Fantastic idea! Yes, we’d love to exchange our spools for filament, thank you! We must have over 300 empty spools collected by now. Please call or email us when you’re ready: 514-312-6060, matterthings3d@gmail.com. Thank you! Claudia
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You should shred them and send bags of shreded plastic to the Perpetual Plastic Project :
Vous devriez les déchiqueter et envoyer des sacs plein de morceaux à the Perpetual Plastic Project :
Yeah, reusing, recycling and returning policies are the way to go. For example, returning one spool would give 5$ rebate on the filament.
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?
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 save mine… going to build an extruder after summer and will need them to spool up filament
Oui, pas besoin de les déchiqueter, faut les réutiliser. Mais il nous faut une ou deux places locales qui produisent et distribuent du filament de bonne qualité. J’ai envie de faire ça et je demande si on peut co-financer l’achat d’une machine décente. On aurait une belle entente et on partagerait les revenus. De la même façon on peut co-financer tout ce dont nous avons besoin collectivement et localement.
I was looking into DIY filament extruders but I find the tolerance varies too much: diameter 1.75 ± 0.2, with perfect parameters ± 0.1, it’s not reliable and it might cause problems in the printers. Also, without a real extruding screw (people use drill bits) you have problems with bubles. If someone will produce local filament for local distribution and reuse those empty spools, it’s gotta be decent quality.
I would like to find a decent machine, no too big, no too expensive, and to crowdfund it with local Makers who would benefit from local and more affordable materials and contribute to better recycling practices. In the Lab where I’m operating (Making), if I have no time to do it, there are members willing to take over tasks like pulling and extruding filaments.
All great ideas! I think that a spool return program would be very popular, especially for partially recycled filament.
That said, I’m backing the Omni Dynamics Strooder Kickstarter campaign 2 and have good reason to expect that the resulting filament will be within the tolerances required by typical 3D printers.
Seems to me that the biggest hurdle standing in the way of small-scale recycled 3D print filament production is the design and production of a machine to mash up plastic parts. I’ve seen a couple of campaigns, none of which light my candle - I’m looking for a low-speed, high-torque shredder. The closest I’ve come to what I’m looking for is this video…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmbzks1RXBM 4
Here’s a similar design…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2L7FLYhbp0 2
…and you can see the problems - It’s heavy and it needs LOTS of power. Personally, I think a hand-cranked design is the way to go - No harm beefing up those biceps - but you still need at least 5 Kilos of fairly tight tolerance steel, which is never going to be cheap to buy or to transport.
One style of design that might be an answer…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoD92UlKNx0 2
Now, THAT looks to me like it could be adapted to the purpose without too much difficulty.
Anyone have any other ideas??
Cheers!
AndyL
Why not just get a Blendtech Blender? Haha