Case 1: Marine plastic recycling
NTT Docomo has implemented a project to collect plastic bottles (marine plastic waste) washed up on the coast of Okinawa, recycle the materials, and use 3D printing to make smartphone cases as an initiative to raise awareness of the problem of marine plastic waste. .
3DPC received the collected marine plastic waste and provided a one-stop service for recycling it into materials for 3D printing, manufacturing smartphone cases using 3D printing, and painting the smartphone cases, providing the product manufacturing solution that NTT wanted.
Case 2: CFRP/GFRP recycling, 3D printing materials
In response to a request from a major chemical manufacturer, we received a pellet of a thermoplastic FRP material that was not originally developed for 3D printing, and we recycled the pellet material and developed a material for 3D printing.
As part of our service, we provide 3D printing tests to evaluate the practicality of 3D printing materials, and report the results of our recycling process development as 3D printable materials.
Conventionally, 3DPC was said to be difficult to recycle. We have succeeded in recycling FRP materials such as CFRP and GFRP into 3D printed materials, and have published an article in The Chemical Daily.
Example 3: Recycling Unused Inventory of a Consumer Products Provider
We provide recycled 3D printing solutions to the unused inventory challenges faced by major consumer product providers.
Large consumer product providers are constantly plagued with unused inventory issues. Unused inventory is inventory that remains unsold per production lot.
From a recycling point of view, unused inventory is a recycled material that does not require cleaning, but due to its unstable supply, it has not been possible to incorporate it into a fixed product supply chain. 3D printing recycling can manufacture parts of various shapes using the same equipment without redesigning molds, etc., simply by converting input data. Therefore, on-demand manufacturing is possible, and as a development for the near future, we have implemented recycling and 3D printing materials using unused inventory and 3D printing manufacturing of practical products.
Approximately 50 kg of materials were recycled into 30 products. This project is underway, and we plan to carry out development for larger size and mass production in the future.
