Would anyone be interested in co-funding the filament extruder? There’s nothing decent under 1000$ and for a quality filament there are bigger machines with pulling system, water bassins, rolls and these machines output a good diameter tolerance but are also expensive. If we can co-fund something serious we can provide local distribution of fresh filament even from recycled materials like PLA milk bottles, etc… Makers would have affordable and reliable material and Co-owners would profit from revenues! What do you all think? GLocal Makers Unite?
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I would definitely be interested in helping you (via co-ownership). Especially since I just started my startup rather recently (due to demand). I have lots of scraps & spools from both the startup & my job. I guess we could talk more via email. jromano@3dtroit.com
I think it is really difficult to get a crusher for printed parts aswell as a filament extruder. You will have to use so excessively much filament to refinanciate those both items.
I am currently in my finals, but after that i will try to build an extruder made for Prusa or Lulzbot models that uses pellets instead of filament. The advantage is first of all, that pellets are very much cheaper then filament, pellets cost close to 1/2 to 1/3 of filament price.
Then you would also only have to get the crusher, but no filament extruder.
This method would recycle old prints, but this would not account for the spools, unless you know the exact plastic that is used for them, then you can crush the spools too and make pellets out of them.
I don’t think that there is another purpose for the spools beside storing filament and getting recycled into new filament/pellets.
I am not really into material sience, but would heating or cooling the prints make it easier to crush them while still not melting them.
What I mean is, that every thermoplastic (the kind of plastic that can be used for filament) has a so called glass transition temperature called Tg.
This is the temperature at which the plastic starts to get bendable because the stiff molecule structure falls appart. Having some heater cardridges in the crushing disks (like in both videos) that heat the part up to ~55-80°C (more for exotic plastics like polycarbonate) would make crushing easier i think.
With some gearing in front of the crusher it will be much easier to turn it, turning antiproportionally more times on the handle would be no problem if you use your own musclepower instead of a motor.
However this all is still very expensive, even if you just want the raw materials for the machines.
You know, that PLA and ABS as well as the spools (most times PC => Polycarbonate) are polymers ?
Hi pomaer! we tried the idea of using pellets in a printer instead of filament few years ago in our lab. It was a monster DIY printer intended to be the next home appliance… We quickly realized that moving a hopper and all the weight around was not an option. We also realized that pellets bring problems with air and filament is still the best way to go. It’s light and the print head can muve faster, and the printer will endure less stress from the head changing direction, and it’s consistant. Then we decided to put a hopper and an extruder in the top back side of the printer and the filament produced would be uneven and cause many problems, and that it had to be dried before we feed into the printing head. Our conclusion was that instead of trying to build a do-it-all thing that does nothing right, it’s better to do things with specific jobs as good as possible. Often times, keeping things simple and sturdy is your best option. It’s still possible to have a crusher and an extruder dirrctly integrated into a home appliance sized 3D printer. It would look something like a stove. But there are so many parameters to watch out for… Unless it’s a super reliable closed loop feedback system that monitorizes and decides for best parameter by it self, most users are not Makers and will lose patience… now for the heating of the shredder blades, I think it’s better to freeze the plastic before you mash it, it becomes more brittle and snaps easyer when it’s frosen hard. I think heating it up even a bit will just make it bendy-er
Freezing could have a quite positive effect on the crushing of parts. Did your pellet extruder contain a filter and did you use an extruderscrew or just an auger one? One of the most important features that DIY pellet extruders are missing is a real extruder screw that compresses the pellets by getting smaller (the space where the pellets are gets smaller). I thought about a design for a printer, that doesn’t move the printhead, I’ll explain that later. -Marius
This is all interesting stuff. I think that there are many challenges here and it’s best to separate out the issues. Firstly, I think we need to decouple shredding from extruding.
Shredding has its advantages, which are mainly environmental, rather than financial. Realistically, I think a semi-centralised shredding function is most practical.
Extruding is financially very attractive. As Marius says, granulated plastic is cheaper than filament, except that the actual difference in cost is enormous. I heard that the World market for filament is less than 100 Tonnes. The market for granulated plastic is in the Millions of Tonnes per year so the potential difference is very high - think 1-2 Cents per kilo for granulated plastic. Now THAT concentrates the mind!
There are one or two granule-fed print heads surfacing. TBH, I think it’s only a matter of time before the technical challenges are met. Perhaps it’s been done already.
cheers,
AndyL
Pot8oSh3D