A researcher at The University of New Mexico School of Engineering has developed a “recipe book” for sustainable 3D print materials.
Today’s 3D printing is dominated by plastics and metals, which are mostly “fresh” materials produced by industry. The amount of recycled and sustainable materials is relatively low.
The paper, “Biomaterial Recipes for 3D Printing: A Cookbook of Sustainable and Extrudable Bio-Pastes”, hopes to encourage 3D printer operators to consider using sustainable materials instead of factory-made products.
Sustainable materials would include not only naturally found organic substances, but also certain waste products that otherwise would decompose or end up in a landfill. These would include substances like “orange peels, sawdust, and tree leaves.”
NMU explains how this all works:
“While testing recipes for the book, Bell sourced a number of items from local waste streams, including cottonwood leaves from the UNM campus, sawdust from a local furniture artist’s woodshop, and waste eggshells from Frontier Restaurant. In the recipes, these items act as fillers, or the ingredients that make up most of the printing material. The book also walks readers through the need for stabilizers, non-absorbent materials that provide stability to the object as it is printed, like sand or eggshells; binders, absorbent ingredients that help keep materials together, like wheat flour or gelatin; and liquids, which help turn the materials into a paste, like water.
They were even able to make the prints waterproof through the use of natural additives such as vegetable oil or beeswax.
Since these materials are organic, the prints can decompose if exposed to a suitable environment. In fact, each of the recipes includes a time estimate for how long it would take for the print to decompose. This is a key aspect of this approach: the prints themselves become sustainable.
Could anyone use these recipes? In theory, yes, but in practice it’s a bit more tricky. You cannot use a typical FFF or resin 3D printer, as these recipes produce pastes that must be extruded with a syringe-type toolhead.
That said, there are third party paste extruders that can be installed on some desktop FFF 3D printers. This upgrade would enable printing of pastes, and that enables these recipes. It also could enable printing of food, if the system components are food grade.
Via NMU
