green
The Half-Life of Things: Taking on Landfill Culture with 3D Printing
My parents had the same egg timer for my entire youth. It was a little, happy chicken-shaped plastic thing made in Europe. When, after 20 years or so, it broke,…
Design for Disruption: 3D Printing Short Runs and Distributed Production
Previously in this series, we’ve looked at designing for resilience and the concept of an industrial aftermarket for all things and 3D printed spares, as well as designing for installation, maintenance,…
Design for Disruption: Love and 3D Printing Redundancy
In this ongoing series, we’re looking for opportunities where 3D printing can disrupt large markets with millions of parts by applying new strategies. We’ve looked at how we can design…
3D Printing News Briefs, February 10, 2022: Business, Medical, & More
We’re starting out with business in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, as EOS has launched a new network to connect businesses with certified AM manufacturers and Meltio announced a sales…
The Brittle Spear IV: Incentives
Publicly traded companies have a fiduciary responsibility to do what is best for their shareholders. It is all well and good that management should be beholden to the beneficial owners…
Bluesint: Materialise Now Able to Recycle 100% of Sintering Powder for SLS 3D Printing
Even though we in the 3D printing industry often tout our technology’s environmental benefits, we do produce waste. In the case of powder bed fusion (PBF), we produce a lot…
The Brittle Spear, Part I: A Disposable World
As the tip of a spear grows ever sharper, it also becomes more brittle. Much has been said about planned obsolescence where companies engineer products to fail earlier than they…
AMGTA Commissions First Research Project on Environmental Sustainability of Metal 3D Printing
In November, the non-commercial, global trade group AMGTA, or the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association, was launched in order to promote the many environmental, green benefits of using additive manufacturing…
3D Printing and Mass Customization, Hand in Glove Part IV
Earlier in this series, we’ve discussed how we’re drunk on consumption, how we use up too much material, and that recycling has some constraints. Now we’ll look at how creating…
3D Printing and Mass Customization, Hand in Glove Part III
As discussed in the first and second installments of this series, we are drifting into a consumption-driven stupor and self-medicating our way through lives that, if we live in OECD…
3D Printing and Mass Customization, Hand in Glove Part II
In the first article in this series, I laid out a consumer consumption-driven world where our needs are never quite met by things. Our needs are now mistranslated into a…
New Method for Circular Chemical Recycling of PLA
In existing mechanical recycling processes, plastic items are chopped into fine pieces, melted and extruded into new plastic feedstock, which causes them to degrade in quality. Recycled virgin plastic is…
Industrie 4.0: Mein Har(t)z Brennt Part 2 Doubleplusgood
In the face of apathy, new dreams are emerging. From a technocratic perspective, these new dreams make sense. But just as we’ve seen with the European dream, an ever closer…
