Engineers David Díaz and Nahielly Cervantes teach recyclers in Ixtlán de Juárez how to separate plastic for recycling into 3D printer filament.
Plastic bottles at the recycling center in Ixtlán de Juárez, Mexico. They could be milled, melted, and extruded to make filament for 3D printers.
Recyclers in Ixtlán de Juárez, Mexico, learn how to separate plastic bottles for recycling into much more valuable 3D printer filament.
Plans at the FabLab in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Plastic pellets that engineers at the FabLab in Oaxaca, Mexico, will melt and extrude into filament for 3D printers.
The engineers at the FabLab in Oaxaca, Mexico, use a toaster-oven to heat plastic pellets.
Engineer David Díaz adjusts the plastic extruder at the FabLab in Oaxaca, Mexico.
A 3D printer with 3D-printed plastic parts at the FabLab in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Engineer Matt Rogge demonstrates the 3D printer he built at the FabLab in Oaxaca, Mexico.
A busy street climbs a hill on the edge of Oaxaca de Juárez, the capital of the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Up one flight of stairs in a fresh-painted white residential building you’ll find the FabLab community fabrication center and Oaxaca’s first locally-produced 3D printer and plastic extruder.
This radio report first aired on Deutsche Welle in English: [html] [mp3]. The photos here are mine and first published here.
On a steep road on the outskirts of Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, a low buzz and plastic fumes emanate from a white house. A ribbed white paper tube snakes out of a window on the building, exhaling a light smoke which mixes with fumes from nearby open-air cooks and the sooty exhaust of rumbling, unmuffled bus engines. Inside, the tube is attached to a machine that’s gobbling plastic flakes—which can come from used drink bottles—through a funnel also made from a plastic drink bottle. At the other end of the machine, a spinning wheel draws out the fresh-melted polymer into a black filament just three millimeters wide and value hundreds of times what it was worth in in bottle form. Continue reading Building a New Economy on Soda Bottles and a 3D Printer→
Men died in gun battles over the installation of windmills in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, three years ago. Opponents argued that energy companies misled them and that community leaders rented out collective lands without consulting everyone they should have. Today, protests continue, but the growth of wind farms and other renewables seems assured: Mexico boasts almost 2 gigawatts of installed wind power capacity and plans to install perhaps another 12 GW by 2022. All that clean energy is a big change for this country, which is the world’s ninth-biggest oil producer and perhaps the 11th-biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Continue reading Mexico’s Renewables Revolution Creates Tension→
Over the last twenty years, Mexico’s electricity sector has shifted from being almost 100 percent state-owned and centralized to about one quarter privately generated. This summer, the Mexican government signed into law energy and electricity grid reforms that will accelerate the decentralization of its electricity production (See “Mexico Opens Its Grid to Competition.”). By the end of this year, a new agency should have a regulatory map available for power producers large and small, said Edgar López, renewable energies director at Mexico’s Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) at a conference in Mexico City last month. Continue reading Power Production Decentralizes in Mexico→
Journalist covering global development by way of science and technology.
