GreenGate3D offers a wide selection of “green” PETG 3D printer materials.
The New York-based operation has been around for about six years, and today offers dozens of PETG products, including both filament and pellets. They also happen to resell Bambu Lab 3D printing equipment.
We had a brief chat with the company recently and asked about the “green” aspect of their business. It turns out that they are actually part of a larger business, Universal Composites. “Universal” has been recycling plastics since 1994, and has built quite a large business handling diverted plastics from major companies, and apparently even the US Navy. Among the materials they recycle are: PET, HDPE, LDPE, LLDPE, ABS, Nylon, BOPP, TPU, PP, PS, PC, EPS, EVA, PMMA, SAN, GPPS, HIPS, TPU, TPE, PVB, PU, and PVC. You’ll notice a few 3D printable materials in their list.
In 2018, they got the idea to produce 3D printing materials from their recycled plastic sources. After all, they had the raw materials at hand already.
They now produce their own PETG material based on diverted plastic, and it’s made from 100% recycled materials.
This approach gets around the problem that confounds most recycled 3D printer filament ventures: how do you obtain “pure” input materials? Plastic scraps are almost always made from random materials with different material types, chemistries, and colours. It’s financially infeasible or impossible to properly separate them, and so initiatives to recycle “all the plastics” really can’t work.
Here, however, GreenGate3D has a ready source of pure materials they can directly transform into 3D printer filament or pellets.
The company produces a PETG variant that actually can be printed at lower temperatures. Typically, extrusion temperatures for PETG are near 240C, but we were told the GreenGate3D PETG can be best printed at only 215C, far lower. This means there is less risk of warping during printing.
Today they offer over thirty different colours for their PETG, and they are offered in 1kg, 1.75mm spools. Some colours are also available in huge 3kg spools. The colours are quite interesting, and you can see some of them here. One is named after a partner company, “Slice Engineering Orange”. They can also produce custom colours if requested.
The company sells spools directly off their website, but also has a popular Amazon store. Curiously, the spools are usually priced around US$32 at their webstore, but near US40 on Amazon.
Is there more than just PETG? It seems they are thinking of releasing a PA12 product in the near future: Natural Recycled Nylon 12: New and Coming Soon (Not PET-G) 500 g“. They say it’s made from “Recycled Nylon sourced from a $170B US manufacturer!” This half-kilo spool will be priced at US$40.
As a US manufacturer with material sourced in the US, GreenGate3D products are not subject to recent tariffs if purchased in the US. However, those outside the US may find reciprocal tariffs imposed on GreenGate3D’s materials.
Via GreenGate3D
