TECHNOLOGY | 3D PRINTING
Right: IWK and Creamelt are involved in the “Closing the Loop” project to reuse ocean plastic in 3D print applications
dimensional form is complete. Stratasys has remained tight-lipped about the compounds that will be compatible with the H-series, with no indication of their partner com- pounder. All a Stratasys spokesperson was pre- pared to say was that the launch material will be a “sustainable PA11”.
Recycling ideas
Sustainability is as much a priority in the 3D print sector as it is elsewhere in the plastics industry and there is a developing interest in utilising waste streams. At this year’s 24th annual SXSW Innovation Awards in the US, Israel-based UBQ Materials won the Speculative Design category for a waste-based 3D printing filament made from a material it simply calls “UBQ”. UBQ Materials claims to have a technology that
Below: Compounding of ocean- recovered material for 3D print filament production at IWK
takes household waste from landfill and transforms it into “UBQ” thermoplastic. The company divulges little about the composition of this material but its patents detail a mechanical process that is said to create a composite of non-meltable waste within a thermoplastic encapsulating matrix. It says its plant in Israel can produce 5,000 tonnes of UBQ material per year, most of which is currently used by local manufacturers. A partnership with R&D company Plastics App, founded in May 2021, has led to the development of a 3D printing filament based on UBQ. The company claims its material is a “climate positive” thermoplastic that can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of additive manufacturing. “With this innovation, 3D printing may become the most environmentally conscious means of production available,” says Jack “Tato” Bigio, co-CEO and co-founder of UBQ Materials. Another initiative focused on plastics waste is
Sweden’s Solaris Community. It is targeting plastic waste in the oceans, specifically oceans in Asia, as a
partner in the United Nations ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) initiative, Closing the Loop. As part of a programme called the Ocean Plastic Project, Solaris and other social enterprises are harvesting plastic from the oceans of southeast Asia, using satellites and AI data to pinpoint areas of plastic pollution. Solaris subsidiary Tide, based at Ranong in
Thailand, co-ordinates the collection process and the collected waste is taken to one of five islands in the Andaman Sea where local fishermen have been employed to gather and sort it. The material is then registered, washed, and shredded in a social enterprise implemented by the Swiss non-profit Jan and Oscar Foundation and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The shredded material is tested prior to com- pounding by project partner the Institute for Materials Technology and Plastics Processing (IWK) at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil, Switzerland. IWK claims to have developed a means to reverse the damage caused by ultraviolet exposure and saltwater penetration. The upcycled polymer is then converted to filament and the end product sold by the Swiss 3D printing filament company Creamelt which, like IWK, is based in Rapperswil.
Thinking big Large Format Additive Manufacturing (LFAM) is analogous to FFF, in principle. In scale, however, it is vastly different. Both systems extrude a molten polymer onto a print bed but while FFF extrudes from a filament in quantities measured in g/h, LFAM extrudes in kg/h. Extrusion rates of 50kg/h or higher are possible and at that ouput rate waste mounts up. Large parts that didn’t quite print as expected can contain potentially hundreds of kilograms of waste polymer. To tackle this waste, SABIC worked on a joint
62 COMPOUNDING WORLD | May 2022
www.compoundingworld.com
IMAGE: SOLARIS COMMUNITY/IWK
IMAGE: SOLARIS COMMUNITY/IWK
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