behind your filament stash.  I don't see the fascination with toys, but then again I don't spend all of my wages on the latest star-war collectables either.  The best way to avoid this problem is just stop printing toys.  Print things you need - for your kitchen, for your yard.  Invent a new thing and enjoy the hours required to tune that thing, one part at a time to make it print-able, take less time to print and heck even sell on etsy.

You'll still have lots of filament to melt down into bricks so you can throw them safely in the trash without a microplastics problem. Just less drawer stuffers.

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

Toys or not, you'll definitely end up with bagfuls of plastic in a couple of months of regular 3D printing. I mostly print functional parts. Very few, if any, decorative objects and toys. Still, I have two medium bags full of PLA and PETG "failed" prints (and that's with a single Prusa MINI+ over the span of a couple of months). Some are truly failed prints, while some others were "oh damn, I forgot this important setting" stopped prints, test fit prints, functional parts that broke due to stress during use and that needed to be redesigned and re-printed, etc.

All of that to say that there are many reasons why one can end up with lots of plastic scrap apart from printing decorative items and toys.

Personally, I've been looking into ways to recycle / compost my (mostly PLA) scraps and didn't find any way to do it yet that does not involve buying multiple-thousand dollar machinery or making a substantial time and money investment to build a DIY recycling machine that produces (potentially) sub-par filament. Or shipping scraps at high cost somewhere else for recycling. I've contacted my main filament provider (filaments.ca) and other Montreal-based companies such as Nefilatek to try and figure out how I could get rid of those scraps responsibly, with no luck yet. They don't recycle PLA, only sometimes PETG (Nefilatek does it) and to my knowledge local composting facilities can't process PLA at all.

I have the same question as the OP. Is everyone really throwing all of their plastic scraps in the trash? What can be done about this?

• Where are you located? Montreal, QC, Canada
• What do you use your printer for? Household use, see below
• What do you like to print? Functional parts (useful things, repairs)
• What materials do you most commonly use? PLA, PETG
• What happens to the fail/obsolete prints? Putting them in a bag while trying to find a solution to dispose of them properly
• How would you like to get rid of it? Recycling or composting, whatever is the most environment-friendly

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

A long time ago, someone invented something called the "trash bin"...

That's where my stuff goes, perhaps not ideal but I don't see reasonable alternatives.

RE:

I've considered extruding my own filament from failed prints, but the machinery is complex and not the easiest to construct.  I've converted my mark 3S to a custom water cooled hot end system that I designed and built. I don't get failed prints anymore from things like filament jams (nonexistent) if I have any failed prints it usually from materials such as carbon fiber polycarbonate, which is impossible to recycle anyway. I don't really print with PLA and 99% of my printing is done with PETG. 

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

It depends on what the failed print looks like. If there are solid portions that can be saved and used for another purpose, I save them. For example, if I have an item that is like a block shape that I can use in another project, I save it. Sometimes I am able to cut them to size and use them as spacers, If it is just spaghetti filament that is left on the plate, I usually toss it in the recycle bin, not the trash can.

A long time ago when men were real men and camels were real camels and COVID wasn't invented there was a crafting group and I took some remelted PLA sheets along and gave them away to people who made things with them.  I know of a child's stool, a bag base stiffener and a photo frame; it would have been easier to print the frame...

Those were just 150 gram collections of scrap. arranged attractively and melted together in a baking tray.

Since lockdown I have built a considerable backlog.

Very few recyclers accept PLA and I know of no composters although if you have access to a hot composting system it will decay, trouble is it will take two or three cycles to go so you have to be able to retrieve the semi-digested stuff and send it round again.

PET is regularly recycled and as long as it isn't in huge volumes PETG can go the same way.  So you can put PETG into the recycling with a clear conscience.

Cheerio,

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

I heard of remelting and it seems like a good idea, but I sincerely don't know what I'd use the remelted sheets for. At least it takes less space this way so it might be OK to store those until I find a use for them.

As for putting PETG in the recycling bin, AFAIK plastic that isn't labeled (with the recycling symbol telling them what kind of material it is) is simply put aside and ends up in landfill. They probably don't have time to test unlabeled plastics to try and figure out what exact types they are. I'd love to be proven wrong, but that's my current comprehension of how recycling facilities work. If that's correct, then throwing PETG in the recycling bin is approximately equivalent to putting it directly in the trash, but costlier due to the time required to sort it out at the recycling facility.

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

I HATE adding unnecessary junk to landfills, but unfortunately that's where my 3d scraps, test prints, and failed prints end up.

I'm all for recycling, but I do not discard enough plastic to make something like a RecycleBot or a Pull-Struder practical.

When I first started accumulating 3d plastic waste (estimated at a filament box full of various scraps, prime lines, skirts, supports, etc. every 1-3 weeks or so) I phoned the trash hauler used by our SID and asked them if they wanted 3d print scraps in the recycle roll-out bin.

They knew exactly what I was talking about, and asked me to put it in the regular trash, as the facility they send their plastic waste to does not want it.  She said that not all types of plastic are wanted by the reprocessors, and for those that are wanted (she mentioned PET) it's impractical to tell at a quick glance what kind of plastic it is, so it's not cost-effective to recycle and they have to pay somebody to pull things like that out of the recycle stuff manually.

A couple of years ago there was one firm (forget which) which would accept 3d print scraps for recycling, but, taking a trip to the real world, I'm not going to be paying to ship plastic scraps to them.

I've also heard of people having poor luck printing with recycled filament, both home-extruded and professionally reprocessed, so I must admit that I'm not too keen on trying to go green-er by using recycled filament.

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

A long time ago when men were real men and camels were real camels and COVID wasn't invented

Those were the days! I still have fond memories of them...

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

Apparently our local recycling scans the incoming stream with laser spectometers and auto-sorts the 'larger' pieces. They don't say what size larger is.  I'd guess at least PET bottle size.  The drawback is the kit can't handle black plastics.

So there's hope.

And if needed it's easy to add the SPI code (1 for PET.)

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

For now, I'm stockpiling PETG & PLA. Eventually I may buy a Filabot extruder. If I get ambitious, I may offer filament recycling as a service.

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

I heard of remelting and it seems like a good idea, but I sincerely don't know what I'd use the remelted sheets for. At least it takes less space this way so it might be OK to store those until I find a use for them.

RE: What to do with obsolete/failed prints?

Keep them safe.