Silver recycling by 3D printing

Description

Silver is a precious metal and emits a large amount of CO2 in primary production. To meet the growing silver demands for electronic equipment and silver jewelry, silver recycling is necessary as silver recycling reduces CO2 emissions by >95% compared with primary silver productions. However, recycled silver costs more due to extra steps and hinders the adoption of recycled silver.

We propose all-at-once silver recycling 3D printing process by using an LCD 3D printer (a very reasonable 3D printer, ~$500) and silver nitrate solution. Silver nitrate solution is obtained as the intermediate step product of the silver recycling process.

This enables simultaneously silver recycling and silver 3D printing with high-resolution and low equipment costs thanks to fast-growing LCD 3D printing technology. This idea opens up not only the economical silver recycling/manufacturing method but also hackers' creativity; for instance, 3D designed jewelry and 3D "conductive circuits&

Project Logs

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Exposure time estimation for 3D print
Kai • 06/13/2022 at 02:02 • 0 comments

Once I identify the right resin, the next step is to find the right exposure time (or light intensity) for a specific 3D printer.

To do that, there is a simple way: to create a working curve (a good reference: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Take-a-Working-Curve-Measurement-and-Create/).

To reduce the amount of the resin, I also made a "well" and put it into the resin tray to confine the resin area.
Resin development by simple UV light curing
Kai • 06/13/2022 at 01:57 • 0 comments

To create a customize resin, I combined multiple chemicals and first tried them if they were cured by a simple UV exposure.
SDS of resin in each 3D printer is very helpful in estimating what chemicals may be appropriate for those 3D printers. I created a small amount of resin and tried to cure them as shown in the picture to identify the right photoinitiator for the system.