Recycled tyre TPE

Treed Filaments is an Italian filament manufacturer that stands out for its wide range of materials for FDM 3D printing. In its catalogue, you can find everything from technical filaments to filaments developed for architecture and artistic creation.

Recycled Tyre filament is a material that is part of the FDM family of flexible 3D printing materials. This filament is composed of Thermoplastic Elastomer (TPE) combined with rubber derived from the tyre recycling process.

Image 1: Recycled Pneumatic Filament. Source: Treed filaments.

The development of this material has required extensive research and collaboration with the Swiss company Tyre Recycling Solutions (TRS). Together, they have succeeded in producing a sustainable filament with a wide range of applications in various sectors.

Inherited properties

From a technical point of view, the recycled tyre filament has excellent interlayer adhesion and good abrasion resistance.

Image 2: Wheels 3D printed with recycled tyre filament. Source: Treed filaments.

Its hardness is Shore 80A, making it a material with great flexibility. In addition, due to the nature of its composition, this filament has a deep dark grey colour, a matt finish and a texture with a certain roughness reminiscent of real tyres.

A sustainable material

Despite being a very common product that is part of everyday life, tyres are a very environmentally damaging waste and their disposal remains an ecological challenge to this day.

Thanks to research by companies such as Treed Filaments and TRS, it has been possible to convert this waste into useful raw materials that can be used for a variety of applications in different sectors, transforming this waste into a valuable and sustainable resource. In the case of recycled tyre filament, tyres are turned into powder for the manufacture of 3D printing filaments through a recycling process.

Recycling aims to convert waste into new products or raw materials for further use. Recycling prevents the waste of potentially useful materials, reduces the consumption of new raw materials, energy use, air and water pollution, and reduces the emission of greenhouse gases.

The tyre recycling process begins with the collection of tyres and the separation of their component parts, achieving the selection and classification of the raw material necessary to begin the transformation.

Video 1: Recycled Pneumatic Filament. Source: Treed filaments.

Once the rubber is insulated, it is cut into manageable strips and ground into powder. TPE (Thermoplastic Elastomer) is then added. This ensures that the material retains the properties of rubber and can be processed into filament form.

Each spool of recycled tyre filament contains more than 20 % rubber. From a single tyre it is possible to obtain enough material for the production of 9 pneumatic filament spools of 500gr each.

Applications

Recycled Pneumatic filament is a material suitable for a wide variety of applications, including:

• 3D printing of tyres for radio-controlled cars or vehicle models.
  Production of shoe soles.

Thanks to recycled pneumatic filament, it is possible to recycle waste that would otherwise pose a serious threat to public health through the release of chemicals and pollutants into soil, groundwater and rivers.

The use of materials such as recycled pneumatic filament for the manufacture of prototypes or final parts has a significantly lower environmental impact than using other materials and provides a sustainable and high quality alternative.