3D printing filament is still sold for far more than plastic pellets and several companies offer filament makers that make decent filament from pellets. There has also been some efforts to make recyclebots, which can make filament from waste plastic that have always been challenging to use. A new version of the recyclebot with enough control to produce commercial grade filament from more or less anything - has been demonstrated with pellets, regrind, and even waste composites like wood. The plans are fully open source and most of the parts of the new machine design are themselves 3D printable via a RepRap.

The fully detailed plans in more than 100 figures and assembly instructions were just published in [www.sciencedirect.com]

The designs are good - but could definitely be improved to push the costs down further.

Do you think it would be appropriate to start a new Forum topic stream on hacking such machines? Or did I miss it.

I am very interested in improving this concept and helping to improve it, maybe bringing in some of my own thoughts.
Some parts are not easy to source, f.ex. the 12V DC motors, and they may be replaced my Nema17 or 23, and some other small dots here and there. But I definite need some time to have a much closer look.
I'd like to hear more from this thing! Anyone willing to give this a try?

12V DC motors are usually cheaper and easier to find than steppers.

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Anyone willing to give this a try?

I could help you out by "donating" tons of waste filament. Mostly PLA, PETG and some ABS

It would be great to build an offshore version of this and recycle the plastic swimming in the ocean.

BTW: I've seen a TV doc recently, where people in a "developing country" collected plastic waste from their shore and built a boat from it. The beach was clean and a few more trees were rescued, too.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2018 02:36AM by o_lampe.

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Trakyan
12V DC motors are usually cheaper and easier to find than steppers.

The type of motor with an attached gear used here was not too easy to find, at least Amazon & Ebay only had 1 in stock. It's not an arbitraty 12V motor, so one needs to change the parts to fit a different motor anyway. And I (and probably most reprap makers) have some spare steppers in a box. I took a second look at the design and the software, and probably it's no big deal to use a different (similar) motor or a stepper, so no worries about the motors. It was just an example.

At home level filament extruders are a waste of time and effort. They can never make consistent diameter filament.

This has been attempted again and again.

And on recycling failed prints, you'll never be able to remove all the contaminate particles from the plastic being reused.

Commercial level filament production is pulled to diameter, not extruded to diameter. 1.75mm filament is pulled to diameter from a 3mm or larger extrusion nozzle.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2018 01:31AM by Dirty Steve.

Does this machine require a ramps 1.4 smart LED display? If not could someone offer me some information on how to connect the LED display I have listed below to the ramps 1.4 board? As someone who is not too familiar with these devices, any and all insight would be appreciated.

This is the display I am trying to connect:

[www.amazon.com]