Making filament from failed prints is the holy grail I reckon. Also, making filament from recycled PET bottles.

I know it wont' help with the time, but you could flip the large disk over and melt it a second time to (potentially) smooth out both sides. Those large disks could be used decorative trays. As a geocacher, I think making things like those star pieces would be a great use for the scraps.

If you're milling pieces - introduce vibration into the melting process to avoid air bubbles and then anneal the melted parts by tempering off the temperature over a longer period of time. CNCing down the round blank you created will result in some dramatic kickbacks or shattering of your pieces. The mix of plastics fused along different surface areas will have material stresses from the melting process that may be resolved from annealing and removing any rogue air bubbles will avoid the mill from skipping. Regardless if you put these under a CNC bit, make sure there is some shield around it, or at least something between you and the CNC machine.

Flip them upside down. Put back in oven. Inspect to see in if both sides are smooth.

a good idea for a business might be to start a filament recycle service that buys scrap prints and supports from you and processes them into new filament

Michael, another interesting and cool tech video. You're a true tech wizard.

0:50 FYI PLA is not biodegradable. It needs healthy microbial community and 60C+ temperature, meaning you need some very specifically designed industrial compost where you could mix 10-20% finely shredded pieces with the plant materials to be able to degrade it in a few months. And that just never happens. So unfortunately every failed print and every broken piece just adds to the global plastic problem. So big up for trying to reuse them in any ways!

there is companies and videos about reusing the filament, making your own of the failed prints, but as you were saying, its not cheap and inclueds many difficult steps but some ppl have managed to do it

OMG I’ve been following you for years and just saw this! This was I had planned out. Thanks for the vids!!

its your monotone that makes me resist your videos, but its the content that keeps me here and coming back anyway

Did a bit of research, and PLA is Plastic #7 on the recycle classification, and it's pretty much WORTHLESS to even send off to recycle. Sad, but I'm just throwing mine away for now.

I had a different idea to shred filaments.. coffee bean grinder.. :) will find that out how it goes when I'm ready

I wonder would you melt and mix this in some pan/pot and pour into silicone ingot mold, so having much better mixed and same colored plastic ingots for some diy projects

You need to make sure that all recycled materials are using the same plastic. If there are different kinds of plastic in your mixture then the melting parameters will be different each time you try to extrude or mold, making it impossible to make parts consistently. Consistency is crucial when dealing with recycled plastic. To improve consistency of material, Your melted product should be well mixed to even out any subtle variations in density of material that could make the final product difficult to process. Most industrial plastic recycling is done in a continuous process that allows for a fine breakdown of recycled materials, heating, pressurization, mixing, and finally extrusion into either a filament or resin bead. You can breakdown your materials pretty well if you keep running it through the grinder multiple times, but to mix the melted product at high pressure and temperature will require much more complex equipment. The most difficult aspects to work out at home are consistent heating and pressurization. However, it looks like you were able to melt some of the material in an oven. The next step would be to stick a mixer in that toaster oven, and see if you can get a consistent melt without high pressure. If that is possible, you then need to see about how to feed that liquid into an extruder or mold with low pressure. A mold could possibly be gravity fed, but the extruder will likely require additional pressurization.

using that garden shredder is a interesting idea! For filament making you need to get down to about 5mm granule size, unless you build a bigger one than typical (ie. bigger than filastruder). I go through a lot of filament and parts, and even the spools add up quickly! Makes no sense that something like 20-25% of the 1kg spool weight is actually packaging plastics and you throw that away. Very very inefficient and wasteful. Then all the failed prints etc. and i like to print big, so a failed print might be 2kg filament + 500gr in spools + other packaging wasted ...

If you made a bigger and thicker circle it could turn out to be a really nice table top. If you could mold entire tables and chairs into multi-color with a nice glossy coat it would be quite unique.

Bolts do not have a very high shear strength. Even Grade 8 hardware is rated in tensile strength, which is basically the amount of "stretch" it takes for it to break. You need to either have someone machine a keyway into your shafts, and your coupler, or try something like dowel roll pins that are hardened. Roll Pins are made to withstand shear force, bolts are meant for withstanding the stretching force.

You asked for things to make I would suggest the flat sides to filament spool holders.

you can make really cool wall round clocks with it :-)

I see most recycling efforts using shredding as a pre-cursor to using some kind of recycling-extruder. Wouldn't it be possible (and easier) to use some kind of large-hopper 'melter' to melt the filament into more manageable sized blocks and/or an intermedia extruded size that could be fed into the final extruder?

Very interesting. I'm currently experimenting with a shredder based on an electric hand planer. Like you, I'm expecting to make feedstock for my cnc.

use panini machine to heat both sides and press melted plastic like injection mold

Gaming surface protectors.. Tabletops ,Dice trays , tiles... If you don't like the chip look you can always paint over and seal it Polyurethane or resin.

Hi Michael i was wondering if you got any further with things to make from recycled pla, i was wondering about maybe using a lathe and making pens

Did you ever make a part two after this video ?

I'm wondering if a solar oven might yeild good results.

Kinda ironic to buy a completely new oven to recycle waste filament... The oven has a much bigger climate footprint than what can be saved by recycling.

I was thinking about this sort of thing as now I got some used printed waste myself now... I thought If I could get a heavy duty garden bush shredder and get the used waste chopped up with that 1st then use a slow turning smaller shredder set up using maybe a stepper printer motor to slowly crew up the waste from the garden one maybe a few passes through it for fine cut up waste. Then I thought maybe use a hot end nozzle ( sized to the 1.75 mm ) Mounted on a frame with a big worm screw in a tube run by a stepper motor on the frame is fed by a big funnel ( maybe made of PETG ). Since the hot end is meant to be used to melt the filament for printing it makes sense to use it to do the filament making! You just need s fan to cool the filament as it exits the nozzle or pass the filament through a cold water bath as the professionals do? I would of course sort out the colours of the waste first before cutting them up for melting, that way the same colours is in the filament which you could have a empty spool take up as it exits the cooling part? I know it be hard to set up But I think using the same tech used to make filament in to models may as well be used in reverse to make the wast in to filament again?

Have you ever thought of extruding all the plastic shreds through a 1.75mm nozzle to fully recycle the plastic?

I used a blender from good will, it was a bit slower but you can make it much finer

What a good idear, thanks for sharing 👍😀

nice! i agree that the precious plastic shredder is still a bit high entry point, and have the idea of using a paper shredder. i was wondering if the original motor have enough torque, and glad to see it work just fine. cant wait to try on my own

You should make coasters

Michael, I know it's more work, but have you tried coating the pieces in resin? I have a fairly large heat press and am experimenting with waste plastic spread on a board, pressed lightly with the press (Almost liquid) and then when cool cover with resin. Can even be creative with the colours and a 3D pen. Really look forward to your vids as have learnt a lot - Cheers from the UK

Well to cut the electric side down you could use the smashing method and then a hand shredder

as a fellow injection molder i need some advice as you seem to have more experience with cocoon create I have recently started doing oour own prototyping on cheap we were refered to aldi when they were on sale the very first model the old black one but it sat in the office and was never used as bussiness slacked of when i had a heart attact but now im back and have learned how to use it and on the 12 print the hotend thermister stoped working i have tech experience so i changed out the thermister but it just wont ghive corect reading do you know of any fellow youtubers who have solved this problem i miss my prototypeing printer thats and cocoon offer no suport except som c++ files

Oh man, I was hoping that this was an old video, so I could skip to the next one and see how it all turned out. 😏🤓

I am looking for a way to reduce VOCs from melting PLA in a toaster oven. If somebody can help me come up with a way to modify it to do that, it we can collaborate. We thought about doing a box in a box with an hvac fan and water cooler

Is there an stl for the shredder top?

Why you don't make new filament out of it?

I wonder if I can do this with the leftover runner plastic you get when building plastic scale models (Gundam, Airfix for example if you aren't familiar). Though scale model plastic is usually polystyrene so not sure what the differences would be compared to PLA.

I'm wondering if I could make some interlocking tiles out of the melted plastic and use them to tile my garage floor. It might take a few years to accumulate that much, but I hate to waste it.

Good job

Thanks for a great video (which I return once again to now) what are your thoughts of the "Earthwise GS70015 Electric Wood Chipper/Shredder", being that you have used a Ozito - is there any limiting factors on the Earthwize or would that work too/or even better as a phase 2 machine?

Use the second mold on top with a pan and a little weight to smooth top while heating? Some smaller discs would be perfect drink coasters as well as conversation starters

I hear you can also boil PLA.

You could make a glossy erasable whiteboard surface by recycling white plastic? Should work

A solar oven would be a good way to melt prints down with direct solar power. May not even need grinding first.

Kinda wondering how this would work with the Filastruder to reuse the plastic as filament.

8:28 there is a duck eating a piece of paprika close to right top side yellow with an orange beak lol

Nice video Michael... keep going

Even if you aren't environmentally conscious, it still helps you to save money in the end.

I've been melting scrap with a heat gun but that's super tricky. I like this better. How long did your timelapse melting video actually take? I have a sacrificial toaster oven that I might try...in the yard, far from the house...easier to put out the ensuing fire. ;-)

You have to watch most of the presentation to find out what the objective for melting the plastic - insane.

Nice 👌👍

I can recycle my failed prints with a Filabot Reclaimer and EX2. I had to write some software, but it works reliably and closes the loop from failed print to pellet to filament to good print.

Hello, what are the names of the molds that have been poured into the molten material?

I'd really like to see if you can make filament from failed prints or recycled PLA waste.

i like see some plastic bags and pill bottles

Can I please have your shredder if you still have it

The hell with that, lol lets get a good process to melt down and re-extrude that stuff back into rolls for use in a 3D printer! The multi-color aspect would lend itself well to some artistic projects or be good as a cheap"test PLA" for proving out slicer settings etc.

fantastic stuff. i have watched precious plastic, but it is way too much work and $ to get their concepts going. the shredder and oven ideas you are using make a lot of sense.

Should put the smaller shredder under the larger shredder. Edit: Ahh you already mentioned it at 9:30

just wandering, i want to use this for my GCSE project and want to know whether this will release any harmful chemical?

Great job! Thanks for sharing mate. Have you made any further progress?

Teaching Tech, did you ever revisit this idea, with any additional parts. I'd really like to make some things out of old pla scraps, but would love to see what your process has become.

Hey, you can try to put that big sheet of plastic over a cup and put it together in oven. Maybe you can make another cup. ;)

did you try to do stuff with it? any news on it?

You might find that the smoking of the silicone is just mold release burning off. Try leaving one in the oven at a higher temperature, it may well stop smoking before too long.

I keep all my waste filament seperate in plastic bags and i crush it to pellets with a cheap blender to reduce the volume. Im hoping yhat one day i may have a workshop so i can make my own filament.

if i had the money i wish i could do the same with my waste

I like your Video about reusing/recycling plastic for another use. It’s seems like there can be a lot of waste if we are not careful. I’m also wondering if you should introduce an additional finer grind to your shredded plastic. Kinda like the process of making Canister Damascus Steel. You may have some air gaps in the cast plastic that you aren’t aware of.

I used my Ninja blender to blend my pieces up after beating them with a hammer.

25 views and already one dislike? wtf is wrong with people?

just a corection PLA is not biodegradable it is degradable.

やったことあるけどPLAが硬くてペーパーシュレッダーが壊れた。 自分ははんだごてやヒートガンで板状にしてからドリルで加工してる。いつも楽しい動画をありがとう！(*´ω`*) I was try papershredder. But PLA is too hard. so I use electric soldeling iron and heatgun. make small plate then drill it. I make T-slot nut or angle bracket. I love this channel thank you ! ：）

Filastruder.com I believe is the website makes a extruder ! I been hearing there newest version is really good you could make some sweet multi color filament to print with

I tried it some days ago and it doesn't worked so well / good i don't crushed the prints so much ;D

I normally enjoy your videos, but this is one of those cases of a solution seeking a problem. You're talking about recycling to reduce a carbon footprint, yet you used a 2400W chipper, a paper shredder, (in this case silicon molds that will break down), and a toaster oven to melt it down. On top of it all you chipped up that ABS chain then talked about using a sandwich press to melt it down. That sounds like a bad idea. When it comes to PLA it's pretty sustainable. Filaments like ABS less so, but it's not too bad. Ive been thinking about using the garbage plastic like PLA for filter mediums. I just use the ABS stuff for slurry or patching up cracks. Resource waste is a thing, we just have to be conscious about it.

You could try making your own shredder to filament machine.... kind of like this redetec.com/

Sooo you just have bigger blocks of plastic garbage... As long as this pointless act makes you feel better...

flip them over and reheat. mite work.

#3DWasted

How about silicon or aluminum CNC or cast mold(s) and make Frisbees for all your friends and kids? That would give you a fun upcycled product.