(MIT News: Cambridge, MA) – While 3D printing has exploded in popularity, many of the plastic materials these printers use to create objects can’t be easily recycled. New sustainable materials are emerging for use in 3D printing, but they remain difficult to adopt because 3D printer settings must be adjusted for each material, a process generally done by hand.

To print a new material from scratch, one must typically set up to 100 parameters in software that controls how the printer will extrude the material as it fabricates an object. Commonly used materials, like mass-manufactured polymers, have established sets of parameters that were perfected through tedious, trial-and-error processes.

But renewable and recyclable materials’ properties can fluctuate widely based on their composition. So, fixed parameter sets are nearly impossible to create. In this case, users must come up with all these parameters by hand.

Researchers tackled this problem by developing a 3D printer that can automatically identify the parameters of an unknown material on its own.

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