research

Utility Research Lab develops award-winning sustainability tech for 3D printing

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 22:11:29 +0000

Utility Research Lab develops award-winning sustainability tech for 3D printing Michael Kwolek Wed, 04/23/2025 - 16:11

Michael Kwolek

Over 460 million metric tons of plastic are created each year and only about 9% is recycled. This has led to ever-growing problems with waste disposal, litter, water contamination, microplastics and a host of other issues.

What if we could rethink our approach to plastics upstream in the manufacturing process before these problems manifest?

Michael Rivera, assistant professor and director of the Utility Research Lab, is doing just that, along with lab members Xin Wen, PhD student, and S. Sandra Bae, PhD candidate.

One of the challenges in recycling is that several types of plastic parts may be used to assemble a single item. These multi-material objects are more difficult, and in some cases near-impossible, to recycle because different plastics need to be processed independently, but cannot be easily separated.

A dissolvable solution

To improve sustainability in 3D printing, Rivera and his team propose using dissolvable interfaces between parts during assembly to simplify their separation for recycling at end-of-life. These interfaces can be made with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyvinyl butyral (PVB), high impact polystyrene (HIPS) or other materials.

Dissolvable materials like PVA are used as support structures, labels and other elements in 3D printed objects. The team goes further by printing PVA in objects themselves to simplify disassembly and recycling. To do so, they developed a computational design algorithm that automates the process of generating and cutting dissolvable interfaces in multi-material 3D-printed objects.

This idea is inspired by the concept of design for disassembly (DfD), “the consideration of ease of disassembly in the design process, aiming to enhance the efficiency of disassembling products by evaluating factors such as time, tools, and effort required for disassembly.”

For their work, the team has been awarded Best Paper (Top 1%) at CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Yokohama, Japan, for Enabling Recycling of Multi-Material 3D Printed Objects through Computational Design and Disassembly by Dissolution.

Sustainable benefits

The team won the Innovation award at CU �鶹ӰԺ’s 2025 Campus Sustainability Summit Student Ideas Showcase

The team has also found that their technique can improve the strength of bonds between different materials in a 3D-printed object. Wen notes, “We ran a bunch of tensile and shear tests that show that varying the parameters of the interface joints can increase the attachment strength” compared to standard multi-material printing.

Alternative manufacturing processes using lego-like building blocks can make reuse and recycling easier, but require more time to build and take apart. The Utility Research Lab’s techniques simplify both of these processes.

Results show their technique can allow for ~90% of the total mass of their designed objects to be recycled. The remaining 10% consists of dissolved material that also has potential for recyclability.

They note in their paper that “recycling 3D printed plastics is a key way to reduce their environmental impacts. Life-cycle assessment has shown recycling 3D printed objects made from PLA and PETG back into printing materials can reduce environmental impacts by more than 50%.”

Wen elaborates, “There are a couple ways you can recycle” these plastics. “There are some DIY recycling machines that you can buy or build off open source designs and there are companies like Printerior that recycle sorted and separated pieces.”

Currently, the team’s technique requires more time to print than conventional multi-material 3D prints due to increased complexity of printing requirements. But they believe with ongoing advancements in printing technology, much of that can be overcome.

For their efforts, the team work won the Innovation award at CU �鶹ӰԺ’s 2025 Campus Sustainability Summit Student Ideas Showcase.

Winner: Best Paper (top 1%) at CHI 2025

Designs for impact

The team has filed a provisional patent. Rivera explains, “We'd like to be able to license to existing CAD software companies and build an extension inside current 3D printing slicers” by PRUSA and other brands.

They also plan to engage with a local recycling facility this summer to connect the research they are doing in the lab to real-world applications by understanding the logistics and methodologies of plastics recycling at scale.

Looking even further, Rivera sees opportunities in applying this research in the much-larger injection molding industry, a common manufacturing process where molten materials like glass, plastic and metal are injected into a mold to create a form. A pen for example may have separate injection molded parts for the shaft, clip and rubber grip.

Rivera details, “Our algorithm does not really care about the [manufacturing] process per se. If we were to move to injection molding, we would do a multi-stage [process] where you mold the first material, inject the dissolvable on top, and then do another one.”

The team is optimistic for the future of this research.

For those in the maker community, they have developed a plug-in for Grasshopper, a visual programming language in Rhino used for design and fabrication. It is available upon request for non-commercial use.

As for next steps, Rivera says, “For us to have long-term impact, we need the people who run the companies that make the tools. Our conversations with people doing injection molding will be enlightening.”

Recycling is extremely difficult for things built with more than one type of plastic. Michael Rivera and the Utility Research Lab team have developed a novel way to disassemble 3D-printed objects for easy recycling.

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Fabrics That Remember

Michael Kwolek — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:30:44 +0000

Fabrics That Remember Michael Kwolek Fri, 04/18/2025 - 13:30

Laura Devendorf describes how wearable technologies like e-textiles can help people to gather insights into and reflect upon intimate moments rather than to modify or enhance them.

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Biodegradable nails make manicures more sustainable

Michael Kwolek — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 16:30:54 +0000

Biodegradable nails make manicures more sustainable Michael Kwolek Thu, 04/03/2025 - 10:30

ATLAS researchers developed press-on nails that are biodegradable, colorful and endlessly customizable with open-source technology and low-cost biomaterials for a more sustainable fashion moment.

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What’s your breakup song? This researcher wants to know

Michael Kwolek — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 19:21:31 +0000

What’s your breakup song? This researcher wants to know Michael Kwolek Tue, 02/11/2025 - 12:21

ATLAS assistant teaching professor, Anthony Pinter, researches breakup songs and how breakups affect our digital lives. He shares some top breakup songs and why they affect us.

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ATLAS PhD Kate Starbird wins PECASE award for research on crisis informatics and disinformation

Michael Kwolek — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:50:44 +0000

ATLAS PhD Kate Starbird wins PECASE award for research on crisis informatics and disinformation Michael Kwolek Mon, 02/03/2025 - 10:50

Michael Kwolek

The ATLAS community is excited to learn that Kate Starbird, PhD (Technology, Media and Society ‘12) was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

The PECASE Award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. The awards are conferred annually at the White House following recommendations from participating agencies.

Now associate professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, Starbird came to ATLAS on the recommendation of Bobby Schnabel, Computer Science department external chair and professor. She had a BS in computer science and a desire to broaden her expertise. The ATLAS Technology, Media and Society program (now Creative Technology and Design) seemed the perfect fit.

Schnabel recalls, “I was fortunate to meet Kate in summer 2006 connected to a visit to Seattle for the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Kate had just finished her professional basketball career and was exploring options for grad school, and from our discussion it was clear the multidisciplinary ATLAS PhD was a great fit for her interests. We were thrilled that she chose to enroll at CU, where she was a star student, and her career has blossomed ever since.”

Starbird began her research career with Leysia Palen, professor, founding faculty, Department of Information Science, who was conducting pioneering research in crisis informatics. They studied the use of social media during crisis events and developed mapping techniques to make the data useful to those affected, officials and volunteers. Together, they published the paper Working and sustaining the virtual "Disaster Desk" in CSCW 2013.

Over the years, Starbird found that rumors and misinformation spread on social media had become a bigger part of crisis events. Originally much of this was accidental, but in time it became clear that intentional disinformation was sinking into the infrastructure of social media. This has since become the greater focus of her research.

Palen was effusive in describing Starbird’s impact: “Kate demonstrated early on in her PhD degree that she is not only a gifted scholar, but a generous one. I saw it then and I see it today: as the leading pioneer in disinformation research, Dr. Starbird offers the fruits of her talents in ways that are intended to protect and improve our society. She is beloved and needed.”

Starbird notes the importance of the interdisciplinary nature of her work. “We're blending this understanding of technology, this understanding of media—and media is vastly reconfigured by internet technology and how it's been used in the last 15 to 25 years—and then the impacts, not just individually, but on society at large.”

This overlap of disciplines is signature of what makes ATLAS special. Our community members apply elements of engineering, design, and the humanities to analyze problems and develop sophisticated responses to them.

Design thinking is a key aspect of this approach. Starbird notes, “There are all sorts of folks that come into the space of studying mis- and disinformation from political science or other [disciplines]. I'm looking at what it is about the design of these information spaces and how people are using [them] that are shaping not just how information flows, but all of these other broader phenomena. So I do think design is critical in my work.”

Many of us can feel overwhelmed or even hopeless when it comes to navigating the current media landscape. From her perspective as a leading expert in the field of mis- and disinformation, Starbird offers some advice for staying engaged and informed:

I would approach information spaces right now with a lot of humility in the sense of not being overconfident about what you're seeing. We all have a tendency to think that the problem is someone else, and yet we know that there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of propaganda out there that individuals play a role in spreading. Sometimes that's aligned with where you want the world to go and then also in some cases, we become pawns in somebody else's political game.
In terms of how we approach information spaces, try not to tune everything out—I don't think that's a good idea. We need to be aware of what's happening. Definitely take breaks—there's a lot coming out. It can be really depressing at the moment for some of us and understanding that you don't want to be spending 24/7 in some of these information spaces, but do spend half an hour, spend an hour and be intentional about it.
I also don't want people to be too skeptical because [if] we get too skeptical of everything, then we tune out. Focus on learning what we can trust rather than not trusting anything. Try to build up a set of sources that you really feel you can trust. Look them up, look at who funds them. Where did they come from? How long have they been around? Spend some time with those.
When you go to social media, you don't get to determine what comes at you, especially if you're on TikTok and some of these algorithmic [platforms]. Be critical there, but also learn to find information sources that you can trust.

For more information on Kate Starbird’s work, refer to her page on the University of Washington website.

Photo credit: Doug Parry / University of Washington Information School

Kate Starbird (ATLAS PhD) was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the U.S. government’s highest honor for early-career researchers. Now an associate professor at the University of Washington, Starbird’s groundbreaking research in crisis informatics and disinformation highlights the value of interdisciplinary engineering and design.

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Why social media algorithms hurt after a breakup

Michael Kwolek — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 19:19:01 +0000

Why social media algorithms hurt after a breakup Michael Kwolek Fri, 12/13/2024 - 12:19

Breaking up is hard to do — especially when you can't control what you see online. Anthony Pinter weighs in on how people manage their data after experiencing breakups.

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Textbook diagrams come to life with CU �鶹ӰԺ AI tool

Michael Kwolek — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 16:23:20 +0000

Textbook diagrams come to life with CU �鶹ӰԺ AI tool Michael Kwolek Thu, 12/05/2024 - 09:23

Ryo Suzuki, ATLAS assistant professor and director of the Programmable Reality Lab, has created an AI tool that can make static textbook images move on the page.

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3D printing with coffee - An in-depth interview with Michael Rivera

Michael Kwolek — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 17:27:58 +0000

3D printing with coffee - An in-depth interview with Michael Rivera Michael Kwolek Wed, 12/04/2024 - 10:27

The Utility Research Lab's work demonstrates possibilities for replacing traditional plastics in 3D printing with organic, compostable materials.

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Textbooks come alive with new, interactive AI tool

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 19:18:55 +0000

Textbooks come alive with new, interactive AI tool Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/01/2024 - 13:18

ATLAS assistant professor, Ryo Suzuki, makes textbooks more interactive with AI-powered tools that turn diagrams into effective simulations for more personalized and immersive learning.

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Brewing Sustainability: Michael Rivera powers up 3D printing with coffee grounds

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 15:40:15 +0000

Brewing Sustainability: Michael Rivera powers up 3D printing with coffee grounds Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/26/2024 - 09:40

Carnegie Mellon University alumni profile details how our Utility Research Lab director employs sustainable materials in place of plastics in 3D printing and textile development.

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