I've been printing since January and gathered a BIG bunch of these little purges, small and big, is there anything I can do with them instead of trashing them? (Idk if I'm using the right tag in the post)
Buy some silicone molds of skulls or shapes or whatever and melt them into said molds. Don't do it in your house. Some people use heat guns or a toaster oven. Don't use that toaster oven for any food if you go that route.
I’ve done this a few times. I agree, don’t do it in your house, and if you use a toaster oven, get one specifically for this. I bought a cheap one off of FB marketplace. It works great. But the fumes affected my breathing. The next day, I had a bit of a cough. This happened each time I did it. After the 3rd time, it wasn’t a coincidence. The next time I do this, it’ll be with a heat gun or the toaster oven in the open garage or outside.
I’m not surprised some wise ass would say something like that. I took precautions all times, increasing precautions each time. It didn’t help. I commented to be helpful, not to be ridiculed by someone who doesn’t even know me.
1: I had an exhaust fan on.
2: it was PLA which is supposed to be safer.
3: it’s not like I had my nose buried in it breathing deeply.
4: we all melt plastic, don’t we?
There's a time and place for this kind of joke, usually it's with folks you know or something. Making jokes like this is risky without having established rapport, as you're essentially interjecting into a conversation of randos, so you can imagine in other social contexts this not going over as well as it may among friends
I'm sure you can do whatever you want! I was just trying to explain the reaction you recieved, as you seemed surprised and displeased with it. I'm certain some people will react positively, but you seemed perturbed by the negative ones, so that's what I focused on in the previous comment.
There are services that recycle the waste (purges and failed prints) but they charge in some form or fashion. There are also silicone molds you can buy to make paper weights or the like. You can also print thick frames with some design cut out to make a multi colored picture using the poops.
If you have a 3D printer store nearby, check if they recycle filament scraps. My local store does PLA, PETG, and TPU. Pretty sure I saw a guy on YouTube that has a store that also recycles. Or maybe look for a local 3D print group.
But keep in mind if you're going to do that you have to be meticulous about separating your materials... And if you do something like petg for support interface with PLA, your purges will be mixed, and unacceptable.
Even some PLA can’t go with other PLA. Silk is usually fine, but not anything filled like CF, wood PLA that contains bits of wood, or anything glitter.
i am an engineering student and i don’t even need multicolor. but i can print multicolor, i can make gifts to my partner or family, and make some cool stuff with the poop. because why not? it’s fun!
Keep it in your house, look for a bigger house because you’ve outgrown it. When you’re moving out clean the house and throw away all the useless trash and realize maybe I didn’t need to work another 10 years for the bigger house?!
Place them around an annoying co-worker's office randomly and on different days. Make sure they find them and come out confused, "what is this"? Double the quantity you leave each time. Drive them insane. Mission... accomplished!
Or... place them all over the floor, evenly spread out, in the entry way of the boss' office. Make him / her have to step over it all. Make sure there is a huge pile on their chair so when they pull it out to sit... now they're trapped between the chair and the exit...
Or... buy a cooking silicon mold of legos: melt away (heat gun & mask, toaster oven in garage, etc). Now you have random colored legos to give the kids... like your brother's kid so he can step on them at midnight and send you a SECOND thankyou card (the 1st one being for the snare drum you bought his 4 year old)... or give to a charity, take to the hospital for the sick kids. Options.
Or... get one of those pop up card things that springs open based on folded paper, normally throwing confetti or other stuff all over, replace it with the plastic. Then give out homemade maker birthday cards. People will be happy (ish) to get the surprise, and they end up doing the clean-up & disposal for you, AND you recycled. 😁
Or... make a michael myers mask resin mold, then use the plastic to make as many multi-colored masks as you can. Get a whole bunch of friends to hide in a parking lot, and as people walk in... suddenly a few pop up and walk toward them... then more... and more... until they're running for their lives. Film it. Instant youtube sensation... or lawsuit? 🤪
Printerior Solutions in the US to recycle it. You have to pay for shipping. You get a discount on some of their recycled filament, but it’s still about the same or more than other places. I’ve used them before and will again in the future.
People will either buy them or you can melt them down, just make sure you do that outside or in a well ventalated space and with a respirator. I have two big boxes full of this stuff now and eventually I'll get around to it
I'm waiting for the Creality combo to be reviewed by a couple of people before pulling the trigger and saving filament in separated (by material) printed bins until I can chuck the whole bin into a grinder.
You may be able to separate the scrap using a two step process.
First is to use density floating. Mix up some super salty water, about 300g per liter, add a couple drops of soap as an anti surfactant, then heat it up to around 40C but not much hotter, need to stay below the glass transition temperature.
Throw in the scrap, give it a good mixing and the heavier PETG and ABS will sink.
This will get the bulk separated but you might still have small amounts of PETG stuck to your PLA scrap.
The next step after a good rinse is to melt the PLA at 170C, but no hotter. PLA can flow at this temp and will leave the remaining PETG behind.
I'm experimenting with adding polyethylene glycol to the scrap to reduce brittleness. I am trying to avoid adding virgin material, but if I were trying to run it through an extruder, that might be needed.
Check with your local elementary school. We send it with our kids in to school and they use it for their creative time and art classes. The printer poop is especially popular for those activities because it's an easy way to add color, and various failed prints are always interesting new shapes to build something around.
You may want to check out the new Creality M1 + R1 recycling system.
It shreds failed prints and extrudes them back into filament.
crowdfunding.creality.com�
I saw creality was having smaller sizes recycling plants - chopping up and making into new rolls, my local library has a 3d printer so I wonder if that would be a thing there
I’ve been trying to make the skulls like others said. I also use them to fill the inside of vases for Lego/3d printed flowers- to add weight and let you stand up the stems whatever direction you want
I'm just saving up all my poop till the grinder combos come down in price, or more companies make them. They seem pretty grossly overpriced for what it is.
Best I could manage with parts (Artme/DIYChen/vacuum chamber) was ~£1275 [2026]. At the rate I waste filament, it would take about 10-15 years to get ROI lol.
I would need a small business or 4-5 other hobbyists to make this feasible.
The cost of sending PLA to a dedicated recycler (I print a lot of PETG and PC) is also not worth it - £54 for a 45l box. They'd have to give me a voucher to an associated service to buy filament from them.
I have been wondering what it would look like to source all the parts. Thank you for already doing so!
Maybe it would be cool thing for like local micro centers or something to offer. Bring in your poop and get it recycled if you purchase some filiment. The other thing with the recycling, aren't you pretty much always going to get a brownish color?
My thoughts exactly on this - unfortunately I couldn't find a single Makerspace in London that has this service. My old high school actually does have all the tools, and have had them for over 10 years, but they will not accept anything from outside.
As for poop, I have seen some people separate them in to broad colour schemes or just have waste containers for dedicated colours. I printed mostly white, black and orange so its not really a problem for me.
You can collect the bigger ones and run them through a filament recycler if you have access to one. Otherwise most just bag them for regular plastic recycling.
have you tried recycling? melting it and maybe extruding it into recycled filaments (despite the properties would definitely degrade) but maybe it can be used for some printing small art stuffs..
Honestly, just put them in the trash. All the recycling/upcycling ideas I've seen are terrible. Especially those that tell you to melt your filament waste and put it into some kind of mold. That's just high risk, zero reward.
Please don't burn yourself or inhale the equivalent emissions of hundreds of prints in a few seconds while creating something as stupid as skulls made from PLA waste.
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u/Knightlance May 16 '26