Re-working used material?

[Clancey 0]

While prototyping I'm using a hell of a lot of material that gets thrown away. That's just the nature of what I'm doing, there's no way around it.

So, does anyone have any means, or is there any machinery available I can use to turn the old parts and offcuts/structures into material I can use again? Is there a limit to the number of times it can be melted?

It just seem so stupid to be wasting over 90% of the material I buy.

All ideas welcome.

Thanks.

[kcel 11]

Part of the problem is that the heating of filament to the point where you can print with it alters its structure to the point where we can't reliably print with it again.

I've read somewhere that can mix used filament with new filament 50-50 in some cases. That would mean you need raw filament pellets, plus your 3d prints ground up and some sort of extrusion mechanism.

There were a few projects around to let you try to do something like that. The Filastruder comes to mind, but I don't think it ever became to a solid product.

A quick googling shows there are some projects out there trying to do this. I imagine a solution will arrive within a couple of years.