Recycling

[Brad Stansell]

Now that I've almost... maybe... possibly got a stable printer I'm thinking about going backwards.  No, really. 

I see all these faulty prints I've made and can't help but think it would be nice if I could re-use that filament.  Everything from when I clip off the end of a strand to fix a clog all the way to the prints that failed in the last 20 minutes after 8 hours of printing.  Wouldn't it be nice if I could turn all that plastic back into filament somehow? 

I've seen some machines, filastruders, that claim to do just that but they seem to be almost as much as my printer has cost me so far.  It doesn't seem like it would  be that complicated to design one.  I've got a few hot-ends lying around.  I'd need a hopper of some kind.  Like a metal funnel.  Put that on top of a hot end.... or two... or three, maybe even add an electric heat gun if that's not hot enough.  Let that feed into an inverted cold end, add a fan it's too malleable then feed that down into a Teflon tube for solidification, then feed that into a standard extruder mechanism powered by a nema motor, then onto a slowly rotating spool. 

it's a theory, and granted one that needs a little (or a lot of) tweaking... but I thought I'd see what you guys thought and if this is even plausible.  What am I missing?  Would anyone be interested in assisting me with design/testing? 

[Shawn]

There have been many attempts at making a filament recycler but the reasons why they tend to cost so much is that it's actually quite hard to get a smooth extrusion for prolonged periods without any variation. And a 1.73-1.93 variation sounds small until you realize that it's more then 10% and the difference between under and over extruding.

The product that somewhat do an decent job have a very large heated chamber and a screw drive that can push completely liquid plastic then cool it off quickly as it's leaving the nozzle unfortunately this requires a fair amount of metal and barrings that can last under high pressures and temperatures for protracted periods of time. And as a result of that engineering quickly drive up the costs.

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[Brad Stansell]

Ok, so nevermind.  It looks like someone has already beaten me to the punch using almost the exact same method I had in mind... down to the metaphorical letter almost.  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:380987

There must be a way to melt down existing/failed models from a reasonable size.  This design doesn't contain a heat gun which I've found works well in melting existing models so I'm thinking it's ripe for a little enhancement/modification. 

I just hate seeing all that extra filament go into the trash bin. 

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