Compostable printing materials

Dane · 2015-03-05T19:07:11.000Z

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

Dane · 2015-03-05T19:09:00.000Z

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!

AtomJaay · 2015-03-06T01:35:14.000Z

wsdot.wa.gov

464.1.pdf

8.38 MB

Fungi Perfecti – 3 Jun 10

The Petroleum Problem

Thank you for visiting fungi.com, and for your interest in the BP oil spill disaster and the potential for mycoremediation. We are being inundated with requests and cannot individually address all of the questions we have received. We are in direct...

and then there is this

Modern Farmer – 6 Jan 15

Plastic-Eating Mushrooms Could Save the World

Austrian design team harnesses plastic-eating mushrooms to help hunger.

Est. reading time: 2 minutes

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

The Mind Unleashed – 28 Aug 14

Fungus Discovered in Rainforest Capable Of Eating Plastic Pollution

One of the biggest problems facing the earth, plastic pollution, could soon meet its match if students at Yale University are able to breed a recently discovered plastic-eating fungus on a large scale. Plastic pollution, exemplified by the giant...

Creastudiostore · 2015-03-08T17:33:24.000Z

Hi Laurits,

Check this guys:

http://matterlab.xyz/

Cheers

Laurits · 2015-03-14T16:40:43.000Z

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 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?

Laurits · 2015-03-14T16:41:24.000Z

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