I’m a tech ed teacher, who’s a novice when it comes to machine building. We decided to build these machines for our materials processing class.
Any chance someone would be willing to chat with me? I received funding to order these parts and need to spend the money ASAP. McMaster Carr is a verified vendor of which I’m attempting to acquire a quote but am nervous of what I should order because of the lack of my experience. Does anyone have a quote or could tell me what I need to ask for so that I have the necessary materials to start constructing the shredder and extruder?
@mrwashington I’m not one of the established machine builders here and hopefully one of them will respond as well, but here are some thoughts.
You didn’t say if the build itself was intended to be instruction for the class or if it is the use of the machines when done. The shredder and extruder are the two more complex/difficult machines to build. They each involve custom parts that you can’t source from McMaster. If the machine builds themselves are not the instruction, maybe you can source the custom parts or sub-assemblies from one of the builders here. You can still source the off the shelf parts from McMaster. For student use you probably should do an extra safety review of the designs, also depends on whether these are H.S. or college age students. The electrical and mechanical hazards are relatively straight forward. The issues of proper fume control if this is used indoors, have not been addressed as thoroughly.
looks legit to me : https://bazar.preciousplastic.com/en/justin. i build machines and under no circumstance I’d recommend anyone building this with cheap to average tools, nor budget or time problems. You can however make something ‘up’ or ‘work’ but its usually far from ideal nor it worth the invest nor you can sell half baken things to anyone so easily, especially outside of PP. It’s really easy to screw things up. the instruction documents are also leaving much out and to desire so if you don’t know metal work and machine building per se, better you buy just something tested & solid .