3D printing can feel wasteful. Every discarded bit of filament you throw away costs you money, and over time, these off-cuts can add up. Though necessary to ensure overhanging elements print correctly, supports can be a major source of 3D printing waste.
If you’re throwing these bits into the trash, you might want to consider what else they can be used for first.
Use it as terrain for wargaming and other miniature hobbies
If in doubt, wargaming
Organic tree supports look a lot like actual trees, especially if you sand them down, prime them, and then paint them brown. With a bit of additional work on your part, you can turn large and small support structures into scatter terrain, which can add a great deal of variety to your wargaming battlegrounds.
In the video above, Uglubs Armoury walks through one tree design that uses a base of MDF, supports for trunks, and some sort of foliage (like aquarium plants, or even something you’ve designed and printed yourself). This is just one example design, and there are other things you can do with this technique.
If you have a resin printer, your supports will look a lot straighter and more rigid, like metal girders. This makes them perfect for use in dystopian landscapes as remnants of ruined buildings. For other hobbies that take place at a miniature scale, like model railways or even LEGO setups, you could also incorporate supports into your terrain.
Turn it into new filament
For the most dedicated 3D printing setups
Turning old filament into new filament isn’t an easy process. You first have to blend it up and turn it into pellet-sized chunks before melting it down, at which point it is extruded onto a spool in a form that your printer can use. This isn’t a simple DIY job, and instead requires the use of specialist equipment.
The cheapest option is something like the ARTME 3D MK3S Light DIY (€650), which itself is a kit that you’ll need to complete using 3D-printed parts. It’s a neat project, and you’ll have something you can use to recycle your old filament when you’re done, but keep in mind that you’ll need a lot of waste product to justify going this route (and you’ll need somewhere to store it, too).
Recycling your own filament is a labor of love, as this CNCKitchen video demonstrates. The filament you end up with should be of decent quality, but the heating and extruding process will degrade the filament slightly each time it’s processed.
Melt them down and set with silicon molds
Gently roast till perfectly molten
PLA is the most common filament type, it’s (generally) non-toxic and it has a relatively low melting temperature of around 150ºC. Since it melts easily, you can stick it into a metal tray and use an oven to return it to a liquid form. From here, you can use a silicon mold to create new shapes by pouring the molten PLA in. You can even mix different colors for a marbled effect, if you want. My favorite is this dice mold by MakerWorld user lcxg.
It should go without saying that you shouldn’t be cooking actual food in your PLA oven. Consider buying a used toaster oven (or a new cheap oven) for use in your workshop or garage and in other craft projects if you’re going this route.
Use them to weight your other prints
Grind and fill
PLA is pretty lightweight, and this can have its downsides. In order to use less filament for prints that don’t need to be super strong, you can reduce the infill density in your slicer, which means you’ll use less new filament within the main body of the print.
Some people like to use filament to weight prints that have a low infill density by grinding up filament and inserting a pause point in the print, right before the final few layers. This allows you to pour scrap filament into the printer before it’s sealed up, adding to the item’s weight.
Use them for PLA welding
Any waste filament works
There are a few ways you can “weld” with PLA. One is to soften the two edges that you want to join with a heat source (or even a friction source like a drill) and then press them together tightly. Another is to use molten filament as a glue, which can work using a 3D filament pen or by melting old filament (including supports).
The simplest technique is to use a soldering iron to melt the old filament directly onto the surface you want to join, working quickly to ensure that you join the two sections before the filament has had time to set. From here, you can use cool water and then move on to finishing techniques like sanding, priming, and painting for a seamless result.
Recycle them
Still better than throwing filament in the trash
Recycling is the responsible way to sunset your waste filament, and it can take a bit more effort on your part than simply throwing this out with the trash. Some companies, like Printerior Designs, give you store credit to get cheaper rolls of recycled filament.
The easiest method might be your standard recycling collection scheme, particularly for PLA, which is classed as a biodegradable plastic. You’ll need to visit your local authority’s website to see how PLA is handled and whether there are other schemes in place (like taking it to a collection point). It’s also worth enquiring whether local amenities like libraries, maker spaces, and educational institutions have existing pick-up schemes (anywhere that already has 3D printers is a good start).
Even though I’m not into wargaming, I love the idea of using organic tree supports as scatter terrain. Did you know that leftover filament spools can also be turned into battleground terrain?
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