A MakerBot 3D Printer makes a cameo appearance in this video (@2:16) about eliminating waste through upcycling.

It’s great to reuse, reduce, and recycle to minimize our impact on the environment. But is there a way to make trash a thing of the past? Graduate students at Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity University think so. Taking lessons from nature, where nothing is wasted, ever, the team dreams of a society where trash is reborn, just as in nature things die and decompose, providing nutrients for new living things. They call this closed-loop process of material renewal the upcycle.

So where do MakerBots fit in? Do-it-yourself 3D printers like MakerBots promote distributed manufacturing. The centralized manufacturing processes we currently rely on are wasteful because products spend 90 percent of their lifetime in transit, according to Singularity U speaker Kausar Samli. That means that for most of their inanimate lives, they are traveling on a boat, in a truck, or flying through the air on a plane, pouring carbon dioxide into the air.

If everyone had their own personal manufacturing facility, the environmental and economic costs of transporting those goods would be virtually eliminated. Although it may be a while before such a considerable change in the manufacture and distribution of goods is implemented on a mass scale, the Upcycle team dreams of bringing 3D printing technology to communities in developing countries as soon as possible. Locals could print their own goods with environmentally friendly bioplastics, making things that were previously economically out of reach newly accessible.

Projects such as the Fab Lab–a mobile manufacturing facility produced by M.I.T.’s Center for Bits and Atoms–are already doing just that. There are 45 labs in dozens of countries around the world, from South Africa to Afghanistan to Austria.

So democratizing manufacturing with 3D printers like MakerBots will not only allow everyone equal access to stuff, it could also help us all be better upcyclers.

NYCDesigner's PET automated build platform conveyor belt

Sometimes there is just no replacement for experimentation.  I’ve been using my Automated Build Platform for about two weeks now¹ , but have found its utility varies with the material I’m using.  Here’s what I’ve tried along with a few notes:

• The mylar belt works much better with ABS than with PLA. ²
• Sanding the mylar belt slightly did not help the PLA stick any better.
• Heating the build platform did not seem to help the PLA stick any better.
• Using just the mylar belt with a single strip of Kapton tape running around one edge of the belt works much better than wrapping the entire belt in Kapton tape.  I noticed that when the Kapton is doubled over itself it will develop wrinkles once it has been around the conveyor.  These wrinkles then remain causing an uneven build surface.
• NYCDesigner tried out a PET belt, which he found easier to assemble than the included mylar belts, but didn’t notice the PET working any better.
• Anfroholic suggested sanding the build surface in only one direction, to preserve the peaks and valleys on the build surface.
• Feilen suggested a Kapton belt has worked excellently.
• I’ve found that blue painter’s tape works great with PLA.  I haven’t tried wrapping it around my entire conveyor belt, just the print area, but I’m hopeful it would work that way too.

And a bonus list of THINGS TO NOT DO WITH YOUR AUTOMATED BUILD PLATFORM:

• Don’t turn on the motorized conveyor belt while your object is still quite hot – especially if your object is very thin.  My test USB enclosure just became even thinner when the motor pulled it down underneath the actual build platform.
• Don’t wrinkle your PET belt.  That’s going to cause problems with an uneven printing surface and they’re difficult (impossible?) to get out.
• Don’t run your automated build platform backwards – it will make the Kapton tape pull up.

What have you learned with your automated build platform?  What are you using for your conveyor belt?  Are you sanding in any particular way?

1. And loving it! [↩]
2. And, frankly, PLA is my new favorite thermoplastic. [↩]

Printed 608 bearing using BB's by TheRooster

Some days, such as today, I love being wrong. 

The other day I suggested printing a 608 bearing using 4.5mm BB’s would be impractical given the dimensions of a standard bearing.  There were a number of very well thought out responses from Tre3 and TheRooster to my wild¹² accusations.³

Among other excellent points, Tre3 pointed out that with careful purchasing you can find ball bearings as low as $0.05 per bearing. ⁴ That’s pretty dang low.  TheRooster said he was able to pick up 2500 zinc plated steel BB’s for $4 from his local big-box store.  That’s about $1.70 for all 53 bearings required for a RepRap.  Cheap BB’s are all well and good – but you’d still need to find a way to shoe-horn them into a printed 608 sized shell.

And that’s exactly what TheRooster did – he designed, printed, and assembled a 608 sized bearing utilizing those 4.5mm BB’s as the ball bearings.  I cannot wait to try this design out.  I realize the labor costs involved in creating your own ball bearings is probably prohibitive.

I think this misses the central questions:

• Just how far can you push a 3D printer?
• When you can make nearly any arbitrary shape out of plastic, just what are the limits?
• What is possible once your biggest cost is the time required to assemble the parts in front of you?

Tre3: I was going to take you up on your offer to test my plastic bead bearings, but they are officially garbage now that I’ve seen TheRooster’s improvement.  However, I would love to see how TheRooster’s printed ball bearings using BB’s match up to your tests.  Are you guys up for the challenge?

1. Drunken?  Intoxicated? [↩]
2. BUI – blogging under the influence! [↩]
3. If I were really smart, I would claim that this was a bit of slight-of-hand reverse-psychology on my part.  Alas, I am just not so clever.  Or devious.  [↩]
4. Given that each bearing requires roughly 15-20 balls and there are 53 bearings in a RepRap, this comes to $39.75 for the lot. [↩]