Hello,
I would like to realize a recycling workspace, but:
I must be able to make 3D printing filament with the recycled or with parts of the recycled materials. Therefore I would need some help about how to proceed to realize that. And to produce filament is a must for the reason, that only under this conditions, I will receive the financial support that is needed for.
The background of it is, that we will receive subventions for a 3D print coffe shop as a social project. But the subventions are not enough to realize the project and we must find donors by our self.
So I got the idea to start with a recycling container that would be able to produce 3D filament. And I think this could be a way to find donors for our final project as well as for the container project.
And if you’re from Switzerland from the region of Basel/Laufen, you even could participate in an active way, what would be welcome. So feel free to get in touch with me.
Hello, machwas!
I am also interested in setting up a workshop that transforms waste plastic into 3d printer filament. How is your project going?
I am currently worried that the product will not be good enough (qualitatively speaking) when I use the existing DYI extruder plans. Have you had a go at this? Were you able to create 3d printer filament with the same diameter across the whole length of the cable?
@deeemm From what I’ve read, many industrial machines are increasingly skipping the intermediate step and taking waste plastic directly as part of the production process. So machines are fed directly from the recycling process rather than plastic being stored then used. However, I don’t believe a single production process is viable for a smaller scale, as in my experience plastic needs to be dried thoroughly before re-use, and it’s unlikely any home solutions will be capable of processing plastic waste fast enough to facilitate this. Also, while you are mostly right about the fact that chemical processing of plastic is not required, it’s worth noting that after 4-5 heat cycles, most plastics lose their strength and need to be reprocessed or combined with new material. Other than that, effective sorting, flaking, drying and storage should give you a fine end product
That large format printer by Sam Smith that you linked to is an interesting experiment. I would not have considered to try to print directly from flakes as for me it adds too much variability to the process, but then all of my experience with 3D printing have been geared towards producing the typical high quality / high resolution print.
Obviously from an energy-time perspective it is a much more elegant process to use the flakes directly rather than turning them into pellets first
i think there is somebody in the bazaar who offers printed chairs (for 345 f** euros), i can’t find it back right now. also it looked rather like a fashion/prestige thingy to me.
may be helps to consider plastic as a common material, just like the others. that way you can treat or use it like wood, steel, beton, … you go the shop, pick up some stock and make your product. it’s common to do so, why not with plastic
so ‘printing’ becomes really relative so to say. i’d try to streamline the process best as possible. I am sure nobody want’s to refill, sort plastic pellets all day long. there are tons waiting to be turned into something ‘precious’ though.
When you say chemical do you mean the composition of the plastic? Not sure I understand.
There is no need to chemically ‘treat’ the plastic, only simply to clean it. The plastic needs to be sorted by grade / type before processing so that you do not mix ABS with PET / whatever. This is a simple manual process of identification and sorting.
nice to have somebody here with that skills, thanks for sharing. to me , this story is a little bit like a car, if the piston seals are broke once in a while i replace them just, nothing which stops people building cars
however, since the topic is quite fresh and hot, I am still enthusiastic to look for a module solution, one shred module, followed by an extrusion, a cut module, a sort module (sorting pellets seems easier than larger shapes), followed by another extrusion (or 2) which prints with a larger diameter stock shapes. all in a way that it could run all day long. i don’t mind it’s a 5 meter long machine.
but you’re right with this kinda of system, printing small and detailed stuff won’t work that way.
The issue with an integrated system is that the failure rate will be much higher. It introduces additional complexities and makes each stage completely reliant on the previous and next stages in the process. Having an integrated system means that you will stop your complete production rather than be able to continue with part of it. Your production rate will also be limited by the slowest / most unreliable part of the process.
You have to take a look at the FMEA for the process to really understand this…
As an example…
failure mode: printer extruder hot end failure
possible effect: auger jam / pellet hopper overflow / shredder jam / etc…
The solution with an integrated system would be to add control to monitor the status & health of the hot end and then use this information to control the other upstream processes. But then you need additional sensors (lots of sensors – this is only one failure mode – there will be potentially hundreds). In turn this will then mean you need quite a complex controller such as an arduino or a PLC, which in turn needs a certain level of skills to program / commission / use / maintain it.
So when one part of your system stops, your entire process stops. Instead of being able to continue to make and stockpile pellets whilst your printer hot end is being fixed you are sitting, waiting doing nothing. Stockpiling pellets (Raw material) is probably a good idea too – as you can do other things with them such as make other products / sell the pellets / sort different pellet materials – perhaps because you have a lot of that particular material in your sorted waste. Flexibility is a good thing.
You may also find that the 3D printing process is slow (it is – it’s very slow) so now your shredder and pellet extruder is tied up working at 25% efficiency as it is solely reliant on the speed of your printer. The best case here would be to have four printers – all independent of the upstream process – allowing your entire process to run at 100% efficiency and also allow you to make a variety of different things at the same time – maybe make a customised product on demand on one machine whilst the other three make stock for your store.
My background is systems integration & process control. I’ve made a LOT of industrial production systems for everything from the food industry to uranium mining. Generally just because you CAN do something does not mean that you SHOULD. We always follow the mantra of the KISS principle (Keep It Simple S#$@%!).
With integrated systems there is a direct relationship between productivity, complexity and affordability – Basically pick any two.
making pellets and print them with the same system could be possible as well, no ? i saw a similar pattern (large to thin diameter pistonish) with pre-heated hoppers, since the plastic is already hot it should be used right away though
I ended up here at precious plastics because I was also looking into recycling plastics to make 3D printer filament. The biggest stumbling block to me seems to be making filament with sufficient accuracy – specifically a consistent diameter. It is the diameter of the filament that really governs the print quality, even small variations will have a big effect on quality. If you watch the Youtube videos of people trying to make filament with commercial machines and raw pellets, even they have limited success.
I think that the best solution is not to produce filament, but to product pellets and then use a pellet style extruder on the 3D printer instead. In this manner the diameter of the ‘filament’ becomes irrelevant and the process is simplified. I think that careful sorting and selection of plastics will also be necessary to ensure a consistent durometer.
The only draw back is that pellet extruders seem to still be in their infancy. There are only a few commercial versions on the market and about the same for open source versions.
I’m just starting down this path but plan to have a go, so I’m in the process of putting together a shredder and extruder so that I can start to process plastics into pellets. Unfortunately I will need to build a new 3D printer to accept a pellet style extruder as none of the machines I have are suitable for this modification.
Yes,
one of the main subjects at the printing filament story is the diameter., but:
We’re living at the time of Arduino, Raspberry, other micro controllers and meanwhile affordable electronic parts. So therefore my point of view ist, that it doesn’t need any magic or miracle to be able extruding filament with a constant diameter. I think it just take some knowledge about the mechanism of this procedure and then try out and try out again until one get what he wants.
So I have a CNC as well as a lathe and for what I can not do myself I know where to go. My house is plenty of electronic components as well, so for that part I don’t worry.
BUT what I need first of all is someone with chemical knowledge because nothing less what others may say about it:
I can not beliebe, that without a chemical treatment of the waste pallets, there will never result a quality filament made out of waste plastic.
SO WHERE IS THAT PERSON WITH CHEMICAL KNOWLEWDGE ABOUT THE SUBJECT?………
P.s.
Our basic project is a 3D Coffe shop as a social non profit project. But the precious plastic project is very much into the line of our ideology and if we could make filament, it would fit perfectly into our main project.
I think that the larger extruder for printing is a good idea. 3D printing always seems to have been about getting very fine and accurate prints, so the extrusion diameter is generally 0.7mm or similar. This is why prints take so long.
When you start to look at what the ceramics / food / paste type 3D printers produce with larger diameter nozzles it gets me thinking that this would be a more appropriate size of nozzle / system.
For example if you considered a system like this being used for practical purpose to print something like utility items from gathered plastic rubbish, it would make perfect sense. Lower resolution prints, but printing much faster.
With a practical application, the aesthetics are less of an issue. In a way this larger diameter extrusion becomes part of the Aesthetic itself – like the lamps shades shown in the precious plastics videos. With a large scale / large diameter extrusion machine you could potentially print stuff like that without the need for a former or mold.
It’s pretty exciting when you start to think about it. So many possibilities, and there really is no right or wrong way as it has not really been done successfully / effectively before. Just a natural progression of existing technologies.
silent shredder, fumes. turns out that you could this in a 2or3-in-one machine, just fully enclosed. from left to right: switch panel and shredder hopper – acrylic, middle panel for a white board, right panel an acrylic hopper for extrusion. in there you can easily noise suppress and catch fumes
here in a stupid larger format
@s2019 It’d be interesting to look into. Most industrial plastic shredders are called crushers, but consist of a rotating set of blades and a set of stationery blades against the walls. The Rapid Shredder I’m using is basically just 2 steel razor blades spinning at high speed. It works alright, but anything that’s put into it needs to be shaped like a branch, or the blades won’t do anything
@microtransactions , Interesting point on the silent shredder. Looking at their adjustment process (p-2) _“While the product is still running, turn the adjusting knob clockwise. When you hear the metal-on-metal contact or see fine aluminium shavings falling out of the discharge chute, stop adjusting the knob.” _It implies sharp blades cutting. Though I agree with you cutting plastic is different than wood. Still the machine provides many of the needed features (motor, speed reduction, hopper, controls) that maybe a hack to optimize the blade/shaving plate for plastic may be worthwhile for low volume production.
@machwas I don’t know if my previous posts went through, they never seemed to appear. In regards to adding new material, it’s not entirely necessary. For most plastics, the only vital step is thorough drying. However, it’s impossible to avoid the fact that plastic weakens each time it’s remelted, so while you’ll be able to get a decent result the first few times, after the fourth heat-cycle, it’ll start to permanently lose it’s strength. At this point it needs to be broken down into it’s base elements and recreated from scratch. I’m currently working on a drying cabinet, and I’d be happy to share the plans with you
@stan Thanks for the feedback. I took a look at the silent shredders, but they seem to be designed to crush wood against a steel plate. You can’t crush plastic without any blades being involved, it’ll just warp and bend. I’ll admit, I’d still very much like a proper cross-cut plastic shredder, and have looked into sourcing the blades from China (alibaba), as the hardened steel they’re made of makes it difficult to get them made in New Zealand. As well as that, due to the design of the mulcher, it makes it difficult to process some plastics. Round bottles work well, but anything else needs to be turned into a rod of some sort, normally by remelting, which should be avoided if possible. However, I think it works well for a basic solutions, and works considerably better than the other cheaper alternatives. Paper-shredders motors aren’t up to the task
@microtransactions , great write-up on Hackaday. Your clever approach to making the mulcher work is probably worth a write-up here outside of the filament process discussion.
There appear several different blade configurations in the mulcher category. The Ozito that you use looks like a high speed chopper (if you ever have it apart, please post a picture of the blade configuration). The Ryobi silent shredder http://manualsau.ttigroupna.com/system/files/359/original/RSH2445B_UM_SAA_v2.pdf?2016 appears to have a blade configuration (page 18) closer to the PP shredder and appears to run at low speed. Neither of these are available in the US. In the US the Sunjoe/Snow Joe CJ603e https://images.homedepot-static.com/catalog/pdfImages/d9/d9e0cb90-3cf0-4c1f-b560-6d2fd7a35651.pdf looks like a lower power clone of the Ryobi with the same blade configuration (page 10).
I think your work poses the question of whether these mulchers offer a viable alternative at the <$200 USD point to the more complex and capable PP shredder for those that are exploring the recycling process at a lower throughput and at a lower $ entry point.
