Gizmos & Gadgets: A 3D Pen That Reuses Your Recyclable Plastic Household Waste

July 23, 2016 – Meet Renegade, a 3D pen that you can use to recycle the plastic garbage bags, soda pop bottles, and other plastic you collect every time you shop. The developers, a London, UK team, who launched a Kickstarter campaign a few short weeks ago have already exceeded their 25,000 pound objective with more than three weeks to go to their August 15, 2016 deadline.

The developers describe their invention as “not the smallest, thinnest, lightest or cheapest 3D pen in the world.” They acknowledge that it cannot “weld wires, burn wood or cut through foam.” It doesn’t come with a smartphone app. All it does is take that polymer-created household waste you collect and use its ChupaCut shredder and a proprietary stand for holding the strips of raw material which can then be fed to the pen to extrude into molten plastic to create objects.

The ChupaCut shredder can handle plastic bottles, bags, and plastic film with a thickness of between 0.14 and 0.35 millimeters. The stand is designed to handle six different cartridge spools to feed the pen.

On the Kickstarter site the Renegade team describe the technology as a solution to the trillions of plastic bags and bottles that get into the environment annually and never get recycled. They cite the 1,000 years it can take for plastic to biodegrade and the millions of sea birds, marine mammals and other ocean life that is threatened by plastic pollution.

So what do you use a 3D pen for? 2D and 3D finished art, or prototyping. And while using it you can contribute to reducing waste plastic in the environment.

An investment of about $130 US (100 pounds UK) through the Kickstarter campaign will get you a Renegade 3D pen, the ChupaCut and stand. An investment of approximately $250 US (190 pounds) will get you a double pack.

The developers are in the planning stages to scale Renegade to become a full-sized 3D printer that will operate using waste plastic. They hope through the adoption of their technology that it will encourage people to reuse the plastic they collect and save the world from plastic pollution.