Filament Extruder - 10K

Hello - my name is Liz Havlin and I have been working on an extruder project since October 2013.

Although there are many designs out there already, and I have spent lots of $$$ to develop yet more designs, the world is in need of an easy to put together kit for a basic filament extruder.

I would like to start over and have someone develop an extruder that makes filament as the same speed as you can feed into your 3D printer.

The extruder needs to be able to be controlled by a port on on the 3D printer board and use open source software.

We are starting with Black ABS, which will come to you pelletized.

These pellets are made from recycled Auto Bumper.

I am located in Seattle, WA USA - and I am open to anyone in the world who wants to work on this.

I can offer funds upon completion and also equity in my start up company.

You can see our website at www.prototypeamerica.com

Can I make a few remarks?

Most extruders (if not all) can extruder faster then the max. printer speed. Letting the extruder "follow" the intake need of the 3d printer thus including acceleration, retract and stopping will make it impossible to get consistent filament width. So feeding directly into the 3 printer without any spool winding/unwinding mechanism that allows for a buffer of filament is (IMHO) impossible. If your goals is to stop using filament but use pellets then you need to find a way to build a hotend that uses pellets as it's source. In other industries those systems already exist but cost an arm and leg Like pressurized hotends feed by plastic from a meltpot reservoir.

You're also talking about ABS but pelletized from recycled Auto Bumpers. Some issues there are contamination and inconsistent pellet size. Contamination can be dealt with by using a meltfilter and mixing virgin ABS in large quantities. I think I read somewhere 75% virgin against 25% recycled.

In terms of "an easy to put together kit " I don't think that (at this moment) the filastruder can be beat I'm not having shares in that company or even a filastruder but that's my opinion based on reading all that's available on it's forum.

What happened to this? There was better designs submitted?

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My printers:
-Makerbot TOM (#5215, circa 2011), MK6 extruder, ABS 3 mm
-HICTOP Prusa i3 (modded for auto-level, thread screws), ABS/PLA 1.75 mm

About me:
[www.thingiverse.com]

I have a Filistruder and it is a great machine. But it is rather limited. ALL of the current machines are. Hugh Lyman has the right idea but no one is jumping onboard.

On a proper extruder line you have to maintain tension. If you do not you get inconsistent dimensional control. Just letting it squirt from the die is poor practice. You need an independent pull drive tugging the filament as it exits the die. Ideally the workflow would be melt, extrude from the die, flash cool, and pull... with level-winding an option at the end.

By doing it this way you can virtually eliminate ovality issues, density issues and all the other common extrusion defects caused by just squirting and praying.

The other thing is machines need are multiple heating zones. Real extruders even tiny ones use 2-3 zones for heat control.

And lastly a proper extruder screw is not simply an auger, it's a complex geometry that melts the plastic, mixes and kneads the melt in concert with the heating zones. Currently we auger pellets into a hot chamber and push on them until they melt. Plastic industry did away with that in the late 1940s early 1950s. It's obsolete for a reason -- It sucks.

This is what we are up against to develop the proper filament extruders we deserve. The technology exists, but I lack the gumption or the technical skill to make such a beast. I'm simply a process engineer, hardware is a different pay-grade.

Part Daddy from seemeCNC uses pellets in a hopper to feed its extrusion system. No filament.

Hallo.

I seek a machineable wax flistruder and can offer a bounty. Mommie and Daddy left some money. They won't pay for my cigarettes and I'm trying to quit anyway.

Is there a machinable wax recycling filstruder extant?

Bateson, my RepStrap, boots from Unimat One to a single self-replicating X axis for <$50 and contains 12 X axes held with cuboctahedra in a cube extended to octahedron.

It's the octahedron that sits on your desk at nearly a yard across, and it can grow by 15% in a single generation.

The joint cuboctahedra must be machinable wax printed, in situ thread milled, cast, finish thread milled, and fitted each with 14 studs.

Likewise strut ends must be thread milled to join without shim washers.

It's pretty demanding but offers a lot. It arrays to billions but 27 is a good array of cubes bounded by octet truss.

I am tool die maker class conventional machinist, an experimental machinist

I would think a filstruder would incorporate a polishing die in the traction segment.

I would offer a bounty $X x (N^2-N)/2 where N participants shared attribution for $ X*(N^2-N)/(2*N) per participant.

I could offer under SPS.

Doug