A growing company called Precious Plastic is developing a line of tools to let anyone convert waste plastic into usable objects, turning trash, as they say, into treasure.

Started by Dave Hakkens, a 27 year old Dutch designer, their system of modular machines are being made available with free plans anyone can download then construct with basic tools and local materials. These machines let you spin plastic into cord or even use it to 3D-print complex objects.

Last year the world produced nearly 311 million tons of plastic, but less than 10% of that was recycled. Most of it ends up in landfills, oceans and even animals.

The goal of Precious Plastic is to make recycling open-source and universally-available, ultimately as cheap and easy as throwing something away, and a way not only to help the environment but for people to save money, too

The post Precious Plastic: DIY Recycling + 3D Printing Machines first appeared on Gajitz.

Aiming to make 3D printing a truly affordable, simple, accessible and dependable staple of everyday homes, this unit has already raised more than 15 times its crowdfunding goal with over 2 weeks left in its campaign.

Three sets of arms together move the printer head for precise control and consistent layering – it can print as fine as 50 microns.  Strong but light, the solid external housing also means that gusts of wind won’t impact the printing process, and if you remove the top it automatically stops printing. The machine takes all kinds of filaments, not just ones sold by the manufacturer, and works wirelessly with your devices.

“Tiko’s slender unibody frame, delta mechanism, and ultra-compact liquefier/end-effector enable it to print objects far larger than any similarly sized 3D printer. Like most delta printers, we started with a circular print volume. But we wanted more than that, so we expanded Tiko’s print volume into the corners for those extra-long prints, maximizing space efficiency.”

The pitch: “As inventors, we use 3D printers all the time. We love 3D printing and all the doors it opens, but we don’t like our printers. It seems like every day something jams, breaks, shifts, or fails. Even when our printers do work, they need fine-tuning to print well. All in all, we probably spend more time working on our printers than on our inventions.”

A solid-body solution without all of the messy moving parts, this new 3D printer promises to become a household item right alongside your vacuum, fridge, microwave and other appliances. Indeed, the unibody idea is what got this idea going: “In most 3D printers, the most expensive (by far) item is the frame. That’s because most 3D printers have a frame built from multiple beams that are fastened together. In delta printers, this frame is often made from three vertical extruded-aluminum beams. We had a simple thought… what if we extruded all three rails together?”

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Printed instead of planted, this strange concoction combines elements of gardening, gourmet dining and 3D printing technologies in a fresh new way.

Created by food designer Chloé Rutzerveld, Edible Growth involves an exterior casing of edible soil (growth medium) laced with mushroom seeds.

Once printed, the consumer waits while the seeds start to grow up and out through holes around load-bearing supports printed into the structure of the case. The finished food is ready to eat a few days later.

While many food printing experiments and ideas revolve around the concept of creating a finished product on the spot, this one is a unique sort of hybrid – it still requires patience, like (but less than) planted edibles would.

The post Living 3D-Printed Food: Output Seeds in Soil, Grow & Eat first appeared on Gajitz.

Developed by a trio of physics and engineering students at the University of British Columbia, this all-in-one recycler and printer grinds up waste plastics and melts them into usable filament for 3D printing.

The ProtoCycler from ReDeTec (Renewable Design Technology) is not the first reuse-oriented printer design but it combines the best elements of what is generally found separately – products that grind the plastic or melt it or extrude it – for faster and all-in-one use.

Taking anything from old plastic toys or soda bottles, it can turn trash into fresh filament at a record rate of ten feet per minute (making it the fastest extruder publicly for sale). Its materials are cheap as well – free, of course, if you generate them from your own plastic waste, but also only $5 per spool if made from the company’s plastic pellets (about 1/6 the cost of a typical filament loop).

The system can be pre-ordered for around $700, making it not the absolute cheapest desktop 3D printer out there but certainly a competitive option for those getting started with 3D printing or looking to save on material costs in the longer term (not to mention the environmental benefits).

The post Student-Built 3D Printer Uses Recycled Pop-Bottle Plastic first appeared on Gajitz.

Past generations kept precious keepsakes such as family photos and letters from friends in boxes to be brought out and admired occasionally. This kind of reminiscing has been made much harder by the digitization of our lives. It’s a lot less fun to scroll through old emails and photos on a screen.

Designer Pierpaolo Lazzarini and musician Giampaolo Scapigliati wondered what kind of keepsakes would be left to hold and admire after the current generation is gone. To create a new type of keepsake, the duo invented the Printeroid, a portable printing device that works with any Apple mobile device. The name is a nod to the revolutionary (for its time) Polaroid instant printing technology.

Printeroid can make hard copies of photographs, text messages, and any other type of document. Using an app they named PMS (Printeroid Messaging Service), users send documents or photos to the printer which can store rolls of paper up to 10 meters long. Printeroid prints on standard paper, sticky paper, or photographic film.

One of the many awesome features of the Printeroid is its ability to print out panoramic photos in one piece. The paper is only 2.7 inches wide so the photos may not be incredibly detailed, but they do bring back the tactile satisfaction of holding a treasured photo in your hands and preserving it for future generations.

In the age of purely digital communication, the Printeroid could be a way to preserve the text messages of a couple from their first meeting through the deep connection that forms. These long printed lines of text and pictures could very well fill the memory boxes of our children and grandchildren, giving them a glimpse into how we lived in the first few decades of the 21st century.

The post Screen Printing: Create Hard Copies of iPhone Memories first appeared on Gajitz.