Polymer recycling in an open-source additive manufacturing context: Mechanical issues

The contribution of the present study is twofold: first, a general methodology to evaluate the recyclability of thermoplastics used as feedstock in open-source 3D printing machines is proposed. Then, the proposed methodology is applied to the recycling study of polylactic acid (PLA) material addressed to the fused filament fabrication (FFF) technique, which is currently the most widely used. The main results of this application contribute to the understanding of the influence of the material's physico-chemical degradation on its mechanical properties as well as its potential distributed recyclability.