The economics of printers is such that it's often cheaper to buy an entirely new printer than it is to replace the ink inside of the one a person already owns. Those same economics have migrated to world of 3D printers. The printers themselves are relatively affordable, but the cost of plastic filament can become prohibitively expensive in a short amount of time.
Enter Dennon Oosterman and his co-founders at ReDeTec.
The Toronto-based startup has created a device called the ProtoCycler. It's a machine that allows makers of all skill levels to recycle some household plastics and 3D printing rejects into new spools of filament.
According to the company's
Indiegogo page, the ProtoCycler, which ReDeTec plans to sell for $799 at launch, will pay for itself within 10 to 20 uses. Indiegogo's community has quickly taken to the idea: as of the writing of this post, the crowdfunding campaign has raised $82,782 USD, surpassing its $70,000 USD goal with six days left.
Oosterman and company started to work on the ProtoCycler while they were studying at the University of British Columbia. The program they were enrolled in purchased several 3D printers that the group got to play with. Oosterman, a life long maker who has created his own guitar amps, became enamoured with the creative possibilities the printers enabled, but he says he also realized that there was was a significant cost to using the printers.
“At first, we thought they were fantastic because we could make anything. They also had none of the hazards of a machine shop, and you didn't have to sit there and watch it do its job,” he says. “A few months later, we realized we had filled garbage bins full of bad parts and rejects, and that we had spent a lot of money on new filament.”
He and his friends set about creating a solution that would make, a task, it must said, that's much easier said than done. Some three years later, they're almost ready to share their work with the world.
It's fitting that the founders of ReDeTec started working on the ProtoCycler while they were still in school; Oosterman believes classrooms will be among the main beneficiaries of the technology he's helped create.
“More and more schools are adapting 3D printing into their curriculum. That said, having kids print ten plus projects year after year quickly becomes unsustainable,” he says. “We let all those same schools save costs and reduce on waste. They also teach kids the inherent value of recycling.”
Source: ReDeTec