Graduation Marc Aliana Guardia | Recycling 3D prints
Marc Aliana Guardia has graduated from the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering with his research on recycling 3D prints in a prototyping facility.
With his research Marc has investigated the opportunity of reusing the PLA waste stream that comes from prototyping facilities.
Recyling waste and failed prints back to FDM filament, closing the material loop.
In his research Marc investigated the role of FDM in prototyping design for product development, the most popular material and its current end-of-life scenario. He identified an opportunity in low-fidelity prototyping, where high mechanical properties and high-quality prototypes are not always required.
He tested and demonstrated that recycled PLA filament produced with a desktop recycling setup can be 3D printed with a desktop FDM printer, achieving similar low‑fidelity prototyping capabilities for design projects as virgin PLA filament, thus enabling the use of recycled PLA from 3D printing waste for low-fidelity prototyping.
The findings of his reserach are converged and conceptualized into a future vision, a roadmap and a short-term solution to explore and facilitate the implementation of PLA recycling for prototyping.
