WASTE COFFEE FOR FFF PRINTING

At DONE Lab, we have been exploring how waste coffee silver skin can be used as a natural filler in PLA-based filaments for Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF).

We developed composite filaments by mixing PLA with different amounts of coffee silver skin and tested them using both FFF and injection molding. The materials were fully characterized through MFI, DSC, TGA, and mechanical testing to study their thermal and mechanical behavior.

What did we find?
• Adding more coffee skin did not significantly affect thermal properties
• All filaments printed well, with strong layer bonding and no warping
• This shows that natural fillers like coffee silver skin can help create more sustainable materials for additive manufacturing, without compromising performance

Credits to the DONE Lab team for their valuable contributions throughout the project (Ângela Rodrigues; Pedro Moreira; António Pontes)

Read the full article in Polymers Magazine 2025:
https://doi.org/10.3390/polym17131766