What To Do With VEX Waste?

Chit-Chat / Rumor Mill
1

Hello everyone,
Doing VEX creates quite a bit of waste(saw dust, used zip ties, bits of metal, broken motors, etc). What do you think is the best way of disposing of them?

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There’s really not much you can do with, saw dust used zip ties and bits of metal. All of those are expendable, and zip ties are very cheap. However broken motors can be repurposed depending on the condition. Such as get taken apart and used for prototype non vex projects.

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just glue it all onto your robot as nonfunctional decoration.

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Recycle them, because recycling companies accept metal, plastic, and (in some cases) rubber. This will ensure that you are taking precautions of making sure that your waste is at a minimal impact to the environment. :wink: Now, if we are discussing metal, see if you can form the metal into a piece that you could possibly use in the future and cut the unnecessary bits off with a bandsaw and recycle the rest. In addition, if you are worried about making waste with zip ties, you can easily re-use them by sticking your fingernail in or using a knife (with caution) to pry the plastic pawl apart to release. (I don’t really do it because it’s very time consuming, but you can do that if you’d like). Most broken motors are re-usable, and if you break a motor it will be better to send it off to VEX or repair it yourself, but if you don’t want to do either you can likely sell or donate the broken motors to someone who can likely take apart and use the motors for their own projects.

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Recycling the metal or taking it to a disposal company is simply a waste of time. And because Vex waste in usually not in very large amounts. The impact on the environment will be even worse, because of the Carbon Dioxide burned in the process of driving to the waste facility.

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This is a good point.

If you want to recycle the metal, it would be best gather it up over the course of one or more years, and take it all to be recycled at the same time.

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would it be viable to melt the zip ties down to make filament for my 3D printer?

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The filament comes in solid rolls, you would have to determine the type of plastic which the zip ties are comprised of. And then get a machine which makes melts the plastic and makes them into rolls. If only there was a 3 in one 3D printer.

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We’ll see how much you gather throughout the couse of this season.

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You forgot game elements.

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Game elements could likely be sold, to younger teams during offseason, to allow them to practice to later games.

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But broken game elements may not have much of a use.

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Game elements could be given to students (or even coaches) as souvenirs. (Even broken ones may work for this if a student wants one.)

Or students’ younger siblings can play with them, provided they’re safe enough.

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5 year olds play catch with itz mogos

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According to a quick google search, zipties are made of polypropylene, which is known to warp after cooling. Wouldn’t be fun.

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