Plastic recycling

Description

Build an extruder to recycle and create new filament cheaply for Fixme's Ultimaker and other people's printers. An extruder is constructed from essentially two parts: a feeding mechanism, and a heater - chopped plastic is fed from a container into the feeding mechanism, which then pushes the plastic slowly through the heater to create the filament.

Goal

• Recycle failed/old prints and extruded plastic

• Recycle other plastics, such as PET bottles (caps), etc
• Experiment with new colors and materials

Obstacles

• Get a filament of repeatable thickness

• More complex = more difficult

• Ventilation preferable for ABS

Parts needed

Part Name	Description	State
Tube	Part where the material will flow trough. Which material should we use ? (Aluminium/ (Stainless) steel /	Needed (20mm internal diameter)
Auger	Screw pushing the material	Just bought one of those on Ebay
Motor	Makes stuff move	Needed
Heating element	Nichrome wire ? Ceramic heaters ? Quite cheap on ebay	Needed
Thermometers	Get the internal temperature in different places of the tube (rear, middle and nose for example).	Needed
Extrusion nozzle	Transforms the heated plastic into a regular filament suitable for the printer.	Needed
Cooling system	"From liquid to solid in a trice !". Air/water/oil ?	Needed

Resources

Extruders

• Basic extruder

• More advanced extruder

I'm guessing we should build something in between - not too simple but not too expensive either.

Misc

• Color filament
• Filament recycling detailed research paper (noskill)
• Broyeuse extrudeuse domestique (noskill)

Schedule

Why do we even have this section?

Participants

• noskill
• sasha