McMaster grad wins international James Dyson Award

A McMaster student has brought home a global award for his innovation — a device that recycles plastic waste into 3D printer filament.

Swaleh, an McMaster University engineering graduate and his U.S. based project partner Reiten, won the 2022 James Dyson Award and approximately $45,000 each for their device, Polyformer. It is an open-source device that converts plastic bottles into filament to create 3D printers at a lower cost.

After being runners-up in September for the Canadian James Dyson Awards, the two-member team entered this international race.

Owais explained that the idea came about while Owais was working in a makerspace in Rwanda, where students and designers can use 3D printers to create their designs.

“One of the local designers mentioned to me how frustrating and expensive 3D printer filament was in Rwanda,” Owais recounted. The average 3D printer filament price in Rwanda is three-times the price of the equivalent product in the U.S.A. and Canada.

Owais also pointed out the inability to recycle plastic bottles in Rwanda.

Polyformer became the ideal machine for Rwandan creators — shredding plastic bottles and converting them into filament. This invention gives plastic new life and lowers the price of 3D printer filament.

The machine can extrude approximately 10 metres per second. Owais explained that an average plastic bottle could produce 30 meters of filament.

“This is a huge game changer for places where 3D printer filament is extremely expensive,” Owais said.

Cheng and Owais met in an online group of programmers earlier this summer. They brought their vision to life and entered the competition. Before joining forces to create Polyformer, both worked on the same problem in their own ways.

Since the Canadian James Dyson Awards, the duo has won prizes in other competitions — taking third place in 2022 Hackaday and being invited to Dubai’s Prototypes for Humanity.

Owais, who was in Dubai for the competition when he spoke with The Spectator, said he and his partner are working on several machines in the same ecosystem “that would make it easier to recycle plastic bottles and into 3D printer filament.”

With the prize money, Owais plans to deploy more machines in Rwanda’s makerspace that are low-resource friendly. He also wants to use part of the winning cash to organize his own hackathon, a programmer’s competition, at the makerspace.

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