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Recycling printcores? And other stuff?


Brulti

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Posted · Recycling printcores? And other stuff?

Hello,

 

I have a question: is there something in place to recycle the printcores from the UM3/E?

 

Or to recycle any other parts of the printers actually, beyond what is already mandatory in our respective countries. I mean, I have one unusable printcore that would probably only need to have the print head changed since I damaged it by printing wood and glow with is, the other one would probably need more work since it got buried in a huge PLA blob when a print failed, but there may be parts that can be salvaged and reused.

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Posted (edited) · Recycling printcores? And other stuff?

Well the heater and sensor are a 25W heater and a pt100. That can be easily removed and reused for other printers.

 

The heater block and nozzle only work with um3. And nobody, not even china clones, sell a nozzle that could fit. So if the nozzle breaks, you need to buy a new 100€+taxes cartridge. 

 

The other option is to buy 3dsolex cores, but they are way overpriced. Ofc, if you are handy, they will save you a lot of money on the long run. 

Edited by neotko
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    Posted · Recycling printcores? And other stuff?

    Thanks for the info on the heater and sensor, I didn't knew.

     

    I guess I should have been more clear in my first post though, because what I meant to ask was if UM had something in place for the recycling? Since the UM3 printcores are quite exclusive, recycling them might save money if all they need is to replace a component or two, or they could even resell them as second hand?

     

    Like ink printers company who know recycles the cartridges which saves quite a lot of money, and the cartridges can be reused many times. If UM only needs to change the printhead on a printcore, maybe it would be more cost effective to recycle them than to produce brand new ones?

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    Posted · Recycling printcores? And other stuff?
    2 hours ago, Brulti said:

    Thanks for the info on the heater and sensor, I didn't knew.

     

    I guess I should have been more clear in my first post though, because what I meant to ask was if UM had something in place for the recycling? Since the UM3 printcores are quite exclusive, recycling them might save money if all they need is to replace a component or two, or they could even resell them as second hand?

     

    Like ink printers company who know recycles the cartridges which saves quite a lot of money, and the cartridges can be reused many times. If UM only needs to change the printhead on a printcore, maybe it would be more cost effective to recycle them than to produce brand new ones?

     

    That's one of the questions that did happen when the beta and release was done, I know little since I'm totally disconnected from ultimaker but afaik they don't have any plan to recycle them. Indeed there's a lot of money on each core, the black plastic for example is made on Peek on the UM3 cores. They are really well crafted and the price is good for what it is, but the lack of recycle plan to save cash or just not be able to change something simple like a nozzle (even if that could break it by a user error) is a bit a shame. But mind that, afaik, um3 is focus on pro users that don't care about price but productivity, so if you have big $$$ you prefer to just buy a new cartridge instead of the manual labour hours of fixing it. For a big company 1 hour of a pro technician is more expensive than just buying a new core and plugging it I suppose?

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    Posted · Recycling printcores? And other stuff?
    7 minutes ago, neotko said:

    1 hour of a pro technician is more expensive than just buying a new core

     

    I think that's the crucial point.

    Disassembling a print core, replacing of the consumable parts and finally reassembling it...
    This needs a skilled employee, the right tools plus the spare parts...
    I'm sure, this would be much more expensive than simply throw it away and buying a new one.

    (who wants a refurbished printcore that is more (or equally) expensive than a new one...?)

    It's a pity sometimes, but the reality for many products nowadays.

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    Posted · Recycling printcores? And other stuff?

    It would make sense to have such a service indeed. Most of the time you will only ruin the nozzle, or maybe the teflon insulator inside. 

     

    Most parts could be reused to build a new core.

     

    As @tinkergnome said the core is quite difficult to take apart and put together again, it's not impossible of course but i would say you have 50% of chance to destroy it (the steel part is very fragile). Any way, if you need to change the nozzle and are willing to try it, i have some spare nozzles from creating hardcores with standard cores, so if you need one tell me ;)

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    Posted (edited) · Recycling printcores? And other stuff?

    @DidierKlein Knowing my manual skills, or lack of, the probability of breaking it completely will probably be closer to 100%... ':D

     

    Well, it maybe expensive and difficult for us, or for any company that uses UM3 printers, but it shouldn't be that difficult for Ultimaker themselves since they do build the cores. So, you would think that they have the proper equipment to disassemble and reassemble the printcores, thus have a low probability of breaking them completely. And I guess they also conduct regular quality control tests on the printers and printcores, beyond the test print done with each printers.

     

    @SandervG What's the current view on recycling for Ultimaker? Is there any discussions on the subject inside UM at the moment, or was there a discussion on recycling before and what came out of it?

    Edited by Brulti
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