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0 pointseconcon5y ago0 comments

Converting Plastic Waste into 3d printer filament

https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...

Hopefully, this will reduce the use of virgin plastic for creating art pieces in 3d printing community and you might be able to create beautiful and useful things out of waste plastic while cleaning plastic waste from the environment.

It's a profitable business.

I worked on this in my free time during quarantine.

I want to make the project more accessible so people around the world can develop local recycling unit. There is lots of work which needs to be done including making parts more standardized, demonstrating how parts fight together in a visual way and also have a microcontroller firmware to control diameter of filament. I don't have much experience with microcontrollers but I've ideas, so we'll see.

0 comments

tren5y ago

Some guys in our city are doing this on a larger scale, schools in the area collect all plastic bottles and in return they get 3d filament: https://www.greenbatch.com/

econconOP5y ago

Wow that's great, I wonder how they modify the PET polymer, as I've been researching it's not an easy polymer to print with atleast not without the glycol modification which is usually sold as PETG.

Any idea how they are doing it?

kanwisher5y ago

I’ve been looking into Precious Plastic project. They have a lot of open source parts to recycling plastic. I couldn’t find any proof it was actually cost effective? How did you come to compute it’s profitable?

Https://preciousplastic.com

econconOP5y ago

I've a video in my post where I am creating filament and I also sold the filament on e-commerce websites.

https://youtu.be/Xirli3qDJlU

mcv5y ago

This is a really cool idea. I originally hoped it was about recycling your own plastic waste into filament for your own home printing, but I guess that's a bit too much to expect.

econconOP5y ago

It's possible to do this if you've a shredder and sorted plastic waste.

celicaraptor5y ago

Any reason for the barrel and screw set to cost 360$?Is it the material?Couldn't you use a steel tube and a wood drill bit?

econconOP5y ago

It's made up of 38CrMoAlA and treated with nitriding gas treatment to improve wear resistance and hardness. And it includes free shipping from china, it's probably 5-10kg. And includes machined nozzle too.

Wood drill has continuous flight depth while extrusion screw has 3 zones. In compression zone, flight depth is gradually reduced to compress polymer.

Other than this, I think you'll have problem with finding reasonably straight wood auger drill.

With precision machine barrel and screw, screw will not touch barrel wall.

You can experiment with wood drill and steel tube but I doubt you'll get consistent diameter filament with it.

If you fancy making cheaper one for small scale/personal use, try this one:

https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-filament-extruder-f...

1 more reply

ejo40415y ago

These guys make recycled filament: https://greengate3d.com/ I've printed a few rolls now, it's nice stuff.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

tren5y ago

Some guys in our city are doing this on a larger scale, schools in the area collect all plastic bottles and in return they get 3d filament: https://www.greenbatch.com/

econconOP5y ago

Wow that's great, I wonder how they modify the PET polymer, as I've been researching it's not an easy polymer to print with atleast not without the glycol modification which is usually sold as PETG.

Any idea how they are doing it?

kanwisher5y ago

Https://preciousplastic.com

econconOP5y ago

I've a video in my post where I am creating filament and I also sold the filament on e-commerce websites.

https://youtu.be/Xirli3qDJlU

mcv5y ago

This is a really cool idea. I originally hoped it was about recycling your own plastic waste into filament for your own home printing, but I guess that's a bit too much to expect.

econconOP5y ago

It's possible to do this if you've a shredder and sorted plastic waste.

celicaraptor5y ago

Any reason for the barrel and screw set to cost 360$?Is it the material?Couldn't you use a steel tube and a wood drill bit?

econconOP5y ago

Wood drill has continuous flight depth while extrusion screw has 3 zones. In compression zone, flight depth is gradually reduced to compress polymer.

Other than this, I think you'll have problem with finding reasonably straight wood auger drill.

With precision machine barrel and screw, screw will not touch barrel wall.

You can experiment with wood drill and steel tube but I doubt you'll get consistent diameter filament with it.

If you fancy making cheaper one for small scale/personal use, try this one:

https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-filament-extruder-f...

1 more reply

ejo40415y ago

These guys make recycled filament: https://greengate3d.com/ I've printed a few rolls now, it's nice stuff.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse