Recycle Cardboard into Anything with 3D Printing!

hey guys paper is a really cool material it can be flattened varying degrees of thickness it can be rigid as cardboard it's strong its flexible its organic and in most of its forms its recyclable but it's still always flat even paper packaging like egg cartons have flat walls of uniform thickness but it doesn't have to be this way and in this video I'm gonna show you how you can use a vise a blender and a 3d printer to turn this cardboard into almost any shape that you can imagine so recycling generally works by separating the cellulose fibers in paper using water and physical processes making a pulp this pulp can then be used to make new paper products it's a pretty simple process as you can see from how many tutorials there are on DIY paper making but the paper is always flat because it's formed on a mesh screen this screen uses suction and gravity to pull the water out of the paper leaving the flat fibers behind however if you instead form the pulp by compacting it you can mold the paper into dense 3-dimensional objects I originally got this idea from will Howdy of 3d Brooklyn we've done some preliminary experiments with molding cardboard trent's with PVA glue I tried this myself with mixed results but after my internship at 3d Brooklyn and a lot of trial and error I was able to narrow in on a process for molding 3d objects out of cardboard newspaper or basically any other paper that can be turned into a pulp [Music] the process works by taking the wet paper pulp in a water-soluble binder material and compressing it on one axis in a 3d printed mold most of the water gets squeezed out in this process leaving behind the paper fibers tightly bound together with the binder if you're still watching at this point chances are you want to learn how to do this yourself so let's dive right in the first step is creating a mold the molds job is to take the high-volume poke and compress it down into the desired form my first paper molding experiment was this two-part disc mold this had two main issues the paper pulp shrinks dramatically when you compact it because about half the volume of it is water as a result the press needs to have a long range of motion in order to hold all the uncompressed pulp that it needs secondly with a two-part mold it's hard to remove the finished object after molding so I settled on a generic three-part mold design consisting of a base in interlocking perpendicular and straight wall and lastly a press tool that can slide freely inside the wall I have much more detail on this in my Instructables guide on the Thingiverse page you can download the files for seven different designs the disc cube triangle mesh sine wave topographic map dish and desk organizer on the node of 3d printing these molds need to be extremely strong to withstand the pressure of molding and will break if they're not strong enough so crank up the infill and she'll counts on your prints once you have your mold you're ready to make the pulp cardboard newspaper white paper food clam shells egg cartons and more can all be made into pulp the only kinds of paper you want to avoid are glossy paper and papers with plastic coatings you can mix multiple types of paper together and even use previous moldings that failed next the paper needs to be broken down into smaller pieces the shreds don't actually need to be that small and you could totally just rip chunks out of it by hand or use scissors as long as they're small enough to be mixed around easily I used an office paper shredder to break down large cardboard and paper sheets much quicker the next ingredient is the binder any water soluble or air drying glue should work but I've specifically tested three PVA glue rice paste and cornstarch while PVA glue is the strongest binder and is the easiest to obtain I prefer using rice paste because it's not plastic maintaining the eco-friendly and plastic alternative theme of this project you can make rice paste yourself by just simmering some cooked rice and water for about half an hour next combine the paper shreds and binder in a blender with water it's pretty difficult to estimate how much paper you'll need to fill a mold as the density the compressed paper is not always consistent or uniform for example these two blocks have exactly the same mass but one is nearly half the size of the other I'll have the masses of the molded objects I made as well as the ratios of dry paper to binder in the instructables guide so you can guess about how much you'll need to recreate them there's no exact amount of water you'll need to make the pulp and here's where this project becomes a bit more art than science you'll need enough water to wet all the paper and just enough for your blender to blend it all together into a uniform and a homogeneous mixture this will depend on your blender but you don't want to add too much water so it's best to start in small increments trying to blend until it starts whirling congratulations you now have a paper pole but before we can mold it we need to get some of the water out first I found using a cheesecloth work best but you can squeeze the water out by hand too you want to get the pulp to a clean light consistency so you don't really need to get every drop out then you can slap together the base and wall of your mold and reinforce it with clamps fill the mold with as much pulp as you can once it's packed insert the press into the mold and make sure it's aligned now it's ready to be pressed put the whole mold in a vise clamp or other pressing device and crank away my bolts are designed with the lip so you know when to stop pressing but if you want to make the final molding taller or more dense you can add in more pulp and press it a second time once you're happy with it leave the mold in the vise for 24 hours after that you can open up the vise take out the mold take off the clamps and use a screwdriver to lift off the pressing tool if all went according to plan you should be met with a slightly damp surface of molded cardboard we're gonna leave the wall and base on right now as we let the molded part dry as these paper parts lose more and more water they expand slightly in the axis of pressing and shrink in the other two it's hard to predict how much a molded part will shrink by as it seems to depend on how densely the fibers are packed which in turn depends on the size and geometry of your mold after a day or two of drying you should be able to detach the base in the mold easily and be able to push the part out of the wall you might need to use a press piece to help do this then you have to let it dry for a bit longer try to put it on a flat surface so it doesn't warp and put it next to a fan or vent to speed things up the last step is to trim off flashing where pulp squeezed in between the mold snips and scissors should be able to cut these easily at long last your paper pulp object is complete the final material is very unique to say the least it has an almost marbled look and the layer lines of the 3d print actually transferred to the surface of a part it's extremely rigid and tough and feels like something in between plastic in a very light wood which I guess makes sense given that wood is cellulose held together by a binder material which is exactly what we made here just like wood the material can be sanded pretty easily with high grit sandpaper smooth or flattened areas and can even be drilled kind of cleanly the parts are pretty strong and definitely can't be broken by hand I haven't done any quantifiable tests of the strength but I did hit one of them with a hammer a bunch of times so uh yeah a lot of people on instagram naturally told me to try burning these but I actually found that they didn't burn that well at least not with the small torch that I was using all that said the weakness of this material is water soaking apart in water for just a few minutes made it completely crumble apart however a lot of products in our day to day life don't need to be water resistant so I tried to make some useful objects out of the recycled paper pulp such as this dish this desk organizer this small container and this topographical map of Mount San Antonio all of these items feel and act like plastic but they're actually made from recycled paper it can even be recycled again by this process and should be compostable if they're made with an organic binder another advantage of this alternate paper recycling process is that it can make use of materials that traditional recycling can't the container I showed is made from paper egg cartons often cartons like these are made from paper that's already been recycled many times and so the fibers have become too short to be recycled into anything else these cartons often get thrown away as a result however with this 3d molding process I was able to make something new from the egg cartons and sequester its paper in a durable reusable form I've been working on this project for multiple years now but I'm still far from done with it I think there's a lot of potential in using paper by outside the box I'm making this video because I want to get other people exploring this too and the best way to do that is to give you guys all the tools and knowledge you need to run with it yourselves there are a few new directions to take this project the obvious next step is to do some proper tests on the strength and composed stability of molted paper but it also loved to see if these parts can be coated with some kind of non plastic coating to make them waterproof or if these parts could be machined on a CNC to add more detail or how a hydraulic press could take the manual labour out of the process if you have any thoughts on these ideas leave a comment down below thank you all for watching this if you want to experiment with this yourself I have an Instructables guide linked in the description below with all the details you could need if you like this video know what to do and if you want to see more videos like this subscribe XYZ [Music]

Channel: XYZAidan

Views: 1,233,221

Rating: 4.9281583 out of 5

Keywords: aidan, leitch, Aidan Leitch, XYZAidan, 3D, Printing, DIY, Maker, Adafruit, Recycling, paper, molding, cardboard, forming, recycle, papermaking, instructables, paper mache, papercraft, pulp, reuse, reuse contest, thingiverse, mache, Cellulose, Casting, recycled, ecofriendly

Id: 0ItPfhx3ulw

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/update_your_itunes]

The material that you produce in this video reminds me a lot of MDF.

I am curious to know if you can use saw dust/wood chips instead of paper when making the pulp.

[u/Maximilian-A]

This is not me in the video. I just shared it because I thought it would inspire someone to use this method.

[u/LegacyOfBob]

Pretty cool stuff. Have you tried coating the molds in like a light oil or wax in order to make releasing easier or is that not necessary?

[u/Wiener_Amalgam_Space]

I wonder if freeze-drying could be used to speed up the process. Get your cryodesiccator going, chuck your molds in there, and voila!

[u/robbob2112b]

Reminds me of the fireplace logs you could burn instead of wood, I wonder if you could skip the glue and just compress logs that would burn slow enough

[u/gjs31]

Would be interesting to see if you could coat in resin or similar to make it more durable/waterproof. There’s a few products we print/sell that may actually suit this process, so will have to give it a go.

[u/asswhorl]

The cardboard slurry is so appetising.

[u/SpoonXl]

this is incredible work, i run restaurants and have always dreamed that i could use all the cardboard i get from produce to serve food, this brings it a step closer

[u/inventiveEngineering]

awesome