Students at the University of Maryland's Terrapin Works labs are hard at work, operating heavy machinery and intricate software, sporting lab goggles and protective gear, and working towards a future of engineering that reduces waste. Just a short walk away, students enrolled in Introduction to Engineering Design (ENES100) are turning reused screws, wheels and batteries to make a mobile class project, utilizing the initiative in which their course leaders engineered a new spin on practical waste reduction.
Terrapin Works, a makerspace whose lab facilities span across 16 UMD buildings, is run primarily by 100 student employees who fulfill manufacturing orders for the university and educate their peers about the labs’ machinery. The lab is the Technical Operations Unit within the Engineering Information Technology subsection of the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
Their work consists of making prototypes and utilizing advanced manufacturing and digital design resources, according to Terrapin Work’s website. Workers are skilled in 3D printing, creating anything from plastic pumpkins to machine parts–their 3D printed Testudos are commonly found at club fairs and events around campus.
With the intention of promoting the reuse of materials within makerspaces on campus, David Kriesberg, manager of Terrapin Work’s Instructional Fabrication Lab, worked with a team to create a polylactic acid (PLA) mold that allows students to melt down pre-used plastic to create a PLA sheet, which is used by ENES100 for a class project.
ENES100 includes a project where students design and build a remote-controlled rover that has to complete tasks, such as navigate an obstacle course or pick up objects. Students are provided with plywood or acrylic sheets to build their rover, but are incentivized with extra time on the final presentation of their project to instead use a recycled PLA sheet. Students who choose to use the PLA sheet go to the Instructional Fabrication Lab and learn how to create the sheet themselves.
One of Terrapin Works’ goals for the project is to efficiently create PLA sheets for all sections of ENES100 to use, which is roughly two sheets per team for about 14 sections. Each section has five teams of eight students.
When first making PLA sheets, lab workers placed recycled granulated plastic on a mold, a baking sheet, and melted it down in a toaster oven. Lab workers weighed the granulated plastic to determine the density and thickness of the sheet. The process took two to three hours for one sheet. The sheets were often bumpy and the process was inefficient, prompting the design team to strategize a way to enhance the process.
With support from the Sustainability Fund, Terrapin Works purchased a new oven that accelerates the production process and improves temperature control. The new oven and manufactured molds cut down production time from about two hours to only thirty minutes per sheet, and allows four sheets to be produced at the same time. Ideally, Terrapin Works staff will produce the PLA sheets for ENES100 over summer and winter breaks to be ready for students by the fall and spring semesters.
“We’re still working through the process,” said Kriesberg. “We’ve designed an experiment that calculates different time ranges versus temperatures to try to get the sweet spot of what would be the fastest and flattest that we can get [the PLA sheet.]”
Kriesberg hopes to create a loop system where plastic waste, such as failed 3D prints, is collected from makerspaces to use for production of PLA sheets, which can be used again by the makerspaces once the PLA sheets are formed. He also hopes that students will use materials provided by Terrapin Works as opposed to buying from websites such as Amazon. The mold will be usable by other makerspaces on campus that have similar equipment, like 3D printers.
An estimated 160 pounds of PLA waste will be recycled yearly with the use of the new oven and molds, as well as create an efficient waste collection process, or a “campus-wide recycling network,” according to the Sustainability Fund proposal. The process is an opportunity for students to develop sustainability skills and for instructors to incorporate sustainability into their curriculum. Project leaders hope to engage a wider audience in plastic recycling and to have positive environmental effects that spread to other communities, according to their proposal.
In combination with the use of the PLA sheets, the ENES100 School Store is making further strides to reduce waste by creating a space where ENES100 students can donate used project materials and make them available for future students.
Before the school store was created, the program made kits for the rovers that students could borrow and return at the end of the project, but students still had to buy other materials, such as sensors, gears etc. This totaled to about forty dollars per student, and many of the materials used were discarded at the end of the course, according to the project's Sustainability Fund proposal, authored by ENES100 instructor and school store project advisor Michael Galczynski. 
The school store was designed to provide students with materials used in previous semesters that were not provided in the kits, and to create a reuse cycle of materials for the rover project, such as electric motors and voltage regulators. Additionally, parts are more accessible to students, as they do not have to order a new one if, for example, sand got stuck in their rover’s motor, explained Galcyznski.
The Sustainability Fund provided a grant to cover materials costs for building the school store and a system for keeping track of items. The store is neatly organized with separate containers for each type of material and barcodes for students to scan when they take an item.
Students are given a budget of 50 coins to spend at the store to ensure that there are enough materials for all teams to use and to facilitate creative substitutes for certain materials, according to Galczynski.
The project aims to reduce carbon emissions from production and shipping of materials, and reduce waste from packaging. Students gain hands-on experience with sustainability principles and the importance of recycling materials through the practical implications of the school store. Both students and the overall program save money by choosing the sustainable option of recycling parts.
The school store and Terrapin Work’s PLA mold project have plans to expand beyond their current reaches and involve more students, staff and faculty in their recycling and waste conscious efforts. Further educating students on the principles of sustainability and the importance of reducing waste makes for a hopeful future of production, and of future Terp engineers.