Plastic Forest

The vision of this project was to create an art piece that used the former functionality of 3D printing tree supports as a way to get the user to reflect on plastic waste in manufacturing. The project had the goal of collecting exclusively waste 3D printing tree supports that were bound for the trash and converting them to artwork.

3D printing is a really interesting process in which users can download files from the internet and ‘print’ them in 3D space on relatively inexpensive machines. Filament is what these printers use to print, and is relatively inexpensive. This process can, if done right, generate almost no waste, as all of the plastic used in the process goes straight into the model. However, if a 3D print model requires what is known as ‘support’ to properly print complex geometry, then filament waste can quickly accumulate. This has gotten even worse in recent years with the introduction of single extruder multi-color printers, which require the process of ‘purging’ filament in order to change colors. This can cause a massive amount of waste to be generated when printing even small models, with the purge filament sometimes generating multiple times the mass in waste of the actual printed model. Pictured below is a collection of this multi color waste over the course of time.

Recycling filament is a process that is also quite inaccessible to everyday users. Filament recycling takes several different machines to do right, which often far exceed the cost of the printer and material itself. So, this is often only done in industrial settings. All things considered, the 3D printing industry, especially in the hobbyist space, has also started to become extremely consumerist and wasteful. More then ever, there are single use and non-functional 3D prints being uploaded to the common 3D printing databases that serve little to no practical or even artistic purpose. This can be thought of as ‘printing just for the sake of watching the machine go’. And, I am susceptible of this trend as well, printing far too many ‘test prints’ then are really necessary for the calibration of my various 3D printers.

One of the waste products of 3D printing that has developed in recent years is organic or ‘tree’ supports. These supports resemble roots or organic structures as they are based in fractal geometry to create as little support material as necessary to help a print succeed. An example of tree supports can be seen below.

These tree supports are quite a visually interesting artifact of 3D printing, and something that often gets thrown away during post processing. I thought that for the sake of this project, it could be interesting to collect these tree supports from my local makerspace, the BTU lab, in order to demonstrate that there is value in using these waste products in an artistic form, with the goal of making the user reflect on their own plastic waste from 3D printing.

Initial sketches of the project looked like this:

Initially I was anticipating that this project would resemble a ‘trashy’ or ‘recycled’ aesthetic, with the tree supports being collected form different color prints, the wood being unpainted, and the text on the front being a mismatched collection of fonts. I wasn’t sure what initially gravitated me towards this aesthetic, but at the time I thought it looked best. Below is an example of the recycled aesthetic I was imagining.

However, as I continued developing the project over the course of a few weeks I started to gravitate towards more of a contemporary art aesthetic. I figured it would be more visually interesting for the complex and often erratic nature of tree supports to be contrasted with a chic, dark painted board of wood with simple and clean sans serif font reading ‘plastic forest’ below. I figured that this juxtaposition would more accurately get the point across that there is art within this waste, and that the tree supports were not just trash but could almost be treated as a celebration of advancements in 3D printing technology and the greater computer science field.

Collecting tree supports was easier said then done. All 3D printing supports are designed to be easy to remove, but depending on the geometry of the printed object, print quality, and other factors, tree supports can actually be quite difficult to remove, especially in one piece. So, my job over the course of time was to post process my own and others prints in the BTU lab by carefully, with tweezers, trying to remove the tree supports as delicately as possible so as to preserve the entire tree. This took a considerable amount of time with lots of broken tree supports along the way.

The fabrication process essentially consisted of the aforementioned sourcing materials over the course of 3 weeks, then sourcing and sanding a scrap wooden board, spray painting it black, printing the “plastic forest” letters in a clean sans serif, gluing the tree supports and letters to the board, then doing documentation photos.

The finished product is a sanded, painted board with many different styles and sizes of tree supports fastened to it. I used E6000 glue to fasten everything to the board which unfortunately left some visual artifacts, but hopefully did not distract from the overall design. All things considered I was quite happy with the finished construction.

My artistic goals were to inspire users to think deeply about plastic waste using a computationally interesting design of recycled plastic, and I believe that this goal was met. I have since gotten feedback from my peers both in Aesthetics in Design and in the BTU lab, and I have gotten a variety of opinions and initial takeaways, most of which relating to its greater message and interesting design.

This project is inherently artistic, with its only function being to get more plastic out of the trash. Still, I wish that I had given more consideration to a functional purpose.

With the permission of Zack Weaver from the BTU, my goal is to hang this project in the BTU lab as a means of inspiring students to do creative things with their plastic waste, or consider ways that they can save plastic during the printing process. 

Overall I am quite happy with how this project turned out, and am hopeful that my project can get across the greater message for 3D printing users to be considerate of the waste they generate during their printing process.