
Open-Source Recycling - pelim
http://preciousplastic.com/
======
herbst
While i nether have the room nor the time to do this, i love the idea. I also
love the "Why" section of the website, so simply yet so mighty.

~~~
rootlocus
I'm hoping to find some workshop that would share the tools and space (for a
fee), but I have no idea where to look.

Making stuff out of garbage would make me feel like Tony Stark.

~~~
herbst
I could see hacker spaces doing this, there is almost always room and a budget
for new machines.

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smellf
I wonder if this project is based off the earlier Recyclebot? That was
something I'd wanted to build for a long time.

[http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12948](http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12948)

[http://reprap.org/wiki/Recyclebot](http://reprap.org/wiki/Recyclebot)

[http://www.appropedia.org/Recyclebot](http://www.appropedia.org/Recyclebot)

Precious Plastic certainly looks further along though - and their instructions
look to be higher quality, too.

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agumonkey
Always wanted to do this, but I was afraid reprocessing plastics would release
toxic fumes or hard to detect dangers for the average guy. I can't stand
throwing things anymore.

~~~
albertojacini
I'm obsessed with not throwing away things and really appreciate a cool
project like this. But nonetheless, I would like to emphasize that recycling
is no substitute for not producing and not consuming plastic, which is by far
the best way to fight what is depicted in the Why? section!

~~~
agumonkey
You're into the San Francisco glass jars + tissue bag trend ?

~~~
albertojacini
No

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pingec
A positive thing for sure. But the hardest part is not the processing, it`s
the sorting of different types of plastic and the washing phase if required.

~~~
dzhiurgis
How advanced are the sorting facilities? I assume they must use some image
recognition and robotics already. Do they use deep learning yet?

~~~
ska

       Do they use deep learning yet?
    

"yet" ? Deep learning is no panacea - it's not clear why this would even be on
a top 5 list of approaches to try on a putative ML part of the process. There
seems to be a lot of confusion on this, generally.

Most likely they just use cheap labor for sorting

~~~
rvense
I'd think once you have built sensors that can digitize the whatever
properties of the plastic that are relevant to sorting them, actually
recognizing the different types of plastics would be rather simple.

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aznpwnzor
Someone who knows more should prove me wrong, but...

Intuitively shouldn't a dedicated plant's machinery have much higher
efficiency? Coupling that with the biggest problems of recycling being the
combined energy costs of transportation and processing, this seems to not
solve anything?

It kind of solves only one leg of the transportation, but the final recycled
plastic will still need to be transported. That's again assuming costs of
transportation are linear with respect to number of sources (but I don't think
that's true...). And assuming same thing about processing energy efficiency,
this does worse with the processing energy part.

~~~
hosh
I think we'll find something more interesting if:

\- The outputs of this recycling tech can be fed into personal fabrication
tech (3D printers, etc.)

\- Power generation is decentralized (solar, etc.)

It's part of a set of tech that would allow for the localization of
manufacturing, closing the whole lifecycle locally. This in turn brings things
back to the community. It's not always about total energy efficiency.

~~~
smellf
> The outputs of this recycling tech can be fed into personal fabrication tech
> (3D printers, etc.)

I can:

[http://preciousplastic.com/videos/build/extrusion/](http://preciousplastic.com/videos/build/extrusion/)

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winterismute
My wife was wondering whether this can be considered 100% healthy: don't you
need plastic to reach a very high temperature to model it that way? Doesn't it
start releasing whatever thing that might be carcinogenic or such?

~~~
maxerickson
Thermoplastics will melt before they start to chemically decompose. Whatever
residue is in the plastic might be liberated by the heat (those residues will
also migrate out at room temperature, so we tend to be somewhat careful about
what residue ends up in products).

Thermoset plastics will not melt and will release all sorts of magnificent
things when heated.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoplastic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoplastic)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosetting_polymer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosetting_polymer)

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fake-name
From
[http://preciousplastic.com/machines/](http://preciousplastic.com/machines/)

> You can make the molds completely yourself using CNC to mill the lathe or
> simply welding them.

.... What? "mill the lathe"? I think they accidentally a word in there.

>These lines can be used to make new raw material (3d printing filament),
granulate, spinned around a mold or up to you to find new creative ways.

> Well suited to make large and more solid objects, the oven itself is also a
> great machine for prototyping and making plastic test.

> Since it works with molds you can easily replicate and set up a production.

This website desperately needs copy-editing.

\----

Also, I'm completely tired of people coming into an existing engineering
discipline and deciding to come up with a whole bunch of terms for existing
processes. It's not "a injection", it's *an injection molding machine. All the
new terminology does is make things extra confusing.

~~~
wila
The people behind the project are Dutch, German, Mexican [0] and none of them
-from what I could see- would normally speak English as their first language.

Why don't you send an email to point out the mistakes in their text? [1]

They might even appreciate it :)

[0] - [http://preciousplastic.com/thanks/](http://preciousplastic.com/thanks/)

[1] -
[http://preciousplastic.com/contact/](http://preciousplastic.com/contact/)

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Fastidious
Not everyone has the skills, nor the tools to do this. I love the idea, and
wish someone would make the machines (or the entire kits to assemble at home).
I would buy them!

~~~
bigbugbag
As said in the intro video, ask the local handyman.

This is not out of reach, they managed to build those in Africa with whatever
was available.

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asimuvPR
I've been looking for something like this for a while. Was already thinking on
developing mynown machines but this just saved me lots of resources. Great
project!

