Need Help!- Plastic Off Cuts - what to do what to do?

[Mattyvdv]

Hey guys and girls.

I work at a plastics and polyurethane engineering company. As our workload rises so do our plastic offcuts. This is creating a major amount of clutter in the workshop and is just a real pain to have lying around. I am interested if yous have any ideas to either use the offcuts to cut out cool little give-away items or even if you can offer any insight into what the company you work for does with their offcuts?

thanks for your ideas.

offcuts are mainly - acrylic, hdpe, acetal.

also, i we have access to a multicam cnc router and other general machining machines.

[jasonjetski]

Hi Matt,
How big are the offcuts?
I make small R/C helicopter parts from black Acetal or Delrin
www.micro-heli-concepts.com
I might be interested in buying some acetal,or maybe you could offer your customers some keyrings with their company logos on them.
Every customer loves to get more than they expected.
Regards Jason

[jjobezo]

I would suggest that you bundle them by type in ten pound bundles and offer them for sale. I think you will be surprised by the demand for small pieces of good plastic. One company here uses a recycling company to reform the plastics into larger pieces. They fired one company though that took the off cuts and shredded them and sold it in East Asia for fuel.
You would probably need to settle on a minimum piece size in the bundles like no less then one cubic inch in volume for any one piece.

[ftkalcevic]

Originally Posted by jjobezo I would suggest that you bundle them by type in ten pound bundles and offer them for sale.

I second that. It's hard for hobbiests to find afforable quality plastics. Cut-offs are usually more than adequate.

[stokestack]

I just bought a square foot or two of acrylic scraps this morning. The place I bought it from sells it for about $4 a pound, if I remember correctly. That seems kinda high. I'd imagine you can sell it for a better price and still make some money.

Shipping could be costly, of course.