Imagine printing plastic household products in the comfort of your own home, then later melting them down and reusing the plastic to print new products. It sounds like a scene out of the futuristic cartoon The Jetsons, with an eco-friendly twist.

But a group of HMC students are working on a project—funded by the college’s Shanahan Endowed Student-Directed Project Fund—that might help make such a concept reality one day.

“The technology for 3-D printing is still very much under development, but it could certainly become significant for society in the future as ease of use and cost decreases,” explains Ian Bullock ’10, one of the students leading the project. “Currently, due to material costs and printing speed, the printer is probably best used for components for engineering prototypes, though someday it could be used to make objects for more everyday use.”

The team of eight students, who split up into a mechanics team and an electrical team, embarked on the project during the 2007-08 academic year—setting up a blog to capture their progress.

They started with the goal of first constructing a replicating rapid-prototyper — RepRap, for short—printer, which can manufacture most of its own parts by building them up in layers of plastic.

The electrical team focused on soldering and testing the control electronics for the printer, while the mechanics team built the Cartesian robot—the mechanical part of the printer that positions the plastic-dispensing nozzle during printing.

The nozzle deposits thin layers of heated plastic, progressing from the bottom to the top of the printed object.

Once the students complete the printer and get it printing basic objects, including fly swatters, coat hooks and door handles, they say improvements will be needed for both the printer and its accompanying product design software.

As such, the team hopes to bring on more students to work on various related small projects that would improve the printer in various ways.

“If 3D printers become widespread, it seems possible that they could be used as a means of local recycling,” says Bullock, an engineering major. “If a home contained a lot of 3D printed parts used as simple everyday objects, it might be possible to melt down the plastic and then reprint it as a new object when needed.”

Stay tuned for the next episode of that.