Closed Loop
Filament Extruder
The Brief
The aim of this product is to reduce the waste caused by the increased use of FDM 3d printers and reduce the impact on the environment of manufacturing and transporting 3d printer filament by recycling household waste plastic.
The solution to the this is to design an affordable household desktop filament extruder that can convert waste generated by 3d printers and household plastic waste into usable 3d printer filament.
Key Research Findings
Only one third of the UK’s consumer plastic packaging is recycles each year. (Lyons, 2016)
The USA consumes 90Kg of plastic per person each year. (Hottle, 2013)
A family of four produces 360Kg of waste plastic per year.
Distributed recycling techniques have an 80% higher efficiency by saving on energy used for transportation and collection. (Kreigera, 2013)
More than 100 million megajoules of energy could be saved per year in the USA if applied distributed recycling to HDPE. (Kreigera, 2013)
