To provide a more sustainable alternative to electricity production, wind power has been developed around the world. In the United States, for example, total annual wind power generation has increased from 6 billion kWh in 2000 to about 380 billion kWh in 2021. There are still many challenges ahead to overcome, but progress is commendable. Among these challenges, some customers believe that wind turbines cannot be built unconditionally, while also considering the recyclability of the blades produced.

To address these challenges of energy shortages, we use additive manufacturing techniques, primarily Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), to design wind turbines out of plastic. This is a more environmentally friendly energy use model.

We note that there is still a lot of resistance to the rollout of wind turbines. Although there are already fairly strict rules to limit the environmental impact of wind turbines, the rules are not understood. They worry that wind turbines will cause noise pollution and block their view, so they don’t want wind turbines in their gardens.

In order to make people look at wind power in a different light, we began to try to use 3D printing to make wind wheels, use magnets for old hard drives and met like-minded partners on the Internet.

Actually, plastic 3D printing is sometimes not as difficult as it looks, and it took us a little while to get it right. Later, a fully custom wind turbine was printed, measuring 20x20x20 cm. This wind turbine has been running well for several months, which is a great encouragement for us.

Sustainability of 3D Printing

Pure plastic blades can be completely recycled, unlike glass fiber reinforced blades used by other manufacturers. We purposely choose reinforced plastics with no added fibers for printing. Because with today’s recycling methods, plastic is still “contaminated” and has much less potential for reuse.

PLA biomaterials may be produced somewhere and then shipped to another industrial facility, where they are processed into filaments. And it is already available locally, and it also has better mechanical properties than PLA.