Something that has been on my mind a bit recently is filament recycling and reusing. Have there been any projects of people trying to build a filament recycler?
I found the work that @PrintForge2 on thingiverse had done with their recycler (Designs - PrintForge2 - Thingiverse) but this is really just cutting up a plastic bottle and trying to use that as filament instead of actually making decent filament.
I’m assuming that one would have to melt down plastic and let it harden in some sort of mold.
Does anyone have any ideas for how this could work?
I have a filastruder but to use it you need to grind up the used filament first. I made an alternate case to fit the parts better but I have not actually set it up because I didn’t get around to setting up grinder for the used filament. Basically you need a heavy duty shredder to prepare the filament to go through the filastruder extruder. I have way too many projects on the go so I have not got back tot that one yet.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4679731
After grinding up the filament does it melt it into shape? Or does it work some other way.
Is this something you designed or did you buy a kit for this?
It was a kit. Its basically an auger that forces the cut up pellets into a heating chamber like on your printer but larger and then out through a nozzle of the required size. The filament is cooled as it leaves the heated nozzle and then it is wrapped onto a spool and rolled up. It is a small version of the large commercial filament extruders. You can build one from scratch, you just need to control the temps and the flow of the filament into the chamber. It works almost the same as a 3D printer pushing the filament into the heated nozzle and pushing out a smaller sized bead of plastic. In this case you force plastic pellets into a chamber using an auger.
Look up Filastruder the guy might still be making them or maybe has a new version?
Not gonna lie, I really want to print a model in Mountain Dew…
Maybe some day.
3 Likes