PRUSA Research introduces recycled PLA to its offer

The “zero-waste” and “circular economy” trends appear more and more often in the marketing communication of companies from the 3D printing industry. The latest initiative in this area can be proud of the PRUSA Research company, which has announced the introduction of a PLA filament made from production scraps – “Prusament PLA Recycled” to its offer.

In the press release, PRUSA Research emphasizes that by producing its proprietary filament – Prusament, it makes every effort to ensure that the material that reaches customers is of the highest quality and meets the strict standards imposed by the manufacturer. As a consequence, a lot of material is lost in the production phase …

Our materials are characterized by excellent color uniformity, high dimensional accuracy measured in two axes, perfect winding and much more. It also means very strict quality control. Not every spool meets our stringent requirements, which generates a large amount of waste, especially if the error is found at the end of the spool winding.

Some of the filaments are used by the company in its own projects, but most are simply disposed of. Now this is about to change – production waste is re-smelted and the filament is re-created from it.

Compared to the standard Prusament PLA, the recycled version has a slightly higher manufacturing tolerance (± 0.05mm) and is not perfectly wound on the spools. While standard Prusament PLA still delivers better results thanks to stricter manufacturing tolerances, recycled PLA is suitable for printing large objects that are then post-processed. According to the manufacturer, there are also no changes to the PrusaSlicer configuration. You do not need to import any new profiles, but you can use Prusament PLA profiles.

A two-kilogram spool of Prusament PLA Recycled costs PLN 219.00, which means it is slightly cheaper than standard PLA. In terms of availability, the production volume depends on the amount of generated waste. For this reason, the number of spools available in the Prusa online store will be limited – the first batch of Prusament PLA Recycled on the market consists of 500 spools.

Source: www.prusaprinters.org