Recycling 3D Prints and Waste Plastic into Filament (PET & PLA)

Подписаться 142 тыс.

Просмотров 217 тыс.

50% 1

Transform your unwanted 3D prints and household plastics into eco-friendly 3D printer filament! 🌱
More Extrusion Info: www.DrDFlo.com/Extrusion.html
Filabot Recycling Lineup: www.filabot.com/products/recy...
Shredii: actionbox.ca/products/shredii-5
D-Flo's Amazon Store: www.amazon.com/shop/dr.d-flo
📷 Follow Dr. D-Flo on the Gram: / dr.dflo
Description: Welcome to Part 2 of Dr. D-Flo’s plastic extrusion series. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Part 1 ( • How to Extrude 3D Prin... ), where a variety of NEW materials are extruded into 3D printer filament. In this video, we will recycle unwanted 3D prints and plastic items found around the house into filament.
The first step in this process is to grind up old parts and empty containers with a shredder/granulator. You'll discover that ground-up plastic isn't the same as new pellets; it's lighter and requires some extra processing before it can be melting and drawn out as a constant diameter fiber. These extra steps include a 3 mm extrusion followed by pelletizing. Ultimately, we end up with a 100% recycled feedstock that can be used for producing 3D printer filament or in any thermoplastic processing equipment (e.g., injection molding).
#recycling #filament #3dprinting
Table of Contents:
00:00 - Intro
01:29 - Recycling 3D Prints
01:58 - Shredding (Reclaimer)
07:55 - Extruding regrind
14:38 - Pelletizing
17:40 - Degradation
20:10 - Re-Extruding
21:15 - Economics
24:00 - Recycling Commodity Plastics
27:10 - Pultrusion
29:00 - Shredding PET Bottles
30:35 - PET Extrusion Challenges
35:15 - Extruding PET Flakes

Наука

Опубликовано:

29 июн 2024

Ссылка:

Скачать:

Готовим ссылку...

Добавить в:

Мой плейлист

Посмотреть позже

Комментарии : 361

@DrDFlo 8 месяцев назад

♻ Mechanical recycling is very challenging. It takes a lot of time and expensive equipment to produce a material that would cost a fraction if just purchased new. Let me know in the comments what societal and technological innovations are needed to make recycling of failed prints and waste plastics more economical.

@bigbomb5904 8 месяцев назад

I have a bag of pla filament failed prints. I have been looking for a long time for someone to take a prints so it doesn't go to waste

@anthonyleggio4877 8 месяцев назад

what if you melted the plastic into a sheet before reclaiming it to get a more uniform size and shape?

@loneepicz 8 месяцев назад

As an optician im very interesting to see if you can recycle cellulose Acetat frames. The goal would be to get uniform pellets to heat mold plates to cut out new frames. For the community could you test a cellulose Acetat spool because it is rare on that market. On the manufacture side i could read that it is possible to recycle PA so my question is while i saw that you have a printer from Formlabs, could you recycle prints with this and could make a PA spool out of it. Hope for more content like this special if you could try cellulose Acetat🙏🏻

@OneHappyCrazyPerson 8 месяцев назад

So how do you get the small particles out ? Like sand or shavings for example, things like that will definitely clog a nozzle

@Master_Tiger_44 7 месяцев назад

This could be a good way to recycle of you can get a donation spot

@halfstep67 8 месяцев назад

If one can't afford a reclaimer, a Chocolate Lab would be a great alternative. A Lab can chew up anything.

@DrDFlo 8 месяцев назад

😂

@stevecade857 5 месяцев назад

I don't think the Lab gets hot enough to extruder a filament though so good luck recovering the pellets.

@FilamentStories 8 месяцев назад

This is hands down the most thorough and clearly explained video on why recycling 3D printed waste is time consuming, challenging and expensive both in energy costs and products required to produce a useable resultant filament. The added degradation of the plastics from multiple heat cycles and the need for virgin resin to make a product that prints reasonably well is another factor that many people don’t often consider. Thank you for covering so well all the considerations and steps required to produce an at home, Makerspace or other consumer-based recycled 3D printer filament. It is a wonderful thing that so many people are passionate about wanting to recycle their 3D printing waste. It's just much more difficult to do than most people realize. Someday hopefully there will be a more straightforward path or more companies like Recycling Fabrik in Germany, who accept and recycle 3D printer scraps. I’ll be sending people your way to watch this video.when get questions in the future. Many thanks!

@Enjoymentboy 8 месяцев назад

This was a great video. Looking at my own PLA waste I can say that supports are about 80% of it is and this makes me think that a perfect use for 100% recycled PLA with 0% virgin pellets added would be for a dual filament 3D printer where the recycled PLA is only used for support material. The physical properties really become irrelevant for supports and colour consistency wouldn't matter either.

@DrDFlo 8 месяцев назад

Great idea! If the model is purely aesthetic, then you could also use the recycled material for the infill and new filament for the perimeter and outside layers.

@SianaGearz 8 месяцев назад

@@DrDFlo Infill should ideally not be load-carrying, as it's extruded faster and with less bonding strength. It's there mostly as internal support for roof layers. I actually do slicing tricks to reduce the extrusion thickness of both infill and support. Infill, it depends, i don't necessarily like going much below nozzle width on that, but on support i go absolutely wild, and it comes out fluffy soft and very easy to remove because it's so fragile.

@stevecade857 5 месяцев назад

Model dependent but I think the filament swap priming would create more waste than just sticking with the primary filament for the supports, not counting the extra time and energy required.

@AndrewHelgeCox 5 месяцев назад

@@stevecade857 Would this be a problem with a dual head printer rather than a filament swap single head one like the Bambus?

@stevecade857 5 месяцев назад

@@AndrewHelgeCox The waste on the Bambu comes from changing filament and flushing it through ready to print. A dual head wouldn't need the flushing just priming so it's ready to print.

@ActionBOX 8 месяцев назад

Thanks for the shoutout Dr! We were very happy to help you out with our SHREDII 😃 Looking forward to more future collaborations 😁

@beldron 7 месяцев назад

I worked in a recycling plant for PET and HDPE and it was interesting to see that you have faced some of the difficulties in small scale which the big recycling process brings with it.

@MitchDavis2 7 месяцев назад

I work at a filament company. This video is spot-on. I get asked daily by people if they can send me scraps to turn into filament, and the answer isn’t very quick or easy to explain, but you absolutely nailed it in this video. Our biggest sales are the lowest-cost filament. We’ve even made recycled PETG filament, but cost always has a bigger influence than sustainability when it comes to sales. You’re the first person I’ve seen that accurately explains why it’s not as simple as “adding old prints into a melter and making filament” and you even went as far to explain why it typically needs to be extruded TWICE. In the business world, labor = $$$, which makes recycling very difficult to make when competing with virgin resin pellets. I’ll be sending everyone who asks me about recycling over to this video. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

@DrDFlo 7 месяцев назад

Glad the video resonates with your experience on the industrial scale! I wish this video wasn't turning into being such a black pill on the recycling process

@matildo4ka7 7 месяцев назад

You guys are blind, you don't see an opportunity that is right in front of your noses.

@MitchDavis2 7 месяцев назад

@@matildo4ka7 what do you mean? We’ve made recycled filament, but it cost more so it didn’t sell

@chilloxik 7 месяцев назад

@@MitchDavis2which country are u sourcing your virgin pellets from? Once you tell me I can check the prices of raw vs. rPET. I think if you can find cheaper rPET abroad it'll still give you a sustainable company label plus you'll sell cheap recycled material to your final consumer. Pultrusion here is the small scale option especially now when you can just use your old Creality 3d printer and reuse it as a pultrusion device. It's $180 for a recycling device, ta-da. Yes, it's long process, but if you work with your community well and they provide you with PET bottles, you can offset some filament costs plus educate your community.

@matildo4ka7 7 месяцев назад

@@MitchDavis2 for the large scale recycling you cannot compete with India and China anymore. You can sit and wait for them to come up with the solutions and they will make equipment cheaper than Filabot btw. I'll wait for that ;)

@Marzec309 8 месяцев назад

The inconsistent feed of your virgin/regrind material can be improved with a screw that has a mixing section. Also, separate barrel heating zones can help control Feed, Mixing and Extrusion.

@stevecade857 5 месяцев назад

The Pelletizer should be direct drive as well just pulling off a free standing or mounted spool. No need for two separate machines.

@phillupson8561 8 месяцев назад

Looks like the grinder would be less labour intensive if they changed the design so you had a big hopper at the top, it could grind on the large grinder and drop straight through to the next grinder, with a sieve built in below that (probably angled toward a collection bin) that could deal with the dust and then slide the correctly sized pellets out to the side, that would remove a lot of babysitting from the process. I've always fancied making something like this (on my list of 3000 other projects i'll never get around to it) but seeing this in action definitely gives me some ideas.

@Arturius_Rex_8 6 дней назад

That would involve extra gearing/axles to run both grinders. This design only requires the one common axle.

@AllsFree 4 месяца назад

This is possibly the best/most informative video on filament recycling. This is great, a complete honest 10/10.

@Uniqueuponme 8 месяцев назад

Even though the costs are still extreme, the advancement in small scale extruding is amazing. I can see this being a long term cost savings for a universities and maker spaces.

@hippopotamus86 8 месяцев назад

But is it really when you factor in the time taken to do this? Buying a spool is probably cheaper than paying someone to run these machines.

@cnc-maker 8 месяцев назад

Even on an industrial scale, recycled filament is more expensive than virgin filament. Electricity and time cost a lot of money, and we haven't even discussed the sorting, or the inability to sort most plastics. As presented, the sorting requires human effort, which again, is extremely expensive and prone to error.

@randallbourque1321 8 месяцев назад

@@cnc-maker The electricity is a point he did not even mention. Unless you have a very large solar array, your costs can be very high depending on where you live.

@ThingsMadeOfOtherThings 4 месяца назад

You're a exceptional educator! You pack in so much detail but it all comes across and the explanations are so clearly worded and presented. I'll come back to this video as a reference for anything processing related in future. Thank you

@DudleyToolwright 8 месяцев назад

Very well done as always. The thought organization in the video is outstanding.

@itsmisterb 8 месяцев назад

This video is exacly what I have been searching for months. Inceadible and thorough explanations!

@adrenalinejunky789 8 месяцев назад

So cool! Recycling prints has come a long ways since the idea was first floating around!

@CD3DP 7 месяцев назад

Thank you so much for your efforts and helping to educate us all with your findings. This is hands down one of my favorite pages along side AVE and proper printing

@BodgeEngineering 8 месяцев назад

Excellent video - you explained so many things that I was struggling with in my adventures with plastic recycling.

@lap87 8 месяцев назад

Another banger from the Doctor, love it! was very interesting to see this "at home" setup explained in great detail, today i learned a lot! Would be cool with a follow-up video where you take us through a bigger facility to point out the differences and any other solutions they had to develop

@DrDFlo 8 месяцев назад

🤞 Hoping to get out to a molecular recycling facility

@BennyTygohome 8 месяцев назад

Your channel is awesome. You explain the process very well.

@danialhowe9814 8 месяцев назад

i think this marks the biggest game changing need in the industry today - once this can be done on a home basis it will be huge

@MO-ss7qt 5 месяцев назад

Well, that takes care of any delusions I might have had about doing something with the poop! ;) Excellent conveyance of this bit of knowledge. Thanks so much.

@rodrigoff7456 8 месяцев назад

Thank you very much for such a sober, educational, and comprehensive overview!

@thenextlayer 8 месяцев назад

Wow. Most effort on a RU-vid video ever. It shows. Great work.

@theresaflorian5052 8 месяцев назад

What an extensive process, learned a lot! Thanks

@gorak9000 8 месяцев назад

I think you misspelt expensive... $12k for just the reclaimer and peletizer?? And you still need the extruder and the cooling modules, and given the cost of the other 2 parts, I bet their metal box with a bunch of fans inside it sells for $300 each at minimum - wouldn't even want to guess how much they want for the extruder.

@filagain4137 8 месяцев назад

@@gorak9000 40K USD for an entire set of filament recycling, so yeah

@gorak9000 8 месяцев назад

@@filagain4137 I see no reason why it's so expensive, other than some kind of "greenwashing premium" to say "I recycled my filament" that big companies would pay just so they can put some bs blurb on their website - there's absolutely no reason why that "reclaimer" and "pelitizer" is $12k - there's probably no more than $500 of parts in both of them combined, and even that's probably being generous

@kenspaceman3938 8 месяцев назад

Great educational video…and it trashed my ambitions to recycle my PLA prints, bummer.😢…. BUT, I learned a lot, was really interesting!

@greenenko 8 месяцев назад

Thank you for this video! You have summarized my own experience in this topic and answered all my open questions on why i have inconsistent filament diameter on my diy extruder why filament is not the same as a new one, why do we need compression screws and the most valuable is how to fix all of that issues! Regranulating of the waste and mixing it with a new granules will fix all my problems!

@whynotbuildit 8 месяцев назад

I get so excited when u post !!!

@Pooria-jr9yf 18 дней назад

this is great. Thank you. One issue I have with the same shredders that I have in my lab is that the previous residue materials is almost impossible to be removed from between blades so the next material is always contaminated.

@kymboskreations1914 Месяц назад

Love that piece flying out at 3:02

@Ckpe4 8 месяцев назад

One of the best recycling videos on RU-vid. Thanks a lot. IMHO plastic is to valuable mostly non renewable resource to be town away

@samuelcarlton6956 2 месяца назад

Exceptional video and a masterclass in thorough, yet concise scientific education. Thank you for the time and effort in putting this together.

@gaboxargentina 8 месяцев назад

AMAZING VIDEO, very educative

@agmuntianu 8 месяцев назад

why not use a modified injection molding machine ( basically only the heating chamber and the piston, with a disk that has many 3mm holes ) , to get fairly uniform 3mm "spaghetti" and pelletize that ? instead of 2x grinding + extrusion to 3mm ?

@rajgill7576 8 месяцев назад

I'm also wondering why he even has to add virgin pellets in if he's going through the trouble of palletizing the recycle to mat h the density anyway. Just feels like he's choosing to recycle 50% slower for a marginally better product

@joshuacheung6518 6 месяцев назад

I wondered the same, then thought about it a bit. How would you load it? How much could you load at once?

@joshuacheung6518 6 месяцев назад

@@rajgill7576to combat thermal degredation.... how much skipping did you do?

@walf6978 5 дней назад

Awesome video! Everything I wanted to know and a whole bunch more that I was happy to learn!

@johnmoore5593 8 месяцев назад

I'm SO thankful you showed this in such detail. I have been very interested in recycling of 3d prints and I'm glad to know that this is not the direction to go in for now. It's simply too low of a return for too high of a cost. I look forward to the day that we have a 3d print recycling service in the Americas.

@Trust_me_I_am_an_Engineer 8 месяцев назад

Printerior in St.Louis? 😁

@johnmoore5593 8 месяцев назад

@@Trust_me_I_am_an_Engineer thank you. I was not aware of Printerior. I will look to them!

@agepbiz 8 месяцев назад

This was super interesting and informative. Great video. I have kept my scraps for years for future recycling. Not sure what to do with it yet though

@petermuller608 7 месяцев назад

Do energetic recycling

@nikethunner2732 8 месяцев назад

Thank you for the effort, this was extremely informative.

@Slavicplayer251 8 месяцев назад

could you try melting the shreded prints first into a solid sheet then shred that to create solid pellets/chunks

@skylinevspec000 8 месяцев назад

If anyone wanted to make one of these there is a company in the USA called Surplus center. 1hp AC motors about $150, the gear box is about $130, the bearing pillow blocks about $15 each. Then all you need is a CNC or manual mill cut tool steel grinders. I've seen a guy make the grinders using plate steel with a central shaft that bolts the plates together. This can then be cut on a bandsaw or plasma/waterjet. some sheet metal case. One hell of a lot better than $15000. The entire units are very manual therefor easy to replicate. For the every day person wanting to be as economical as possible when printing.. the entire system if near 18k is way out of range, the ethics of charging education facilities that price is also questionable.. . Good concept, good company idea, greedy implementation and therefor bad environmental impact.. im the bin my left over prints go :( I should note the parts I believe are the same. Ironhorse is a chineese company on alibaba

@BennyTygohome 8 месяцев назад

It looks like a huge pain in the butt, but extremely educational and interesting. The biggest value is education and (although a pain) it looks very interesting to do... Almost even fun 😊

@chatroux399 8 месяцев назад

Thank you for this video, great content

@macros3798 8 месяцев назад

Extremely viry nice idea and best filament making idea 💯👌

@SeanHodgins 8 месяцев назад

Very cool, I've wanted to venture into this myself, but I don't think I have enough print waste to make it worth it yet. Its odd they didn't just put a feed directly on the pelletizer to get a perfect cut length for different rpms.

@Scozzy_23 8 месяцев назад

I was not interested in recycling prints, but after this video I am. Maybe not right now but I’m the future, your video was very informative and very high quality, this is the first video of yours I have seen but I am definitely subscribing and you deserve way more subs then you have man.

@stevecade857 5 месяцев назад

It's funny as I now am completely of the opposite view. I was interested in personally recycling old print scraps, I'm not now.

@stefanguiton 4 месяца назад

Excellent video!

@CraftySven 4 месяца назад

excellent video, thank you !

@stevelyons2744 2 месяца назад

Going down memory lane a bit. When bottles were glass, and some modern plastic containers, had deposits on them. Returned to a store, if your state participated, you got cash or credit. It was better than shattered glass on the roads and such. Shipping would be hell, but recycling drops in brick and mortar filament vendors could do the trick... a little. 6 kilos of old prints for 1.5 kilo spools. Dunno. Some big box stores do it with batteries. No money, but a central drop off.

@rusgib3648 3 месяца назад

Very informative. Thank you.

@yunessaga983 7 месяцев назад

Thank you for the great explination 👏

@subtext9881 3 дня назад

This is quality content and well presented too. Regarding the set of machines, I am somewhat surprised that those are, well, "under engineered". For 17k I expect more sensors and actuators. Adjusting rates by hand is a thing of the past.

@ottorollin395 7 месяцев назад

Excellent content!

@loneepicz 8 месяцев назад

@kevingauthier7973 5 месяцев назад

I worked in injection molding over 40 years and I worked with plenty of regrind materials. I kept looking for you to make a mistake but you hit everything on the head good job. Those are all the same issues all recyclers deal with . I worked at an injection molting factory once that advertised a product as recycled materials but used virgin because it was cheaper than recycled. Also there is a difference between pre consumer and post consumer plastic.

@jacksonrussell3645 7 месяцев назад

I used to work at a plastic factory we had a water bath directly infont of the extruder to help with keeping uniform size

@becauseican2607 8 месяцев назад

If you dry the pet flakes with a higher temperature it could pelletize. A pet-bottle in hot water shrinks a lot. So will the flakes.👍

@stevecade857 5 месяцев назад

Very enlightening. Seeing all the scraps I throw in the bin I really wanted to put that waste to good use, probably on prototypes rather than final prints so plastic quality and colour isn't a big concern for me. The time, money and effort required to be doing the 'right thing' is very off putting when a new spool of filament is so reasonably priced. This has really got to be something for 3D printing clubs / shops or education facilities to offer a recycling service. Bring along your scraps (free donation) and purchase recycled filament spools at cheap prices. As long as it makes sense for them financially as well.

@keegan854 5 месяцев назад

Thanks for the video, this is very interesting stuff. The hollow filament produced by pultrusion is a non-issue -- you just increase the slicer's extrusion multiplier to compensate. I have printed many aesthetic and functional parts from pultruded PET bottles, including all the motion parts for a 3D printer. I agree that the process is quite slow and tedious, but the results are good. If you're dedicated enough, it is pretty much the only truly affordable way to produce filament at home.

@sujithkr136 6 месяцев назад

great video..One thought is ,if you melt the whole bottle to a smaller ,sphere shape,and then perform the shredding process..That way i think you might be able to get rid of the flake shape of pet bottle shreds to much more of a granular shape...

@user-sx7kg4sr4t 3 месяца назад

Yeah, *THATS PRACTICABLE*

@yinfest 8 месяцев назад

Have you tried compacting the PET bottles and then heating them to melt in a bit more thick/solid object before shredding it? It should give more thick pallets with better flowability and thus be easier for the extruder to operate. I might be wrong but it's worth a shot.

@matildo4ka7 7 месяцев назад

You need a very good shredder for this type of action.

@richardborens833 6 месяцев назад

wow, really interesting. Thanks.

@markumoeder 6 месяцев назад

This is actually a very good investment if you are operating a big 3d print farm business. But only if you got the experience have source's of free plastics and the time.

@Guardian_Arias 8 месяцев назад

The battle for recycling 3D printing waste continues. Have you looked into melting flakes into pucks? or using melting chamber with a piston to extrude into an inconsistent filament? I do understand the first proposition would degrade the filament further, but it might be worthwhile exploring.

@stevecade857 5 месяцев назад

Hydraulic press? Probably better to avoid another high temp heat cycle. The press will generate heat which could help it fuse and be grindable into chucks rather than flakes.

@AlexanderBurgers 7 месяцев назад

get yourself a panini press and turn your household recycleable plastics (bottles) into flat pieces first before sending them into the shredder. :) And plastics that are not good for 3d printing can still be turned into feedstock for cnc machining or straight into cast/moulded parts.

@pmcquay1 8 месяцев назад

Instead of grinding regrinding and melting the bottles, then pelletizing them and reextrudimg them, could you melt them in an oven in a 3 inch by say 18 inch tray, until you have a bar that is half an inch thick, and then grind that? It might avoid some of the flake problem and let you process the bottles faster.

@itsmisterb 8 месяцев назад

Exactly what I was thinking! ActionBox, who he partnered up with for the shredder, also sell a injection molding machine. My idea is he use that machine and use the flakes to make PET ingots. That way it makes it just like a 3d printed part! Of course it adds to the thermal history but such is life

@matildo4ka7 7 месяцев назад

You guys are thinking in the right direction 👍👍👍

@Digitallifeconcepts 7 месяцев назад

thank you for the info on the bottle peeler recycle tech. I am interested in this but not at 20hrs per spool of sub par material

@seanwelding4183 8 месяцев назад

I wish these machines weren't so prohibitably expensive, the setup is quite nice overall. I would love to see more recycling done on a small scale by individuals such as those of us in the maker community, but at $12000 for just two of the four machines you realistically need to make quality filament, the ROI isn't there except for larger businesses that have employee time to burn between other tasks. At $2,000-$3,000 all in for a setup such as this, I could see it becoming rather commonly used, as the ROI on that is more tangible for an avid maker or small makerspace to digest investing in.

@NicksStuff 8 месяцев назад

I wonder what is expensive, though. You find new (but discounted) 1 hp motors for $200. Wouldn't a hacker space be able to machine the screw?

@jeromefeig4209 8 месяцев назад

I agree with seanwelding4183. I also want to add that the cost that is represented is way understated in that the source of power (electricity) has not been considered nor the cost of maintenance and repairs to the equipment. You have already stated as well that the cost of labor and facility overhead (raw material cleaning, operational, maintenance, and supervisory) has not been included.

@steevepark4966 8 месяцев назад

Wow Great ~!!!

@stuartashers 8 месяцев назад

I would modifie the hopper and auger starting with large screw tapering down to the standard shaft.

@voyeger4464 7 месяцев назад

according to me, the best way to recycle the filament waste is to supply it to the recycler. They have a system in place. There are hundreds of products that can be made from melting the plastic, it is absolutely not necessary to make recycled filaments that are subpar and useful for hobbyists only.

@bran706 4 месяца назад

This is a fantastic video and you weren't joking about being expensive for hobbyists. Just $13,000 lol

@chemistclips 8 месяцев назад

If your 3d print needs a specific center of gravity or ballast for a weighted base, I feel like pellets could be great to add mid-print as opposed to solid infill. Your QC on the pellets can be pretty loose and you still maintain plastic homogeneity should you intend to later recycle the same print. I'd like to see more investigations using heat (look at the PET droplets falling from the screw! 36:16 Could you get those small enough so they serve as pellets?) or maybe high frequency vibration cutting methods to simplify pellet creation and microplastic reduction? Thanks for sharing your experience and doing the economic calculation for us!

@asharma9345 5 месяцев назад

Keep it up Bro.

@NicksStuff 8 месяцев назад

Could you send a handful of samples to CNC kitchen and have him test the mechanical properties of recycled filament?

@sammy_1_1 8 месяцев назад

Would be a cool to see this process automated at this scale where possible...

@RPBCACUEAIIBH 7 месяцев назад

Plastic bottles shrink when heated. When they shrink, they also thicken. You may be able to shred plastic bottles far easier if you heat them before shredding. Thicker shredded pieces may also feed better, so it worth trying to heat the bottles to shrink before shredding.

@frozendude707 8 месяцев назад

When making PET bottles in a factory, they start with a preform that looks kind of like a short test tube with thick walls, and then use compressed air in a die in an oven to expand it to the final shape, like a balloon. Would it not be possible to do the same in reverse? Like using a vacuum pump connected to a metal bottle cap and then put it in an oven or perhaps using hot air? Then it should be thicker and easier to granulate.

@yerry_verse 8 месяцев назад

Nice video, some things about pulltruders are not correct, and maybe you chose one older model. The other thing is that pulltruded filament can be used to print up to 0.08mm , I'm doing it with my printers, you just need to increase the flow.

@DrDFlo 8 месяцев назад

How long would it take for you to make 1kg of filament from (~50) bottles with your pultruder? Please include the time it takes to prepare the bottle and strip it. I had very little practice, so I am curious how quickly an experienced user can process this material.

@nietofarias 7 месяцев назад

You could easily make stackable pulltruder machines. Also, I usually prepare 3 or 4 bottles at a time without inflating them, just heating them. The cutting can be done quickly and you can store and pile up the strips. I'm actually producing more filament than I consume myself. The problems are: • Too difficult to set the proper printing parameters to combat crystallization • How to join filaments pieces to make one large 1Kg spool. Since the filament is hollow, it's difficult to join. Filament joiners available now make too weak joints that require wider spools to protect joins from breaking

@donrozwick7367 7 месяцев назад

well that explains my problem with extruding my grindings. They usually got stuck and no extrusion.

@william-Bartee 7 месяцев назад

If you make plastic slabs on a press (like brothers make RU-vid streamers ) it does not matter all these things ,also a panini press with teflon sheets is what is used with bottle caps to make slabs I later make into knife handles has been fun and I get marble looking plastic

@bembelknecht 8 месяцев назад

societal and technological innovations needed to make recycling of failed prints: lower prices for these machines or central recycling, where manufacturers buy your failed prints back. But generally speaking it has its charme to recycle material for yourself

@GregAtlas 2 месяца назад

For the PET bottles, wouldn't it be faster and easier to melt everything down and condense on a tray or some other container and then chop it up so it's not so thin of pieces? That would also help the moisture issue.

@FALLAXT 7 месяцев назад

What an outstanding video! Do you think you could improve the extrusion of PET by grinding it to a powder instead of shredding it or will the same problem occur as with the PLA particles that are too small?

@georgstreitz6003 7 месяцев назад

A really informative Video 👍 For me it would be very interessting to see if the addition of a little bit of chain extender as masterbatch into the regrind/virgin would further enhance the mechanical properties. Do you have rheometry equipment to get a feeling for the degradation?

@flaagan 4 месяца назад

It's a little surprising the reclaimer isn't designed in a vertically staggered layout so you can go from large to small granular sizing without having to manually reload the hopper.

@C-M-E 4 месяца назад

I mostly specialize in material development that can be more easily transferred into alternative production methods and am currently working on a solvent-based extrusion method for ABS (also easily adaptable to other plastic/polymers in the recycling sphere of interest that work with easily obtainable solvents). It's a real easy build that can be done in a weekend, as I just obtained all the remaining parts to mock up the extruder yesterday. If you're interested in yet another project, this will definitely cut down on redundant processing of oddly-shaped flake, but better yet, should be able to bypass the shredding phase altogether. I do have a high RPM alternative shredder that kicks out almost powderized stock, but have been loading simple compressed samples quite well in my testing phase. I'm currently focusing on recapturing the solvent for subsequent passes as that is the part I'd most like to reuse, as it contains quite a lot of liquefied microplastic stock. Not that it's terribly expensive, but being able to reuse the solvents makes it that much more affordable rather than letting them vape off to atmosphere, aside from environmental concerns with doing so.

@DrDFlo 4 месяца назад

Always interested in alternative methods of recycling! ♻️ Please consider posting your build to my forum: forum.drdflo.com/

@C-M-E 4 месяца назад

@@DrDFlo Will do! I hadn't documented much during the build as it was a personal project at the time just to test a material, but it turned out to be so cheap that it could solve a lot of problems. I'll work on a write-up as the build progresses. Just got the extrusion body done this evening, on to testing tomorrow!

@meansq 8 месяцев назад

you can orient the screw vertical to have gravity help with those flakes.

@bigvinweasel1050 8 месяцев назад

Imagine, just imagine, if the large shredder auto filled the smaller shredder and you got usable material without the manual intervention....

@nledevil 2 месяца назад

The reclaimer needs a baymax sticker saying "I am not fast"

@Festivejelly 8 месяцев назад

Oh man for the cost of these machines you'd think they would have a bit more of an elegant setup. Look how much stuff ends up outside of the hopper. Also why not just have the secondary shredder underneath the primary one? It could be driven with gears. Very odd to make you babysit a process like this.

@anthonyfigueroa2395 7 месяцев назад

Or use a tiny table saw to pre cut your pieces into tiny strips you can chuck in later...

@tummy_fritters 8 месяцев назад

Really interesting video. I have to wonder what the energy use impact is per kg of material produced compared to a factory setup. I expect it will be less efficient, but is it enough to make the diversion from landfill worth while? Essentially, is small scale plastic recycling better for the planet overall than not consuming the energy it takes to do so? I think a good option might be large scale recycling of PLA and PETG, but I doubt that can be done in many places. Really well made video, Doc!

@chris993361 8 месяцев назад

I can't help but think that there's a path where melting the water bottles instead of shredding them might lead to an easier process. There would obviously still be a shredding step but one that gives you chunks instead of flakes.

@stremstremnik8246 3 месяца назад

Отличная работа ! А ты не думал поставить после сопла в 3мм машинку для подачи пластика с замером толщины которая сама рассчитает скорость подачи при уменьшении толщины и сразу нагретое сопло в 1,7 на котором будет уже меньше скачков толщины. И еще не думал экструдер который выдавливает нить поставить вертикально может под действием притяжения будет ровнее толщина.

@VladimirVonRootinTootin 8 месяцев назад

I’ve been waiting so long! Thank you so much! I wish I could afford this but I’m stuck in college tuition and I want to try with other filaments that I use more often

@GeddyRC 8 месяцев назад

I know it's many years away (too far away, really) but I imagine a world where you can toss supports into a box, dump it into a machine when it's full, and magically have it melted down and re-spooled. All the while being affordable and not being an entire separate hobby on its own. It's a logistical nightmare and there are far too variables keeping it from likely ever being this simple, but it's something I like to think about.

@matildo4ka7 7 месяцев назад

Pellet printers are the answer here. Filament is problematic as a recycling product. Small scale needs to mimic big scale, but make it faster and we will have a great future.

@inventtory1272 8 месяцев назад

Has anyone at your Makerspace ever tried printing regrind with a pellet extruder? I'm genuinely surprised I haven't seen this tried. I would imagine it would be difficult, like anything else, but one would think that it would be worth it to skip a few steps. Even if the amount of regrind to fresh pellet was low, I would think it would be usefull.

@DrDFlo 8 месяцев назад

Yes, I have! You have to print slower due to the lower bulk density of the regrind. But definitely possible

@inventtory1272 8 месяцев назад

Honestly, if I ruled the world, I would simply design an extremely rugged pellet extruder designed specifically for regrind. Even if the prints were low quality it would be insanely worth it to completely remove the idea of filament from the system. I can't help but daydream that something like this would open up the door for the grinding up of household products for printing. Sadly I have limited resources for such experiments.

@inventtory1272 8 месяцев назад

@@DrDFlo Oh excellent. Sorry, I missed your answer while typing that other comment. Simply knowing that it's possible is a massive help towards me trying it for myself in the future. Thank you very much.

@keischembri 7 месяцев назад

Great video, but as you mentioned, when looking at the total costs, which would be around 12K, time labour and electrical price due to time to process, it would not be profitable for the consumer; however, this should be an excellent video for governments to look into recycling and provide incentives.

@Ne0kil 5 месяцев назад

One thing that I was wondering is why are we even feeding the pellets directly into the screw? wouldn't it make the process much easier if there was a some kind of "heated kettle" that would already heat up the plastic and from there it would already be flowing and the screw could press it through the extruder with far less issues. Or am I forgetting something?

@killsalot78 8 месяцев назад

having to go from solid to chopped to shredded plastic extruded into wobbly 3mm filament back into pellets to then re-extrude into 1.75mm is quite a process, seems like a few steps could be skipped with with a more optimized machine. A shredder that actually has enough torque/HP to single pass grind it would save a lot of energy, and a second extrusion stage to take the hot 3mm filament and directly turn it into 1.75mm drastically reducing the amount of thermal cycles

@DrDFlo 8 месяцев назад

Oh there are extruders that can handle wet flake, degas it and extrude it as a precise fiber in one step, but they are prohibitively expensive (several $100k if not millions). Checkout this MRS extruder: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MWVwyBMCGHA.html