Here's a few attempts at doing what you're talking about: Sticking them into a blender probably won't work, at least not directly. However, if you have access to dry ice or liquid nitrogen, it might work fine:by jamesshuang - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Oh god, I've had enough nightmare tangles with 1.75mm filament, let alone 0.4 mm. I nearly gave up on home filament extrusion until I built a winder similar to Ian's design. This idea comes up very regularly both here and on the filastruder forums. I don't think most people understand just how much pressure is required to turn pellets into filament. To put things in perspective, the filastruderby jamesshuang - General
If you already have a firmware that would work on the beaglebone, you can make something like the SevenSwitchby jamesshuang - General
Mmm unfortunately melted plastic doesn't really act as a liquid. It's more of a gooey paste. It wouldn't "flow" like water from a vat. That's why an auger and a massive motor is necessary -- to push the paste through the die. The variety outlined in that recyclebot document actually looks like it might work. I've never tried extruding such a thin filament before so I don't really know the behavioby jamesshuang - Delta Machines
Hmm... not to rain on your parade, but I don't think this is a viable option, not with pellets at least. I've built and operated a lyman-esque extruder for the past few months. There are two main reasons: 1) The pellets are 3-5 mm in diameter each. A smaller screw would only feed them a few at a time, and it would be difficult to control the amount of extrusion. 2) Even with a gigantic motor witby jamesshuang - Delta Machines
This was all on a Prusa i3 laser cut version, which has that "frog" plate on the y axis. See here: There was no center hole on the plate, so I printed a strip that extends across the two legs to have a middle hole. The corkboard under the heatbed was only for insulation -- the MK2 floats over the top of the plate on spring-loaded bolts. In any case, don't do that! Use all 4 bolts for maximal riby jamesshuang - General
I had a stack of corkboard / MK2 / glass plate all sandwiched together. The natural springiness of this stack was the problem -- it wasn't well supported enough at the corners and wobble during quick moves. I wouldn't want another heavy plate on the y axis considering there's already so much mass there.by jamesshuang - General
Hey guys, Just a word of caution for anyone using 3-point bed mounting with a moving y-axis printer. I printed an adapter to use 3-point bed mounting for an MK2 heated bed on my Prusa i3. It does make leveling the bed easier, but It's been destroying my print quality. I noticed how much the corners were wobbling during fast y-axis moves. This was the source of all the weird backlash wobbles I staby jamesshuang - General
If you notice, the print looks terrible at that speed. Also, the entire frame is wobbling back and forth. You can certainly make your printer move that fast by jacking up the current and increasing the acceleration, but you will not achieve acceptable print quality at those speeds. The plastic simply won't melt fast enough. You'll need a material with much lower thermal mass, or a completely diffby jamesshuang - General
I've seen this happen with overheating MOSFETs. Try sticking a tiny heatsink on the MOSFET, or put a small fan blowing towards the controller, see if that helps. Alternatively, try replacing the MOSFET with one with lower RDS on, like the IRLB8748. The RAMPS board I got from China had a cheap mosfet, which was one of the problems.by jamesshuang - General
Laybrick is filament with the stone powder mixed in already. You can get it here: I built a filament extruder and I'd be interested in experimenting with stone-filled filament, if it weren't for the fact that it's horribly abrasive and would probably polish the extruder smooth...by jamesshuang - General
If you know someone with a filament extruder or you feel like building one yourself, ASA resin is available here. It's billed as one of the most weatherable plastics. Alternatively, if you're in the US, I can send you some ASA if you're interested.by jamesshuang - General
I have the qu-bd dual extruder on my prusa i3. I had to design a new mount for it and it does work ok, after all the modifications. These include and (I highly recommend you buy new barrels straight from since they're actually incredibly difficult to make. I'm not happy with the mount yet, since there's no easy way to allow fine extruder head adjustments without taking the entire mount apart.by jamesshuang - General
I heard the e3d people were working on a cam system, such that all 4 hot ends are controlled by a drive motor and a select motor. Then even a RAMPS1.4 will be able to control all 4 nozzles. Here's a kickstarter project with something like that:by jamesshuang - General
According to this blog post: , only about 2kg of force is required to push 1.75mm PLA filament through a 0.4mm nozzle. Direct drive on a NEMA 17 with a standard 11mm hobbed pulley would generate close to 10 kg of force at the filament, which would be plenty for extrusion. Using a wade's extruder (especially with the much smaller diameter hobbed bolt) gives nearly 40 kg of force on the filament! Tby jamesshuang - Reprappers
Hi everyone, I've been successfully printing with a printrbot Ubis hotend for quite some time now, fairly impressed at how reliable it's been. I'm interested in upgrading to a dual extruder at this point, and the qu-bd extruder looks pretty interesting. However, the reviews I've seen scattered throughout the web have been overwhelmingly negative with regards to jamming. Have they managed to sorby jamesshuang - General
That is VERY VERY broken... The smooth rod needs to be as straight as possible, otherwise your layers at going to be very messed upby jamesshuang - General
So, just wanted to post this in case any one wanted to try -- a peristaltic pump will NOT pump thick pastes like ceramic or clay. I went through the trouble of designing and printing one, only to find out that the clay is too thick be sucked into the pump. The only thing driving clay into the pump is the springiness of the tube, which is not even close to sucking up anything more viscous than a tby jamesshuang - Paste Extrusion Working Group
Here's a formulation for making "carbomorph", a tested conductive filament:. The one line summary: suspend carbon black in dichloromethane, mix with your polymorph (aka PCL), dry it out and roll it into filament.by jamesshuang - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Haha, I did just that but my cheap calipers are now too inexact! Depending on how much I push on them, I can get measurements between 7.98 and 8.02. These rods look pretty good...by jamesshuang - General
Traumflug: that looks interesting... Not exactly sure how to make it smaller though -- if I clamp it once I've sawed through it, will it cold set and reduce in diameter? Mihai: vxb doesn't actually list their specs anywhere. This is exactly what I bought: the entire x carriage makes the click click when I shake it. It could easily be the fault of my bearings though, since I got cheap Chinese lmby jamesshuang - General
After noticing grooves being worn into my cheap O1 tool steel rods, I decided to upgrade my Prusa i3 to nice VXB linear motion rods. I bought a new batch of LM8UU's as well, since I lost a few bearings when I first put the printer together. After swapping in the new rods though, I noticed the bearings have significantly more play. Specifically, the x-carriage now wobbles and rattles against the sby jamesshuang - General
If you have a soldering iron, just hook the tip into the middle of the nut and push them into x-end, holding them for a while. ABS is relatively heat tolerant, and a typical electronics soldering iron isn't going to heat up a nut enough to damage it. Generally, you don't even need to do that, since the nuts are being forced down by gravity. Which version of the x-ends do you have? The box versioby jamesshuang - General Mendel Topics
Has anyone tried to make a peristaltic pump for clay or ceramic printing before? All the designs for clay extrusion mostly use syringes / plungers, or augers. The auger designs sound like they have wear issues. I was imagining using thin rubber tubing inside a peristaltic pump, feeding into a much stiffer tube that connects to a syringe needle.by jamesshuang - Paste Extrusion Working Group
Why not use something like a hairdryer? Seems like it would be very cheap and very high wattage, and it comes built in with a powerful fan...by jamesshuang - General
I ended up just clipping the glass / pcb / cork sandwich together with bulldog clips. Works reasonably well, however eventually you'll make a divot in the cork.by jamesshuang - Reprappers
They look fine to me... How are you driving them? Perhaps turn down the max speed and max acceleration?by jamesshuang - General
I suspect a vastly simpler sensor would accomplish about the same: paint a few lines on the idler bearing and use an optical encoder to check if the idler is moving as far as the hobbed bolt. Every time I've had a jam, the hobbed bolt grinds down the filament and the idler stops moving. This seems like a fairly easy way to determine if the extruder is working correctly.by jamesshuang - General
Sorry, but home depot won't have PTFE tubing that small. I ended up ordering 4mm OD / 2mm ID tubing from seemecnc, and some amazon pushfit connectors.by jamesshuang - General Mendel Topics
The lulzbot taz will do around 10" cubed, but it is double your price range. For something a little different, I think the SeeMeCNC Rostock MAX will do just over a 10" cylinder. Alternatively, you could self-source a Prusa i3 box version for just about any size. It will also probably be ~$500 that way, if you're careful. Just a warning -- printing a full 10" cube will be very difficult with anytby jamesshuang - General