In this first installment, [Michael] cleaned up the machine and restored it to a working state. In the next part injection molding will be attempted again, which should give some idea of the feasibility of turning scraps of PLA and failed 3D prints into smooth injection molded parts, assuming you have the CNC machine or patience to carve out the requisite molds, of course.

Lauren has used her economics knowledge to focus on the company’s finance and Shehara, also an Economics student, has focused on operations.  Liana, an MBA student, worked on relationship building; Mikael, a marketing student, worked on branding and Jules, an engineering student, focused on the machine’s operation.

110V is somewhat safer than 230V. The US had to much invested in 110V by the time 230V was available to make a switch over economical.

The process requires uncontaminated plastic that’s been cleaned and sorted depending on various factors such as grade and colour before going into the machine. It is then shredded into chips and transferred to a different part of the machine - a 3D printer.

UNSW business school student Lauren Hayes along with team members Shehara Hapugalle, Liana Nguyen, Jules Grimont and Mikhail Mathias won the 2019 Big Idea competition in the postgraduate category with their start-up idea called Closed Loop – a local-level plastic waste recycling business.

As in many things, the US was ahead of the times. The solutions were suboptimal, but were kept because switching to a better system would have cost too much. The rest of the world followed, but learned from the mistakes made in the US.

UNSW is located on the unceded territory of the Bidjigal (Kensington campus), Gadigal (City and Paddington Campuses) and Ngunnawal peoples (UNSW Canberra) who are the Traditional Owners of the lands where each campus of UNSW is situated.

I suspect the cost of not doing the change has been much much higher than the cost of doing it would have been.. The same with metric. I remember when Aus changed, and yes it was a lot of work. But it was done, and after 50 years nobody would think any different – the US should have done it inthe same time frame.. But yes, I agree, voltage is different, but if you look around the world the US is the only major economy with the low voltage..

The first major electrical power plant in the US (and probably the world) was 110VDC. That was partially a limitation of the equipment and partially a safety limit – 110V was considered low enough to not be immediately deadly if you touched it.

Although [Michael] had discussed using the machine for PLA with the seller to confirm that this would work, a user error meant that the now defective unit had been sitting idly for many years, until recently.

When AC equipment became available, the US stuck with 110VAC. The 110VDC light bulbs and other appliances could run on 110VAC easily enough.

“We thought it would be an amazing opportunity to spread awareness about reprocessing and get people involved at a community level to realise that reprocessing is actually in their hands,” Hayes said.

Closed Loop addresses plastic waste by renting out plastic reprocessing machines to community centres and councils and providing the public the opportunity to upcycle their plastic.

Aus was always 240V – indeed I often measure my power at 250V or so…. a while ago they theoretically changed it to ” 230 V (+10% to -6%), therefore providing an allowable voltage supply range between 253 V to 216 V” but I’m yet to ever see anything under 240..

“We realised that the most effective way for us to make an impact and spread awareness on reprocessing, was to start at a local level,” Hayes said.

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“I’ve found it highly valuable to be able to bounce ideas off a team. Everyone comes from a diverse background. As a result, we were able to strengthen our start-up idea and maximise our skillsets,” Hayes said.

We are still very firmly stuck at the barely useable (for workshop and large appliance use) 100V here in Japan. You can get 200V split phase if you need more power, but that’s still significantly less than what my toaster ran on back in Australia…

“In terms of what the processing machine actually does, is it different to a recycle bin. Reprocessing is when recycled plastic re-enters the world as new materials – rather than being just re-used, reduced, recycled. So, we take recycled plastic and it goes into the reprocessing machine. What it does is that it can produce new products such as bowls, iPhone cases, pot plants and coasters – depending on which moulds are used in the machine.”

The Closed Loop service is available on a subscription model and will initially target community centres and local governments in Sydney with the view of scaling out in the future. The subscription is inclusive of consulting fees, maintenance, provision of the machine as well as educational workshops.

UNSW postgraduate students winning the 2019 Big Idea competition at PwC Melbourne. From left to right: Mikhail Mathias, Jules Grimont, Lauren Hayes, Shehara Hapugalle and Liana Nguyen.

“The greatest way to have impact is to reach out to community centres and the government. We are working to place a reprocessing machine in every community centre in Sydney. We are also in discussion with numerous councils and looking to put a machine in their space as well,” Hayes said.

“The community centre will decide what customised moulds they would want to create out of the reprocessed plastic. As part of the subscription service, the community centre can request up to three customised moulds. That’s where our consulting service comes in,” Hayes said.

To achieve this, the team acquired an open-source reprocessing machine from Precious Plastics, a global community for plastic waste.

“We took part in the COMM5201 – Social Enterprise course which culminates in a presentation to a local Big Idea judging panel. This course enabled us to learn how to build our own social enterprise, beginning with idea generation to then developing the business case.”

The Big Idea is a national university competition organised by The Big Issue every year. More than 350 students from 11 universities entered The Big Idea competition this year with the finals held at PwC Melbourne. Both UNSW undergraduate and postgraduate teams were qualified for the finals.

“We’ve pitched our idea and are looking to raise funds through a GoFundMe campaign. We might also join an incubator to raise capital as we want to ultimately expand Australia-wide,” Lauren said.

Since the machine had been gathering dust and rust in the garage, fixing the machine up took a complete teardown to remove corrosion and resolve other issues. After this the original fault was identified, which turned out to be a shorted wire near the heater which had been turned up to a too high temperature, leading to the release of magic smoke and banishment of the machine to the Pit of Despair, AKA the shadowy depths of one’s garage.

When [Michael] over at the Teaching Tech YouTube channel bought a hobby injection molding machine a long time ago, one of the plans he had with it was to use it for grinding up waste bits of PLA filament for injection molding. Since the machine was bought from a US shop and [Michael] is based in Australia it required some modifications to adapt it to the local 220+ VAC mains, followed by adding a PID temperature controller and a small compressor to provide the compressed air rather than from a large shop compressor.

To date, the Closed Loop team has worked closely with the Precious Plastic community and also partnered with Defy Designs to raise social and environmental awareness.

With the split-phase system, the US has 220 availabe for all major appliances. You can even get 220 outlets installed for larger window AC units.

Local councils and community centres could soon be able to reprocess their recycled plastic waste thanks to an award-winning idea by UNSW Business School students.