32
votes
Accepted
How to recycle filament material from printed parts?
There are a few options.
Machines are available which grind the used plastic into fine pieces, melt it down, and extrude it as filament to be reused. Filabot is perhaps the most well known.
Depending ...
- 1,553
10
votes
How to recycle filament material from printed parts?
If you're more interested in the recycling and reuse aspect than the re-print aspect, you could melt all the scrap filament onto a cookie sheet or into a bar (like in a bread ban). You could then ...
- 1,025
8
votes
Accepted
Making your own filament
Quality depends on 3 things:
Quality of pellets (purity, fillers, color)
Where/how they are stored before and during the extrusion (humidity, contaminants)
Have a filter in your extruder to get rid ...
- 944
7
votes
Accepted
Conversion of 3 mm ABS filament to 1.75 mm
In theory, making filament is easy. You take a 3 mm hotend with a 1.75 mm hole, and extrude the 3 mm (sometimes actually 2.85 mm) filament, let it cool, and then reel it up.
In ...
- 1,843
6
votes
Accepted
What types of pigments can be used when making your own filaments?
The normal way pigment is added to filament (or any other extruded plastic product) is by mixing "masterbatch" pellets containing a high concentration of dye with the raw resin pellets. (https://en....
- 6,516
6
votes
Accepted
Can general purpose polystryene (not HIPS) be used for 3D printing?
In principle, it should work fine as a filament, since it's used extensively in the plastic extrusion industry, but I don't think you'd get great material properties out of it. ABS and HIPS ...
- 6,516
6
votes
Making your own filament
You can basically use any machine that pulverizes your pellets into small pieces.
One guy on 3dhubs, explained it in details.
My conclusion is that you can recycle everything using this data ...
- 711
5
votes
Making your own filament
Producing own filament is a challenging task. I see main pitfall in producing filament so it has same quality as you get in shop. You have to:
constant round-shape diameter
diameter tolerance ±0.05 ...
- 1,911
5
votes
Conversion of 3 mm ABS filament to 1.75 mm
The best option is to find somebody in need of 3 mm filament and trade them for it (either in exchange for 1.75 mm filament or in exchange for legal tender with which to buy said filament).
...
- 14.7k
4
votes
How does the Filament production process work?
Some general comments about the process used (plastic extrusion):
The plastic extrusion process is not simple- many textbooks dense with equations have been written about it. The lowest cost ...
- 303
3
votes
Conversion of 3 mm ABS filament to 1.75 mm
You could build a machine that has a nozzle with 3 mm input hole and 1.75 mm output hole, based on some designs for filament making machines. Or you could just cut the filament into little peaces and ...
- 1,106
2
votes
Filament mixer?
OK, it just turned up on Thingiverse that someone has demonstrated a trivial machine to do exactly what I asked for: any FDM printer.
Its sounds crazy, but it works! This technique will allow you to ...
2
votes
How does the Filament production process work?
I do my own filaments and its pretty simple. The real key for quality is stability of everything. The temperature, the movement of the air around cooling part, the extrusion force, both internal and ...
- 245
2
votes
Accepted
What type of plastic can be used to produce your own filament?
Filament manufacturers (for example, Colorfabb) also sell pellets, price per kilo would be about 10 times less than the same plastic in filament form.
Out of household garbage only ABS can be easily ...
- 164
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible