Got a broken doodad? Throw it in the recycler and print a new one. 99% of the necessary feedstock ought to come from the broken one, so the only costs should be energy and the part that failed its tests and had to be replaced. Hopefully it's something small like a single capacitor.
There's probably some fundamental limit on how good such a system can get. Like, even if you recover 100% of the solder, you're going to need new flux every time. Or maybe you fill the chamber with argon so you don't need flux, but then how much of that can you recover. Or maybe you just leave it full of argon, but then how lossy is your doodad-in-out mechanism...
If your recycling scheme involves condensed matter physics, it might as well be magic. But if it's just known-robotics and reusable parts and good design taken to the n'th degree... that's the kind of thing that could feasibly inspire action in a reader--which is the kind of sci-fi I want to read.
Besides, there's something inelegant about breaking something all the way down just to build it all the way back up. A system that understands that the shortest path from here to there means something other than a full molecular disassembly is far more impressive than one that's just a decomposer.
It'd also be a nice springboard for an AI's first go at manufacturing and going out of spec lol
I think you're right! I wish our society did recycling better. In Japan, to get rid of a computer (for example), you don't throw it in trash - you must pay a recycler to handle it correctly.