A practical circular 3D printing recycling program for Australian makers For years, 3D printing has had an awkward truth sitting in the corner of every workshop: the pile of empty spools and the box of failed prints destined for landfill. Many kerbside recycling streams in Australia will not accept PLA, PETG or ABS, and the cardboard or plastic spools they ship on are similarly difficult to recycle locally.
Recycl3D is our answer, a simple, in-store return program run jointly by Global3D and OzFDM that turns that waste into store credit and new filament.
Customers of OzFDM can now drop off empty spools and failed prints at the Global3D workshop in Perth and receive $0.10 of OzFDM store credit per spool. There is no minimum quantity, no booking, and no paperwork, simply return your empty spools and drop them in our collection bin and we will add store credit to your OzFDM account on the spot.
How the program works Recycl3D has been designed to be deliberately low-friction. The intent is that every Perth-based hobbyist, university lab, design studio and engineering shop has a reason to keep their used material out of the bin and a reason to come back through the door.
1. Drop off empty OzFDM spools (or other compatible spools) and failed prints at the Global3D workshop counter. 2. Receive $0.10 OzFDM store credit per empty spool, applied to your account immediately. 3. Failed prints are accepted by weight and sorted by material at intake, we currently accept PLA, PETG, ABS, ASA and PA-based prints. 4. Credit is redeemable on any OzFDM filament purchase, including the recycled lines that will eventually be produced from the program. 5. No appointment needed, drop-offs are accepted during normal workshop hours.
What happens to the material Returned spools and prints are sorted by polymer at intake, cleaned, and granulated in-house at Global3D. The granulate then feeds into our Titan EXT1070 large-format pellet extruder, where it is either re-extruded directly into large-format printed parts.
Note: Eventually, we will compounded recycled material with virgin pellets and additives for re-spooling under a planned OzFDM recycled line.
The process behind this is not a simple "shred and reprint" — recycled polymer behaves very differently to virgin material. Moisture uptake, chain length, contamination and colour pooling all conspire to produce inconsistent flow and poor mechanical performance unless the inputs are controlled tightly. That is what the 2025/26 R&D program was for.
The R&D behind the process Through 2025 and into 2026, Global3D ran an internal R&D program focused specifically on closing the loop between desktop FDM waste and large-format pellet extrusion. The work covered intake sorting protocols, granulate size distribution, drying schedules per polymer, blending ratios with virgin pellets, and screw and barrel temperature profiles tuned for the Titan EXT1070.
The outcome is a process that lets us print large-format parts — tooling masters, scale models, fixtures, architectural mock-ups — using a meaningful fraction of recycled feedstock without sacrificing dimensional stability or surface finish. For customers, this means the spools you drop off literally become the next generation of parts coming out of our workshop.
Why this matters for Australian 3D printing Australia does not yet have a mature kerbside path for 3D printing waste, and shipping spools interstate or overseas for recycling rarely makes environmental or commercial sense. A local, Perth-based program where the material is processed in the same workshop that prints with it is about as short a loop as you can build.
For OzFDM customers, Recycl3D is also a small ongoing rebate — every kilogram printed becomes a few cents back toward the next reel. For the wider Perth maker community, it removes one of the genuine friction points of running an FDM-heavy workflow at scale.
Getting started If you already buy OzFDM filament, you do not need to sign up for anything new — Recycl3D credit attaches to your existing OzFDM account. If you are not yet an OzFDM customer, an account can be created at the counter when you drop off your first batch.
Bring your spools and failed prints to the Global3D workshop during normal hours. If you are running a high-volume operation (university lab, prototyping bureau, school workshop) and want to arrange a regular collection, get in touch and we will work out a schedule that suits.