Verba makes feeding troughs for the pig industry from stainless steel and from recycled plastic. These recycled PE plates with a color film are made at Ekon in Limburg from PE plastic such as soda caps and other plastics. Once these plates have been processed, residual pieces are returned to Ekon to be used in the production of new recycled PE plates. The sawdust and drilling and milling waste cannot be used in the remoulding of new recycled boards. Guus Nijs and Fabian Heerkens, students at Avans Hogeschool in 's-Hertogenbosch have done a graduation project with Part-E, from cousins Robbert and Mark van Kaathoven, to make new granules from this sawdust, drilling and milling waste from Verba with which 3D printing can be done. This success is a novelty in the field of recycling and 3D printing. A subsequent graduation project will look at the marketing of products that can be made with this.
Article in MooiRooi:
Scoop from Rooi: Robot prints 3D with 100% recycled plastic
Fri 29 Jan 2021, 16:23
Sint-Oedenrode - What means a mountain of waste to one person is a pile of gold to another. More and more plastic is being processed into new raw materials. This makes it possible to work on a more sustainable world. Part-E, a young company from Sint-Oedenrode, is working on this in their own way. They make plastic granules, and recently came to a breakthrough after several tests.
Processing waste into something valuable is something the Van Kaathoven family has been doing for years. Cousins Mark and Robbert van Kaathoven are working with their company Part-E to process this plastic waste into usable, new products.
For example, they have processed production waste from feed feeder manufacturer VERBA into raw material. In collaboration with students from Avans University of Applied Sciences, they have succeeded in making these plastic granules reusable without any additional additives. With this, a novelty in the field of 3D printing was achieved within six months.
Using a robotic arm and a printer, objects of up to 7 by 7 meters can be printed at the Spark innovation lab in Den Bosch. Hardly ever before has an organization, anywhere in the world, succeeded in printing large products made of completely recycled materials.
The greatest desire now is to use the new raw material in various sustainable products. The first plans for collaborations have already been made. In cooperation with Spark, developments are in full swing to print the well-known concrete road blocks from 100% recycled material. The innovation is in full swing and it will not be long before the first roadblocks are made of a sustainable material.
