Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

I am about to make the jump into 3D Printing and the ability to make my own filament seems super attractive and cost effective. I am curious to hear more about both of your experiences.

so, tell me if this is crazy, but If you can make more than 1Kg of filament per day, that seems a lot faster than my printer consumes it. Admittedly, I've only just started playing with increasing print speed. I've only just started to get reliable quality.

If you've had your printer more than 6 months and are using it as much as possible, how much filament are you going through?

Does anyone have experience with sharing a recycler? My math is shooting from the hip here, but it seems like 2 people could easily share it, maybe even 4. One issue with this that occurs to me is power costs - do you keep it at one person's house or trade off? maybe also invest in a solar panel and leave it in one location. Does this sound interesting to anyone near San Jose, CA?

Also, I'm interested in the shredder - but it seems WAY over priced for something I would probably only use a couple times a year after my failed prints start to pile up. Are there any rental services for these?

If I did use the shredder I probably wouldn't bother to separate my colors unless I had to. would it cause problems to mix different colors of the same type of plastic? I hope it would look as cool as i imagine it does

yea i only make filament during the weekend, so i do little things over the week and refill when i have big blocks of time.

with this hopper i made, i put in 2 cups of my pellet ratio and it makes a little under 1 lb of 1.75 filament.

Recycling failed prints is nice, but i don't really have failed prints any more, so a recycler in that sense wouldn't be worth the money. The one that would be nice is the 3d printed filament pelletizer, and what it does is takes the last couple feet off a roll and repelletizes those.

bubbasnow wrote:The one that would be nice is the 3d printed filament pelletizer, and what it does is takes the last couple feet off a roll and repelletizes those.

That's a much easier problem than a general purpose grinder. I've got a handheld grass trimmer (was a bonus item with a power drill set, using the same batteries) I've never used that would probably do a fine job just by feeding filament into the scissorlike cutting action by hand. It would be smart to add a blade cover with a feedhole for safety purposes for this application, of course.

bubbasnow wrote:but i don't really have failed prints any more

No-one likes a smartarse

My prints these days generally either work or fail in the first couple of layers. Those failures go in the juice jar. BUT I also find it often takes a few goes to get engineering part designs right - either they need a little more reinforcement here, or a slightly wider/narrower opening there to fit properly, etc, etc, etc.

These parts which are OK in themselves but not quite right for the application all go into my treasure box and, one day, it'll be recycle time.

Captain Starfish wrote:

bubbasnow wrote:but i don't really have failed prints any more

No-one likes a smartarse

I read somewhere that cutting abs for recycle breaks up the polymer chains and leads to problems down the road. It was suggested to freeze the parts in liquid nitrogen then break them up into smaller pieces that can be re-extruded.

I was thinking of buying a Filastruder, but the fact that it's pretty much only an ABS thing makes it a deal breaker for me. I would really need it to extrude PLA.

atoff wrote:I was thinking of buying a Filastruder, but the fact that it's pretty much only an ABS thing makes it a deal breaker for me. I would really need it to extrude PLA.

Filastruder will extrude many kinds of plastic. ABS, PLA, Nylon, TPE, LDPE and HDPE. Reasonable precautions should be taken with some polymers because of thermal decomposition. Visit the website for more info: http://www.filastruder.com/

atoff wrote:I was thinking of buying a Filastruder, but the fact that it's pretty much only an ABS thing makes it a deal breaker for me. I would really need it to extrude PLA.

pla is non-issue for this. when you get a moment look through their forums and used recommended materials and you shouldent have an issue

If PLA is a non-issue then I'm sold. I'll look into buying the kit. I'll also have to look into colorants... one of the reasons I would want to produce my own filament is to produce unique colors.
I live in an apartment, would there be any health concerns I'd need to be aware of?

the motor used is not silent.... abs can give smell but its not that bad. i guess as long as things are going right and nothing catches on fire

read the forum, there are tiny quarks about making this thing run good. prepare your forearms for lots of winding!

bubbasnow wrote:the motor used is not silent.... abs can give smell but its not that bad. i guess as long as things are going right and nothing catches on fire

read the forum, there are tiny quarks about making this thing run good. prepare your forearms for lots of winding!

Is there an autowinder available?

atoff wrote:I was thinking of buying a Filastruder, but the fact that it's pretty much only an ABS thing makes it a deal breaker for me. I would really need it to extrude PLA.

PLA is fine, just potentially requires a bit more pre-drying. Kind of like making a PB&J sandwich vs. a salad - one requires a bit more preparation and/or fine tuning. Here's an example of a user making and printing with PLA:

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/4108/my- ... s-and-pla/

barry99705 wrote:I read somewhere that cutting abs for recycle breaks up the polymer chains and leads to problems down the road. It was suggested to freeze the parts in liquid nitrogen then break them up into smaller pieces that can be re-extruded.

A very small amount, nothing of consequence for most folks.

Eaglezsoar wrote:

bubbasnow wrote:the motor used i not silent.... abs can give smell but its not that bad. i guess as long as things are going right and nothing catches on fire

read the forum, there are tiny quarks about making this thing run good. prepare your forearms for lots of winding!

Is there an autowinder available?

Yup, though it's out of stock right now, waiting on more PCBs from Seeed Studio.

http://www.filastruder.com/products/filawinder
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:174383

bubbasnow wrote:here is some abs with the copper color above

[img]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Seem ... 204640.jpg[/img]
[img]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-d5wd ... 204650.jpg[/img]

this stuff prints like butta!

hey Bubbasnow,

I love the looks of your copper color filament! havn't seen anything like that in any shop so far, and still, i have been looking for it. since photo's have misleaded me more then once, I would like to ask you, does it look like the surface of mars? like, really close? I have a friend of mine who is obsessed with mars and wants me to print a Gale crater from thingiverse in white, so he can paint it, but i f your filament looks a lot like the martian surface i would love to buy some from you!

- Demy

Demy,

Sorry i am not currently set up to run production filament. If you are ever in the Salt Lake area I could hook you up.

But i can share with you my knowledge on how i achieved this filament color.

The filastruder requires a mixture of raw and colored pellets to make what ever colors you want.

my hopper can hold about 2 cups of these mixtures. Using the ratio of 1 cup raw:1 tsp copper i was able to get that filament in the picture.

with some experimentation and other colors you might be able to make it look more like mars

links:
http://store.osprintingllc.com/ProductD ... b_ABS_MG94
http://store.osprintingllc.com/ProductD ... ABS_Copper

^ no so clever spam?

you made me laugh, thanks kas.
I needed that today.

*BAN* goes the hammer.

(KAS isn't replying to bubbasnow, he's commenting on a spammer's post that occurred after that.)

g.