I was watching this video (below) this morning about a machine that can make 3D Printing Filament from PET Plastic Bottles. The video is by Brothers Make — their YouTube story is here. The machine that is featured in the video can be purchased from Tylman Design.
This machine is pretty jolly great I reckon… so I decided to get up early and write this blog post about it! It will also be fascinating watching this technology evolve in the coming years.
In the above video, it also speaks about a person named Kevin who I gather is based in Kenya who runs a social enterprise called ChipuRobo. Amongst things, they are using this machine to help make affordable Crutches for people in Kenya. How good is that!
I sometimes wonder: If we could teach more young people in Australia how to fix things, including plastic items, and give them greater incentive to do so, surely that would be a good thing.
I’d luv to see more broken items being fixed and used to extend their life. I’m sure we would ALL like to see less items going to landfill and/or being discarded.
Side note: One of my jobs in my very early 20’s was making models for an architectural model-making business in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. Amongst things, they taught us how to use Styrene sheets.
Styrene is not cheap. You can actually use PVC Pipe instead — it is very easy to flatten. As an example, below is a model RC car that has been made from PVC Pipe:
Side note 02: I was shown a broken kids toy the other day that a dog had chewed.
I don’t often have the spare time to fix broken toys, but I knew this toy would not be hard to fix, so I grabbed a bit of scrap Styrene and repaired it. A few photos I took during the repair are below.
I’ll give the blades a quick paint soon. It’ll become hard to see that the toy was ever damaged.
Side note 03: There are heaps of tutorials on YouTube showing how to fix plastic items – eg: how to do basic plastic welding, how to mix certain ingredients into Superglue to make it very strong, how to use Styrene, how to use PVC Pipe, etc.
PS. I know upcycling is a thing. I even joined this Facebook group recently and their channel on the Tedooo App. I’d luv to find out though, how many enterprises in Australia are doing upcycling and plastic item repairs at scale? I might start doing some research.