Reform3D

At Halve Waste, we want to spotlight and support individuals, groups and businesses that are “doing good” and helping us to reach our target of reducing our waste by 80% by 2030.

The next business in the spotlight is “Reform3D” located in North Albury. The business has been operating for 3 years and has been important in diverting plastic materials from the Albury landfill. Des was happy to talk to Halve Waste about Reform3D and what their future goals for this business are.

What type of plastic do you recycle/use to manufacture with?

Reform3D – “Re-forms Polymers into products using large format 3D printing”

We source local waste engineering grade plastic from other industrial manufacturers, for example when they cut parts out of sheet plastic – we can receive the ‘skeleton sheet’ which is typically destined for landfill, this can be up to 50% of the sheet – depending on the part geometry.

We also process HIPS (high impact poly styrene), HDPE and are continuously trialling the printability of new plastic types and sources.

What do you do with the plastic that comes to your site?

We work closely with DMD plastic recycling which supply us with granulated materials where we can guarantee the purity and quality of the raw material.

The next step is to pelletize the plastic to make it uniform shape, size and density, we add any additives that are required at this point.

From there, we can sell pellet to other printers or moulding companies, and the balance is fed into our custom-built large format 3D printing cell which primarily uses a robotic arm to form the parts we produce.

We produce headwalls for all types of stormwater pipe on the Australian market, and we print our internally designed ‘Culvert Kit’ – a complete culvert solution that can be easily transported in a ute or small trailer to the location and installed by hand – thereby reducing the cost and timeframe for install for vehicle culvert crossings

As our pipe has an arch design, it has 4 times the crush strength than corrugated plastic pipes which are the most commonly used today. (www.reform3d.au)

How is Reform3D helping to reduce waste to our local landfill?

Reform3D is the leading company in Australia focused on printing recycled feedstock, we believe large format 3D printing can be used as an alternative moulding process to create well designed products from plastic sources that would otherwise be discarded.

As a manufacturer of products using recycled content, what is your biggest issue and what can the local community do to help?

I would ask the community to look at the product offering we have available, and try the product once – we believe the design elements deliver saving’s in time and cost for users and councils, and that will lead to repeat purchases – if there is any negatives in the design – its just a ‘double click of the mouse’ to improve, or create new products from scratch.