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Hey Laurits,

As has already been said here, PLA is an eco-friendly plastic made from corn starch and is indeed compostable with a little love. PET is fully recyclable and the same material that water bottles are made of. I recommend PLA as its the most common, recyclable, compostable and ubiquitous plastic out there.

Feel free to visit my hub or contact me if you would like to print in PLA, PET, PETG or any of the materials I have listed, or even if you just have questions. https://www.3dhubs.com/copenhagen/hubs/protoneedcom

Regards,

Dane

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Hi Luke – cool! Printearth seems to have the properties I’m describing. I’ll try finding someone who can print with it.

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Hi Luke – cool! Printearth seems to have the properties I’m describing. I’ll try finding someone who can print with it.

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Hi Ralph – thanks! Yeah, bioFila might be an option – “when you throw it in a landfill or soil it ultimately breaks down”. I’ll try to find out how quickly that happens.

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Hey Dane

Thanks for the pointers, but I don’t think PLA or PET would work as I’m looking for something that’s compostable on its own and breaks down quicker than regular plastics. I think PLA and PET would take many years to break down to its own, right?

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Just in case anyone else is looking for filaments with similar properties to what I’m looking for – it seems sugar might be an option.

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Here is a reddit post about growing oyster mushrooms in a woodfill PLA printed substrate: http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/2t7rkm/growing_mushrooms_on_woodfill_pla_xpost_from/

So, if you factor in the % wood in your overall print, you’ll have a head start on the breakdown time in a compost. Additionally, It is my understanding, if you make the compost a bit on the acidic side of the pH scale (potential Hydrogen for anyone who didn’t know), the process of PLA breakdown will be expedited.

There are few different types of wood being used to dope PLA filament, everything from bamboo to cherry wood.

Hope this is helpful info, please post your results.

@AtomJaay

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You may want to look more into using Oyster mushrooms to do the dirty work of your art project. They may have an accelerated time table of total breakdown over the compost bacteria. Also, it is a great way to promote the idea put forth by Paul Stamets that mushroom mycelium “eats oil”, which means that it has the ability to break any hydrocrabon bond and render petroleum or other complex hydrocarbon chains into fungal sugars. The testing by Battelle labs suggests that the “fruit” of the oyster mushrooms contains no hydrocarbons and are most likely edible.

So, you could potentially feed some folks with your art pieces faster with a touch of Mycology.

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Will your files for the printed devices have this type of structure? Image is of the printed woodfill puck file used for the Oyster Mushroom experiment.

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TED 2008: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world (Part 1/2)

1 Like
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Hi AtomJaay – Thanks, that’s a pretty cool suggestion! I think the image of mushrooms growing from the kind of objects I want to make (smartphones, tablets, laptops etc.) is quite neat – I’ll attach a mockup.

The models I have for printing are solid/do not have the kind of structure as the one in the oyster mushroom experiment. But I could change the structure so the mycellium would have a larger surface area to “eat”.

I wonder how effectively the mushroom would be able to break down the plastic in a woodfill structure. I’ll look more into that. Do you happen to have a take on it?

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Not sure, but I nudged the redditor that made that oyster puck… also Could we get some colorfabb guys in here for feedback… that is the brand used in the experiment and it is the “House Brand” of hubs lately. @Nikki

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Saw your nudge. :wink:

That experiment actually failed: after 3 days of expanding mycellium inside the “puck” growth stalled and withered.

As best I can tell the mycellium liked the wood filled PLA just fine, however the problem seems to be a lack of moisture. Specifically, wood-filled filaments don’t seem to wick moisture AT ALL, the plastic “casing” is too complete around the fibers.

I am trying again in a double-pronged experiment:

a) I am going to print a puck with greater density and smaller pores, so that perhaps the structure of the puck will wick moisture into the interior spaces “mechanically” via capillary action. I feel like this may be a tough line to walk between providing enough water and too much.

b) I’m preparing a culture of blue oysters on conventional rye spawn, and then i’ll insert a puck like the original one into the spawn bag. I’m hoping to see whether the mycellium will spread happily into the puck while having the benefit of the conventional spawn maintaining proper humidity. This is intended to confirm if woodfill is yummy to the fungus in the best conditions.

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Thanks for the update and the extra effort posting over here! Any suggestions pertaining to composting 3D filament which was the original scope of the art project?

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Hey AtomJaay,

Thanks! I think this is a great suggestion and I’m currently growing Blue Oyster mushrooms out of a kit. I have a small business that does 3D printing and I’m currently looking for a way to sustainably dispose of my PLA which is about 95% of what I print. I think that mushrooms have a huge potential here. Do you have any links or resources that I can use to learn about using mushrooms for this sort of thing?

Regards,

Dane

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Hey amaurer3210,

Thanks for doing these experiments. I saw this on reddit a while back and was immediately amazed at seeing a use for 3D printing I had never thought of! I hope your experiments go well as I would like to do something similar!

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and then there is this

http://aem.asm.org/content/77/17/6076.full

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Hi Laurits,

Check this guys:

http://matterlab.xyz/

Cheers

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amaurer3210 – thanks for the puck-update! Will be awesome if you can get it to work. Could you possibly post results from “Experiment B” here? Would be very useful to know if woodfill is indeed yummy!

I’m “borrowing” the idea of the object being eaten by the fungus for some more hand-made stuff – hope you don’t mind :slight_smile: Casts in a mix of sugar (isomalt) and straw/wood pulp that contain mycelium or plant seeds which will *hopefully* be able to feed on the casts. Let’s see if it works… Not super-optimistic about the mycelium being able to survive the casting process + lacking oxygen while the cast object is still breaking down.

So, I’m doing hand-made stuff since I don’t have the time+confidence to improve on your woodfill experiment (my project has to be finished pretty soon). But! I would still love to do prints in some kind of compostable or environmentally harmless material. Something you could just leave in the dirt somewhere and it wouldn’t cause any trouble for plants, animals etc. Maybe the trickiest bit is that it needs to be something that’s pretty easily available. Anyone here have more suggestions than those already mentioned?

I was tipped that PVA is easily soluble; does anyone know if it’s also environmentally friendly?

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Creastudiostore – thanks for the tip, MATTERLAB’s filaments look pretty interesting. Any idea if similar stuff is available right now?