The purpose of this thesis was to gather information and knowledge about additive manufacturing and how to recycle materials. The thesis focuses is on recyclable materials and 3D printing methods that can be used with recycled materials.

The studied materials were mainly plastics and metals. The different recyclable materials and methods of additive manufacturing are presented in the theory section of the thesis. The section also includes some use cases where recyclable materials are used.

Focus was in savings of material and in quality of the end products. The data was collected by studying literature and browsing internet. Data gathering was quite challenging because the technology has developed so fast recently and the quality of available literature was not so good and in many cases focus was in consumer devices.

The literature referred to in the thesis is primarily in Finnish and in English. The thesis work was carried out during the autumn of 2018 along with normal teaching. By studying the field of additive manufacturing it became clear that a lot of experiments and research has already been done, but recycling of materials is just taking first steps and we still have to wait commercially outstanding use cases.

During the study, it was noted that there is still big potential to change current practices radically so that recycling of materials could be profitable business some day in future. On the other hand, there are still many unsolved problems and challenges in additive manufacturing.