Fail of the Week: Upcycling Failed 3D Prints

Is it possible to upcycle failed 3D prints? As it turns out, it is — as long as your definition of “recycle” is somewhat flexible. After all, the world only needs so many coasters.

To be fair, [Devin]’s experiment is more about the upcycling side of the recycling equation, but it was certainly worth undertaking. 3D printing has hardly been reduced to practice, and anyone who spends any time printing knows that it’s easy to mess up. [Devin]’s process starts when the colorful contents of a bin full of failed prints are crushed with a hammer. Spread out onto a properly prepared (and never to be used again for cookies) baking sheet and cooked in the oven at low heat, the plastic chunks slowly melt into a thin, even sheet.

[Devin]’s goal was to cast them into a usable object, so he tried to make a bowl. He tried reheating discs of the material using an inverted metal bowl as a form but he found that the plastic didn’t soften evenly, resulting in Dali-esque bowls with thin spots and holes. He then flipped the bowl and tried to let the material sag into the form; that worked a little better but it still wasn’t the win he was looking for.

In the end, all [Devin] really ended up with is some objets d’art and a couple of leaky bowls. What else could he have done with the plastic? Would he have been better off vacuum forming the bowls or perhaps even pressure forming them? Or does the upcycling make no sense when you can theoretically make your own filament? Let us know in the comments how you would improve this process.