Today on Adafruit’s weekly live 3D Hangouts, we will be sharing a guide and video featuring DIY 3D printing filament and print recycling. Here’s a quick roundup of other DIY 3D Filament stories that caught our interest to whet your appetite!
One of will.i.am’s first projects as Chief Creative Officer for 3D Systems has been to broker a collaboration between 3D Systems and CocaCola to launch a 3D printer for post-consumer waste from PET plastic coke bottles.
From the Cubify product page:
“Waste is only waste if we waste it.” – will.i.am
Exclusively printing in post-consumer waste, the EKOCYCLE Cube 3D printer recycles what you use, so you can remake into new, meaningful, beautiful and better things.
The EKOCYCLE Cube 3D printer lets you stylize your digital world and make it real, printing in high resolution, fast speeds and with beautiful complexity only matched by nature. It unlocks the limits of your style.
EKOCYCLE – Setting a new standard for how we make things
Each EKOCYCLE cartridge turns the equivalent of 3 bottles into your next wearable fashion, music accessory or desktop décor. With a simple tap you get to decide how it’s made, where it’s made and when it’s made with your EKOCYCLE Cube 3D printer. (read more)
From the CokeStyle announcement:
EKOCYCLE is a sustainability-minded partnership between will.i.am and The Coca-Cola Company. The goal of the program, as will.i.am explains, is to “partner with the most influential brands around the world and use technology, art, style and inspiration to change an entire culture. We will create aspirational lifestyle products made in part using post-consumer waste. We will make it cool to recycle. And we will make it cool to make products using recycled materials.”
“The EKOCYCLE Cube takes 3D printing to the next level, giving people all over the world the ability to transform discarded waste into useful, functional and fashionable objects,” said will.i.am, Chief Creative Officer, 3DS. “This is the beginning of a more sustainable 3D-printed lifestyle.”
The current collaboration with 3D Systems to launch the innovative EKOCYCLE Cube 3D printer fits naturally with other EKOCYCLE products made with recycled materials such as Beats by Dr. Dre ® Studio headphones and New Era® 59FIFTY fitted caps.
“With EKOCYCLE products, consumers have been able to get beautifully designed items made with recycled materials,” notes Kelli Sogar, Senior Global Licensing Manager at The Coca-Cola Company. “With the EKOCYCLE Cube, there is enormous potential for everyone, from students and home crafters to artists and inventors, to feel a more direct connection with recycling and think of it as an integral part of creating something new. It’s not just about making an object at home, it’s about making a change in how we think about recycling.”
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
