[Update October 13th] Working very hard right now to organize the shipping of the Pellet Extruder and other tasks related to Greenboy3D like organizing a supply of pellets for everyone and a pellet extruder wiki, which is why I sometimes have trouble answering everyone immediately. Most parts for the extruder have already arrived and have been processed & packed for shipping, however the pellet extruder screws are still in manufacturing since this is the most complicated and costly part of the pellet extruder. I believe that the first units will be shipped out by the end of October. Due to the additional organizational tasks related to the supply of pellets, there is simply more work that needs to be done. This includes staying in contact with many companies selling different types of plastics & watching out for good offers, requesting samples, testing them, negotiating prices, organizing the transportation of tons of plastic pellets, and so on. These tasks also take up some of my time, which would otherwise have been spent on the Wiki/Knowledge Base platform and the guide videos. Just a couple days ago, for example, I ordered and paid for 8,600 kg of PLA pellets, which will likely be transported to my location from Slovenia next week. 2500 kg PETG pellets are already in my possession, but more of other types are needed like: ABS/ASA/ABS-GF/ABS-GB PET TPU/TPE (various Shore levels) PA GF/CF Additionally soon there will be a new update about the ongoing progress (including the one about pellets) 🙂 If you want to get some additional pellets along with your order then that is possible however you need to consider that, while the pellet extruder will be shipped for free there will be additional shipping costs for pellets. However I will keep you updated regarding the pellets. The only thing I am not sure about is whether I should also get these extremely elastic pellets I showed in one of my videos, after doing more research it turned out these were not Shore 5A, but Shore 30 (with out the "A") which is significantly below Shore 0A meaning even more elastic and flexible than Shore 0A The only problem is that these pellets are quite expensive compared to other plastics and could only be offered for prices like 12,99 USD/EUR per kg (way higher than the other plastic types like PLA, which will probably go for 3,5 USD/EUR) Should you have more questions or concerns please feel free to contact me anytime - I am here to help.
What if you just build a seperate extruder to produce the filament from pellets (essentially what you have right now) and then feed that into a standard fdm printer head? I imagine that should solve the consitency problems, even if it's a bit less efficient?
Consistency could be greatly improved by simply building a pellet sifter that can bin the sizes through a series of graded holes. With just 12 grades of pellets by size ("too small", ten steps about around the average pellet size, and "too big"), you'd be going from 15% variation to 1% or less variation within those 10 steps, (depending on how narrow you do your steps). A filament maker could do 1% tolerance-graded pellets by pre-sorting and binning them as a step before all the out-of-grade pellets were just loaded into their standard filament extruding machines like usual.
As an injection molding designer and engineer I can contribute with some things: A) The screw starts with low inner Ø and then gradually increases its inner Ø. This is because the pellets form air bubbles that get traped in the screw if the Ø is constant. This gives inconsistent flowrates. B) You MUST heat the entire screw, from start to finish. Even the nozzle if you can. C) Most pellets are thought to be used in injection, extrution and blow mold. The relation between the size of the pellet and the screw of those machines is many times larger. However, this is not true to this case, where the Ø of the screw only lets 2-3 pellets to get in. Tips: Make screw wider, with progressive inner Ø. Let some gap in the fit so air can go away (about 0,2 mm). Heat the entire screw, from start to finish. You may use more than one heating element. PS: Your idea is brilliant, keep on that study case.
You mean that, in commercial extenders, the screw's minor diameter (the diameter in between the threads) increases along the screw, right? Such that the gap between the screw and the barrel shrinks along the screw?
I purchased one of those PetG bottle kits online. After seeing how easy pellet printing is, i think i can get it modified to do this. Would be better to have a separate machine to use pellets and make filament since my printer is tuned to be faster and lighter
@@Psyden5757 I don't think it is that simple. Pretty much all those bottle filament extruders pull the filament through the nozzle. You have nothing to pull if you're cutting it at the nozzle.
@@Psyden5757 hmm, maybe you could use some rollers with blades that kinda chop the filament as it's coming out, tho this doesn't seem particularly reliable
In commercial extrusion, in between the barrel and the tool (your nozzle) you would have a pump that holds back pressure on the barrel and maintains a constant pressure in an expansion chamber. The expansion area will have its own heater and pressure and temperature sensors. These form a closed loop system with pressure and temperature sensors to control pump speed, screw speed and temperature in both zones. A well balanced arrangement of PID controllers keeps the right flow at the right temperature at the tool. For what it's worth, the pump seal is maintained with compressed air to keep material leakage and contamination down. One really cool aspect is that you can change what material you are loading the barrel with on the fly. Color can be adjusted in real time and composition can be changed with little or no waste.
Multiple heating zones, screw/auger geometry, and back pressure are the three that I had learned about when running industrial extruders. From the quick that I saw of the screw, it looks like you had done a good bit of research into the taper of the thread. I agree with Carson, that you should add a preheat before final heat.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
things that could improve print consistency 1. dual heating zones first pre-heat second working heat (which means possibly longer hot end) 2. Sift your pellets to separate them by size then workout flow rates based on pellet size used
iirc buying pellets they usually come in standard sizes/ weights for injection molding, although seperating wouldnt hurt to distinguish between anything out of tolerance in the pellets. dual heating zones might eliminate the different pellet size problem as all pellets would be forced to one size due to the taper on the injection screw.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Was going to comment the first one too. Screw based injection machines that use pellets usually have multiple heating zones and long mandrills for more even mixing of the melted material so that inconsistencies are minimized. A system long enough to have three heating zones would probably be even enough to remove any need for sifting and open options for materials that do better with heating in stages (like chocolate).
@@greenboy3d Submitted through the link in the comments, its a bit detailed and includes some stuff not mentioned in my above comment, if youre interested it should be submitted under the name alex ;) best of luck with this project ill be following along the journey my friend!
As someone who used to material handle at a plastic injection company. I knew there was something missing from 3d printing. I am looking forward to your next video.
This process has been available for a long time. The extruders are typically very large and costly ($2.5-6k) However there is a affordable production 3D printers with a similar design as this called the Piocreat. This current project seems more consumer oriented, universal and affordable
The future is in making your own filament at home, mix your own colors, reuse the same spool, ensure filament diameter without blindly trusting the manufacturer. The high cost is due to the middle man, also your comparison is based on pellets (ali) vs spools (us/eu vendor). If you look at the spool prices on ali it is already a lot less, if making filament at home becomes viable again or a community rises up like voron etc. with thousands of people putting their minds together I am sure they'll come up with something
@@greenboy3dThat would be overkill, depending on how much one prints a 500€~ would be amazing. Even for commercial use the solution by 3Devo is just really out of reach, I recall it was like 5-6k. Bet there is a lot of interest for the community to chime in with mods, imagine all those users running different mixtures finding perfect solutions. Especially for PC-CF there are barely any good option, so far only ezPCCF works for me and that's about 100€ for a 750g roll
Not that you asked for advice, but I dug through my old material processing notes to see if anything jumped out at me as far as consistent flow rate. It appears commercial extruders have 3 zones: feed, compression, and metering. The feed zone just moves pellets and begins to heat them. In the compression zone, melting increases, as does the minor diameter of the screw. Air is expelled backwards out the feed section. In the metering section, the minor diameter of the screw either increases slightly or is uniform, but not as much as the previous section. The polymer is 100% melted and pressure builds, which will eventually force the melt through the die (nozzle). The pitch of the screw threads has a complex relationship with flow, as (approximating polymer as a Newtonian fluid), forward flow is proportional to cos(angle)sin(angle), whereas backward flow (which is bad) is proportional to (sin(angle))^2. At the end of of the screw, having the interior of the barrel taper similar to the screw end is preferable to a 90 degree turn in the interior barrel wall. A tapered design should control flow and allow polymer coils to relax before being extruded. A longer "land" (distance between end of screw and nozzle, after the tapering of the barrel) will give coils more time to relax, but may increase pressure and slow flow rate.
When I saw the title my thoughts immediately went to recycling print waste, glad it was covered in the video. I think it’s an important area of focus for users and designers of 3D printers.
This was a great watch and so well explained, to get bags of peelets and be able to print guilt free with such a low cost would be extremelly liberating. Pkease continue to evolve your pellet printing process and cant wait for the desktop 3d printer pellet conversion video...i have Bambu A1 Minis and Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro so hopeing these feature...fantastic work.
great content dude! this is big stuff youre bringing out! do you think this would also be possible for something like my secondary printer? its an neptune 4 pro@@greenboy3d
i hope you will get recognition, this pellet printing looks interesting and seems a better choise but the problem is availability, few or none companies who would like to invest into this technology, but so far 3D printing is changing, i hope that i will see it in a near future.
Developing this technology further is bad for the big 3D printer companies. Then you won't have to buy so many spools of filament anymore and the worst of all you could reuse them 😉. This would not just be a big emotional but also financial damage for the big boys.
@@greenboy3da lot of the printer companies have their fingers somewhat in the pie of filament manufacturers, but I think they’d much rather sell you a fancy new printer for a markup. Because it’s not like they’re locking you into their brand of filament in the first place. Even when manufacturers sell filament on RFID spools, people are reusing those for other brands of filament. Klipper is only just starting to be included with off the shelf printers, give it time before a more niche tech gets adapted. 3D printing is moving fast, but not that fast.
The good news is, since pellets are already a readily available resource, it would be very easy for shops to buy in bulk and repackage to sell to consumers in smaller quantities, if big printing companies like it or not!
@@greenboy3dThe same companies that are selling both printers and filament would still be reselling smaller containers of pellets, for those who don't want to have to search and shop for what they're looking for. They wouldn't be able to charge as much as they do now, but production would be just a matter of repackaging, at much lower cost to them. Furthermore, most of the current leaders in the filament printing world were NOT the pioneers of the movement, and they've made almost as much money off of filament that the paper printer companies have made from ink cartridges. No tears from me.
Here's an idea... Serialize two print heads: 1) The first is fed pellets which extrudes filament, which is cooled and has a buffer coiled area perhaps. 2) The second consumes #1's filament and now you're printing with all the abilities of FDM but you're producing your own filament from pellets.
Seems like you've missed the point: I'm sure that pellet hot end development will rapidly get to the point where it will take over the market, at which point there will be no need for filament.
@@BrightBlueJimyour missing the point of this commenters suggestion. He’s simply recommending a hypothetical solution to the volumetric consistency and flow issues by first turning the pellets into a consistent filament right before final extrusion. A two stage system with Brunson extrusion utilizing current filament extruders and nozzles. A viable solution which many have of us have also thought of. He’s not suggesting two individual print heads. It should also be noted that 3D printing with pellets isn’t a new or proprietary concept and there’s company’s that specialize in these extruders. There’s a few RUclips channels that have built machines with them.
@@ChrisS-oo6flWell, you've got your interpretation, I've got mine. What he actually DESCRIBED was having a "buffer area" between the two heads; the one printing a 3D object WHILE the other was producing filament. Which wouldn't solve the problem of inconsistent flow from the pellet extruder, because this would produce inconsistent filament diameter, which would result in a reduction of quality in the final print. Which is exactly what other people have noticed about their own efforts to print filament. If you don't like hearing constructive criticisms of ideas, you've come to the wrong place.
how about a three phase print head, phase I sends the pellets down a shaft via your screw, phase II melts the pellets into a dripping goo within a buffer area, and phase III takes in the dripping goo out of the buffer area and extrudes it - thus eliminating the problem with the varying size pellets. Also, some sort of purge mechanism to purge the pellets out of the phase I - likely by just reversing the screw. That way there would be less waist when its time to purge the old print material out by pushing in new print material. Phase II uses an independent smaller screw to transfer the dripping goo into phase III.
Not an engineer, but have you tried a pellet screw that gets progressively tighter at the bottom? In my mind, it would make sense that the flow rate would be more averaged because pressure from threads above would be shoving the pellets down into the extrusion barrel. Excited to see your idea for recycling plastics in the future.
I had an extremely similar thought! Or possibly a two-stage screw, one cold screw and one smaller hot screw if you will. I was also thinking of tapering. Excited to see more of his design!
Excellent work! Ultimately I think this approach will only be practical in high-volume printing situations, where perfect precision isn't required, but wow your print quality really is excellent given the variance in pellet sizes. I tell myself this is something I don't need (imagining the mess of spilling pellets like spilling a bottle ot glitter), but I'm so gawd damn cheap that I can't deny that buying kilos of raw pellets for dollars or having a path to recycling is extremely appealing to me. 😅
Okay, you've got my sub, because I really want to see more about your pellet extruder. I really think this is the future of 3D printing, for all of the reasons you state. The clearest thing is that if recycling requires grinding into pellets anyway, the intermediate step of having spools of filament is just a big waste. One thing I noticed when you showed your screw removed from the barrel, is that it doesn't look like your pellets are getting fully melted until just before they get to the bottom of the screw. It seems to me that this would result in some of the air between the pellets doesn't have time to rise in the screw, and therefore it might be getting mixed into the melted plastic. This would result in both inconsistent flow and lower strength in the prints. I know my suggestion will not be welcome, and of course you've got a great deal more experience with this than me, but I think the screw just needs to be longer, or perhaps the heater needs to cover more of the barrel. Another thing comes to mind: I had a toy when I was young, back in the 1960s, that was a set of nylon molds and an injection molder for making toy soldiers and other things. The injection molder just had a vertical cylinder, about 20mm diameter, with a plastic plunger that fit in its top. The plunger was tapered at about 45 or 60 degrees, and there was a matching conical section at the bottom of the cylinder, with a small (2-3mm) hole in the bottom. Below the cylinder was a housing with a rectangular hole that you slid the mold into, and of course the mold had a hole in its top that lined up with the hole at the bottom of the cylinder. The molding system came with a few bags of pellets, which I am guessing was a mixture of paraffin and polypropylene, because it melted at a lower temperature (don't know what temperature, but low enough it was hard to burn yourself with, like maybe 90 degrees C, and it smelled like polypropylene or maybe polyethylene, but the resulting toy soldiers were softer than either of those. But my point is, the whole cylinder was the melt barrel, and you poured in as much of the pellets as would fit without being packed, and all of the molds were designed to use about the same amount of plastic, so filling up the cylinder left you with very little left over, AND you could cut that up with scissors or a knife to use on your next parts. And in fact, I cut up most of my parts to make other parts, because it was more fun making them than playing with the toy soldiers! So all of that to say, maybe a plunger is the better way to go, to get consistent flow and strong plastic. I realize the problem, that you can't make anything bigger than the barrel will hold, but there are ways around this as well. It's so great to see what you have accomplished, and i look forward to your future videos. Good day, and good printing!
Pellet printing will eventually get there. Ink printers are now getting more common with ink tanks instead of cartridges. It will be same for 3D printers, different hoppers full of pellets to print from.
1 thing to keep in mind is fraud of pellets. You cant gauge quality of pellets as well as filament, mainly because with pellets, you wont really see a difference between new pellets vs pellets made from 30-50x recycled plastics. Where as filaments you can determine the flex/strength before hand.
Good ideas! 👍I definitely will convert 1 of my printer to pallet extruder printer for Big stuff which does not require precision function. All those test print & benchies can be recycled. Not only that many plastic containers can be shredded and repurposed for household use. Thanks for sharing ❤
I agree with every advantage you cited from pellets printing, from price to flexibility of mixing colors, buying smaller quantities and using different materials. I think the main limitation of this method will be speed. Now we are going to 300mm/s printers (the core XY profusion). The pellet extruder seems way heavier than the filament ones, and it will limit speed. The pellets chaking form hi speeds may also be an issue.That said, I don't believe pellets will be mainstream in FDM 3Dprinting, but I do think there will be a solid share for it if it gets sufficiently developed. Congrats!
Yea, it is definitly a trade off: Speed for lower cost 😀 By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
That is exactly what such an extruder is great at 😄 By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I've actually wondered why pellets weren't used since shortly after 3D printers started to become popular. It always seemed like a lot of extra expense that could be avoided since you wouldn't need the reel filament came on as well as not repeating the forming of the plastic.
Oh, wow! This is your first video. At least on this channel of course. I subscribed! It would be very exciting if pellet printing could become practical, affordable, and widespread. I would figure the hardest part is making sure no air gets into the pellet melting process, but it doesn't seem like that's the exact issue. Very interesting. I look forward to more of your videos.
Thank you! In the next video will show the extruder in more deepth By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
If we use a 1.75mm nozzle with your extruder it would be very easy to make custom home made filament. Would you make a contraption that could make good quality filament with even thickness using your screw extruder setup? it doesn't need to be very fast. Most of us have basic filament 3d printers which we don't wanna tinker with so a cheap home assembled filament maker would actually be something I'd like to buy to go with my 3d printer.
nice video. I can't sit through many 3-d printing videos because the speaker rambles on about nothing and takes too long to get to the point. you present everything clearly and succinctly. Good work!
Awesome start to a RUclips channel, congrats. Something I've been thinking about for a while myself. One thing you might look into to help with the gaps in the feedstock is have two screws and small void between at the heat block, so you are pushing your pellets into a pool, and your second screw is pushing air-free molten material through the nozzle. Might make purging a bit more annoying, and startup will be more delicate, but I'd suggest a system like this would tend to run more continuously than a filament style printer.
That's actually how the older industrial patents work, and how I used to think all of the industrial machines still worked. You can still find parts for multiple screw extruders, but very little information, while all the RUclips videos about filament factories imply or show them using single screw machines. A proper extrusion machine uses two screws that both have pregressively varying geometry to apply different forces to the material, and an offgas port near the end of the melt zone. Today you can even buy modular screws so that you can rearrange or extend the different zones. Not that any of that helps with FDM hot end designs, sadly...
To get better consistency, your extruder screw has to be much larger than your nozzle, but doing so will increase weight of the assembly. There has to be an acceptable tradeoff. Another parameter, the average pellet size could be tweaked by grinding the pellets to a much smaller size.
You are spot on! The hard part is to decide which tradeoff is better or worse. You are also right with grinding pellets down to smaller size, but I wonder whether you have ideas on how this could be done? 🙂
Great approach, I have been looking for this type of approach for a couple of years now. Looking forward to the next video where you will present you extruder
As someone with 13 years of experience in the field of extrusion, particularly adept at utilizing palets and screws, it's worth noting the significant transformation we've undergone. While our primary focus used to be filament production, the intricacies of screw adjustment have become paramount. When addressing screw depth and barrel fitment tolerance, we've observed a remarkable reduction in output variations-from potentially as high as 15% down to a mere 5%. This is achieved through meticulous adjustments, ensuring the screw depth and barrel fitment tolerances are finely tuned to operate in close proximity. Moreover, optimizing the preheating process for palets in the hopper has proven to be a game-changer. By initiating the heating process from the nozzle end at higher temperatures and gradually decreasing towards the back, we've effectively mitigated the risk of pallets becoming lodged within the screw mechanism. This careful calibration ensures a smooth and efficient extrusion process, minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity.
Polymer engineer here, in full size extruder, there is a reason why the screw is tapered and there are multiple heating element in the chamber. Pellet are not only melted through heating but also the grinding motion of the screw and the chamber itself. The multiple heating element is to make sure that the pellet didnt get heat shock that would change the characteristics of the extrudite.
@andybrice2711 not sure what you mean but to give the extruder shredded type of plastic is what it sounds like I forget the creator but he showed that proved to be way more inconsistent and best results was pellets and size and a vibrator to keep them flowing
@@Mikehatespigs No, I wasn't thinking so much of that, more a screw which breaks up larger pellets before they enter the melt zone. Because I think 3-5 mm pellets are optimized for the larger screws of injection moulding machines. This smaller screw might function more consistently with ~0.5mm pellets.
If someone starts manufacturing pellet conversion kits for filament printers, this could become a trend. I have an Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro, which uses Klipper, and I assume that it will just require updating the settings in the slicer for how much it advances the screw stepper instead of the direct drive steppers. I expect that one of the key things will be to work out how to safely purge the hot-end, since it's not as simple as pulling out the filament, and allowing the melted plastic to cool inside the screw might cause some issues. So long as it is electrically compatible with a direct-drive extruder and can be supplemented with a bed probe, the hobbyist can swap the print heads between the filament and pellet extruder. A quick-change carriage that accepted both types of tools would make this even easier.
Printing speed is also a factor, since you have pellets on the extruder and a large hose with more pellets inside, the added weight would make it difficult to print fast and would add a significant amount of wobble.
@@greenboy3d There's no solution that makes sense. Your primary application is cheaper 0.8 mm printing of larger parts period. That's assuming you can drive at least 120 mm/s without issues.
@@cybyrd9615Boy good thing you already know everything about everything. Everyone we can just give up now this guy knows it's impossible so why even bother.
But 0.4mm and 0.6mm does also work fine. Of course Filament is better but still Why should there be more applications like recycling household waste with pellet 3d printing?@@cybyrd9615
This is such an awesome idea that was actually made into reality, not many can do that. Getting this extruder customized to fit onto more platforms is the next hurdle.
cool stuff! i wish you the best for your fresh channel - but since it seems like you already really know what youre doing you probably will hit it off :)
I am glad that RUclips pushed you into my feed. Looks like a fine Benchy but I would appreciate a side by side comparison on common printing aspects: flow rate, pressure advance, stringing
Thank you for your feedback 🙂 Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
You can repurpose the filament nozzle and extrusion setup you took off from your modded printer for the waste reuse. You turn them around, funnel the waste through the hot-end whatever way (gravity or pressure if ground stuff, just the pull force on the other end if strings of bottles) and on the other end, use the extrusion to make a string, at the exit of the extruder you cut it up into bits with a rotating blade driven by the same motor as the extruder to make it simpler and sync the cutting to the extrusion rate for better size consistency. Cool stuff. Sounds like this should be the goto method for experimental printing (parts, printer calibration, design experimentation), quality is good enough and the easier reuse gives more options to fail a print (or just reprint a broken piece from the same exact material for color consistency or something). And filament printing is much better for stuff like board games, art projects, printing services and stuff like that.
rotating the extruder screw backwards creates under pressure that prevents ooze for a short time similar like in a filament extruder... Enough time for travel movements without ooze
@@greenboy3d The only way I see to keep this small and have good output quality is to measure the pressure in the chamber. I'm wondering if it could be done by measuring axial load on the screw.
Incredible video. I learned a lot here. Can't wait to see if this technology develops! I can imagine some really cool color mixing or multi color printing by having a dispenser dispense just the right amount of pellets combined with purging you could get some really cool stuff going.
The cartridge system from 2D printers is the reason pellet extrusion is not mainstream. Qui prodest is the only question you need to ask. All of these big filament manufactureres would go out of business in no time if pellet extrusion was the norm.
There is no "big filament". To my knowledge, there isn't a cartel either, nor is the technology in any way proprietary. Including manufacturing, packaging, distribution and taxes, it is pretty hard to make filament for under around 16 euros per kilogram, with most being around 20 for a reason. Keep in mind you have to make very consistent filament, pack it, ship it, pay your workers, have some profit to invest and so on. There are quite a lot of filament factories, at least in the EU and they offer a shitton of options. No need to use fancy words or start conspiracy theories. If you want cheap filament in Europe, there is GST3D, in bulk a kg is under 10 euros, but it's not necessarily the best quality.
Total BS. Cartridges are proprietary, they are being sold by the same companies that produce printers itself, they sometimes sell cheap printers and make most of the money from cartridges. The idea is to force people to stick to their cartridges and prevent them from using ones from competition. Filament is just a form of a material, much like sheet paper, it is industry wide standard, the same for all manufacturers, it is not proprietary in any way and there is nothing special in it to make it work only with the certain 3D printer model.
c'mon, the reason they're a different colour is that one is more white and one is more creamy in colour?! don't want to be a hater, but it just lowers the content quality hugely when things like that are said
You may or may not know it but upon recycling of PLA or too much heat exposure PLA starts to change its color to a darker one until it turns completely black with extremely weak mechanical performance. Therefore, it was important to mention that the color difference is just due to a different color used in the plastic, because people might otherwise assume that my pellet extruder causes plastic to significantly degrade while printing, which is not the case. I hope now you understand the more in-depth reasoning behind that statement "Stupid color" statement 🙂
I am planning to make my Pellet Extruder available to everyone but I need your help first Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Man, great job! I'm waiting for commercial product from you, will totally buy pellet extruder for 150-200$ even in half-diy form. But i would like to see more tests - speed test, strenth test. It is perfect thing for mass production.
I just realised this could be incredibly useful for recycling filament too, since you would only need a shredder and those pieces could probably work in a pellet extruder (if you can get the shredded pieces to be a similar size)
Absolutly. I am planning to make my Pellet Extruder available to everyone 🙂 Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
If you shred for example your old 3d prints into granules, then this method of using meshes works very well as I showed it in this video: ruclips.net/video/eWgzi4a1bJo/видео.html However, normal pellets are generally speaking about the same size but have due to their shape from certain angles different sizes which make proper filter almost impossible...
Great video. I am just starting to look at 3-D printing as a hobby and this video couldn’t have come out a better time the many questions I had about for them and printing, and the newness that this has all been for me. The questions I had in my head, were answered by you without even knowing That I had those questions Haha quite the ramble. What I wanted to say is thank you !
This really is some awesome stuff. The sheer amount of freedom pellet printing would offer is insane. For one, recycling plastics into printed parts becomes essentially facile which is a pretty big deal!
Absolutly 😀 In my next video I will show the Pellet Extruder in more deepth By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I'm a little bit underwhelmed by the regular filament benchy, since you shouldn't have stripes on a properly tuned printer. Also those benchies are scaled? So I'm not sure the comparison is fair. Though I do appreciate your work in this direction, it's a great idea and a great prototype!
Working very hard right now to organize the shipping of the Pellet Extruder and other tasks related to Greenboy3D like organizing a supply of pellets for everyone and a pellet extruder wiki, which is why I sometimes have trouble answering everyone immediately. Most parts for the extruder have already arrived and have been processed & packed for shipping, however the pellet extruder screws are still in manufacturing since this is the most complicated and costly part of the pellet extruder. I believe that the first units will be shipped out by the end of October. 🙂
Use a fine grain pellet to decrease the volume of empty space - this also will help with improving even pressure in the hotend. Ali express has pla powder but I couldn’t find any pellets that are the size of sand granules. Perhaps you could diy with a grain mill, dry ice/liquid nitrogen to decrease the temps so it doesn’t melt the pellets during the grinding process? Then you’d have to use a sieve on the “grains” to get all the larger piece out.
Thank you for your appreciation ❤ I will do my best to improve it further more By the way, you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Excellent work man! I see that this is your first video. Im looking forward to more. With the right marketing and with enough iterating, im fairly certain that youll have the demand for a product like this. Best of luck!
Thank you for your comment! 😀 By the way there is a Greenboy Discord Community Server with almost 100 people. If you'd like to join then there a link in the description
subscribed as soon as i saw this video, this is such a great idea to bring to the table, cheaper plastics for printing, recycle supports, multicolor, if only the comunity could figure out the flow inconsistencies to have fast pritings we all be set
@@greenboy3d it would be nice to see more about your pellet extruder and what changes to firmware are in order to make it work anyways i look forward to any content this channel has to offer
Thank you! 🙃 A longer meltzone might help with flow rate consistency, but then other new problem would arrive which I am going to cover in my next video. Do you maybe have any questions that you would like to ask about pellet 3d printing or my extruder?
Good video . I suggest making the screw pair 50% larger, you can try it in length with an increase in heating area , or you can try it in width, it will definitely improve the stability of the material supply. It would be good if you can try this
Man Can't wait for more, this seems like a breakthrough in 3D printing, I would be soo much better having pellets over filament, and great work really man big time
Fascinating stuff! There was a crowdfunding campaign for a pellet based 3D printing waaaaaay back in the day that became abandonware as far as i could ever tell shortly after the campaign finished, and ive always been curious about thr potential. Thank you for the excellent proof of concept - your work shows through! The modern 3d printing hivemind is so obsessed with print quality that these demos might get marked as "poor quality", but circa 2016, youd have been trading blows with the best nozzles available. Immense potential here!!! Excited to to see what you could come up with to resolve the flow rate issues :)
Thank you so much for that comment! 😀 Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
also on recycling if you are investing in an extruder to create new filament out of your scrapped plastic then you can also create your own filament out of your pellets
I've been dreaming of printing with pellets, because they are so cheap and universal. Also color/flavour/etc mixing you mentioned is interesting. Small layer inconsistencies are propably not critical to functional prototypes or parts that will have finishing steps anyway.
Hello! I loved this idea! I have a suggestion to make... What if instead of modifying your 3d printer you make a filament extruder? Then you could make the filament spool from your pellets and maybe it will be better to tweak and adjust, or make improvements without changing much the 3d printer. I guess the extra gear needed to melt pellets may change the weight of the printing head too much, leading to imprecise prints. Having a stock printer and a separate jig to melt and make filament from pellets might be a better solution in many ways! Hope to see more from this subject in a near future! Good video and awesome idea!
@@greenboy3d Since you use pellets, you potentially have an inconsistent flow rate. If there is a the worm drive first that is heated, it can compress and fuse the the pellets. From there, the primary feeds a smaller secondary worm drive to print. The primary worm drive would ostensibly feeding "hot filament" into the secondary. The primary being larger, can also operate at its own speed, to keep the feed consistent; you might further this by using a pressure sensor, to assist in the feed of pellets, though this may be overkill, and a future enhancement.
I really appreciate the idea and I am sure it has room to evolve even more, specially if it gets adoption. What I am a bit sceptical about it is that it gives me the impression that it can be messy and require more maintenance work. Also curious about the implacations of retraction. Maybe still has to evolve a bit to 3d print parts that require more precision or smoother finishes (without requiring post processing). But I definitely believe it can cover a wide range of use cases and can help with volume 3D printing (like farms, for example). Keep up the good work, I will definitely be tuned to your channel. I would like to know more about how to source the material for pellet printing and curious about your recycling idea.
Thank you for your kind words 🙃 By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Thank you for your kind words 🙂 By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Well done! Your pellet extruder looks like a brilliant design :) To improve flow consistency, you can buy pellets with a smaller diameter (0.5 - 1.5mm) from polymer companies, that are used for micro-injection etc. Industrial twin-screw extruders like the ones we use for research tend to feedback torque from the screw motor into the machine's UX/UI; Perhaps that feedback could be used to alter the extruder screw torque around a setpoint? Most extruders and injection moulders tend to have a feed section heater, which would be at the top of your extruder design. These tend to be set around 60C for PLA for example, to slightly pre-heat the pellets and reduce the torque needed to extrude them. Might be worth an experiment! You should bring this to SMRFF 2024! Will the project be open-source or a product?
Nice. This seems like it’s be good to use pellets for prototyping and random parts you don’t necessarily care about being perfect to drastically cut down on cost, then use filament when you want to make a “nice final” product.
In traditional manufacturing plastic is often pumped the entire screw setup acts as a ram to quickly inject all the plastic needed for a plastic injection. The screw does not meter out the plastic by rotating the screw in a typical setup, the length of the stroke meters it out. At it's face this approach may not seem useful for a 3d printer but perhaps a spring setup could be used to maintain a more constant pressure and allow the screw to float back and fourth a little to account for variations in pellet packing. Advanced plastic screws have sections that pull a vacuum on the plastic to actively outgas it inside the screw, I don't know how well that could be miniaturized.
This is such an interesting are. I love the increased recyclability and customization that is possible. I would love to hear more about your development on the extrusion system. Do you monitor pressure in the meltzone to get consistent extrusion volume/mass?
One way to get more consistent size on the pellets is to sort them by size, just like you sort gravel. That way you could use the smallest pellets to print quality prints and the larger pellets for large prints where quality matter less. First time viewer, insta-sub.
The pellets are acutally quite uniform. With 3 - 5mm difference I am meaning that some pellets of a specific manufacturer are 3-4mm and some of another manufacturer 4-5mm. The best solution would be to have Pellets in the size of 1mm because they would stack up more evenly through out the 3D Pellet Extruder Barrel And thank you for your comment! 🙂
Hi, that's a really interesting idea, have manufacturers already ventured in this direction? In any case, converting filament printers into pellet printers seems fairly straightforward, you just need to industrialise the manufacture of the extruder. One idea regarding the difference in size between the pellet grains, why not first pass them through a sieve to harmonise the dimensions, which should allow a more regular flow, at least that's what I thought when I saw this passage in your video. In any case, I hope that in the long term this will indeed be the future of 3D printing, as the reduced cost of materials should interest many printers and perhaps encourage printer manufacturers to look into this development.
I am planing to make my extruder available to everyone. Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Great video and craftsmanship. I have an idea how to fix the issues of pellet size, working at a company that among other things, makes Polypropylene pellets. Exdrude the pellets you bought, and install a rotating fan kind of blade directly behind the opening of the nozzle, chopping the extruding string into tiny beads. This way you can control the size of your pellets by nozzle size and blade speed.
Thank you very much ❤ By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
A great idea. Probably not good enough if you're producing something to sell but certainly a more cost-effective option for your own projects and prototyping.
Thank you 😀I will do my best to improve it further more Do you maybe have any questions that you would like to ask about pellet 3d printing or my extruder? 😃
[Update October 13th]
Working very hard right now to organize the shipping of the Pellet Extruder and other tasks related to Greenboy3D like organizing a supply of pellets for everyone and a pellet extruder wiki, which is why I sometimes have trouble answering everyone immediately.
Most parts for the extruder have already arrived and have been processed & packed for shipping, however the pellet extruder screws are still in manufacturing since this is the most complicated and costly part of the pellet extruder. I believe that the first units will be shipped out by the end of October.
Due to the additional organizational tasks related to the supply of pellets, there is simply more work that needs to be done. This includes staying in contact with many companies selling different types of plastics & watching out for good offers, requesting samples, testing them, negotiating prices, organizing the transportation of tons of plastic pellets, and so on.
These tasks also take up some of my time, which would otherwise have been spent on the Wiki/Knowledge Base platform and the guide videos.
Just a couple days ago, for example, I ordered and paid for 8,600 kg of PLA pellets, which will likely be transported to my location from Slovenia next week.
2500 kg PETG pellets are already in my possession, but more of other types are needed like:
ABS/ASA/ABS-GF/ABS-GB
PET
TPU/TPE (various Shore levels)
PA GF/CF
Additionally soon there will be a new update about the ongoing progress (including the one about pellets) 🙂
If you want to get some additional pellets along with your order then that is possible however you need to consider that, while the pellet extruder will be shipped for free there will be additional shipping costs for pellets.
However I will keep you updated regarding the pellets.
The only thing I am not sure about is whether I should also get these extremely elastic pellets I showed in one of my videos, after doing more research it turned out these were not Shore 5A, but Shore 30 (with out the "A") which is significantly below Shore 0A meaning even more elastic and flexible than Shore 0A
The only problem is that these pellets are quite expensive compared to other plastics and could only be offered for prices like 12,99 USD/EUR per kg (way higher than the other plastic types like PLA, which will probably go for 3,5 USD/EUR)
Should you have more questions or concerns please feel free to contact me anytime - I am here to help.
Done and it is great that you had made it.
Thank you so much ❤@@j3novauh
The tank should be called a pellet hopper. Its a more standard term.
What if you just build a seperate extruder to produce the filament from pellets (essentially what you have right now) and then feed that into a standard fdm printer head? I imagine that should solve the consitency problems, even if it's a bit less efficient?
Consistency could be greatly improved by simply building a pellet sifter that can bin the sizes through a series of graded holes. With just 12 grades of pellets by size ("too small", ten steps about around the average pellet size, and "too big"), you'd be going from 15% variation to 1% or less variation within those 10 steps, (depending on how narrow you do your steps).
A filament maker could do 1% tolerance-graded pellets by pre-sorting and binning them as a step before all the out-of-grade pellets were just loaded into their standard filament extruding machines like usual.
As an injection molding designer and engineer I can contribute with some things:
A) The screw starts with low inner Ø and then gradually increases its inner Ø. This is because the pellets form air bubbles that get traped in the screw if the Ø is constant. This gives inconsistent flowrates.
B) You MUST heat the entire screw, from start to finish. Even the nozzle if you can.
C) Most pellets are thought to be used in injection, extrution and blow mold. The relation between the size of the pellet and the screw of those machines is many times larger. However, this is not true to this case, where the Ø of the screw only lets 2-3 pellets to get in.
Tips: Make screw wider, with progressive inner Ø. Let some gap in the fit so air can go away (about 0,2 mm). Heat the entire screw, from start to finish. You may use more than one heating element.
PS: Your idea is brilliant, keep on that study case.
Love it!
You mean that, in commercial extenders, the screw's minor diameter (the diameter in between the threads) increases along the screw, right? Such that the gap between the screw and the barrel shrinks along the screw?
@@coltongerber1879 exactly. This achieves a progressive melting of the thermoplastic since you heat the barrel from the outside (not the inside).
great comment! thanks. what do you think one could get down to in terms of size and weight for a reliable micro-size extruder?
apart from screws, are there other types of "pumps" used anywhere to extrude plastics?
I think ill be switching to this. Filament is crazy expensive for just being plastic string. Thanks
I purchased one of those PetG bottle kits online. After seeing how easy pellet printing is, i think i can get it modified to do this. Would be better to have a separate machine to use pellets and make filament since my printer is tuned to be faster and lighter
@@jayzazuYou could just kinda have the extruded bottle filament be cut at the nozzle into pellets, with something like a motor with a razor blade
@@Psyden5757 I don't think it is that simple. Pretty much all those bottle filament extruders pull the filament through the nozzle. You have nothing to pull if you're cutting it at the nozzle.
You are going into to the right direction with your ideas my friend! 🙃@@Psyden5757
@@Psyden5757 hmm, maybe you could use some rollers with blades that kinda chop the filament as it's coming out, tho this doesn't seem particularly reliable
In commercial extrusion, in between the barrel and the tool (your nozzle) you would have a pump that holds back pressure on the barrel and maintains a constant pressure in an expansion chamber. The expansion area will have its own heater and pressure and temperature sensors. These form a closed loop system with pressure and temperature sensors to control pump speed, screw speed and temperature in both zones. A well balanced arrangement of PID controllers keeps the right flow at the right temperature at the tool. For what it's worth, the pump seal is maintained with compressed air to keep material leakage and contamination down.
One really cool aspect is that you can change what material you are loading the barrel with on the fly. Color can be adjusted in real time and composition can be changed with little or no waste.
Multiple heating zones, screw/auger geometry, and back pressure are the three that I had learned about when running industrial extruders. From the quick that I saw of the screw, it looks like you had done a good bit of research into the taper of the thread. I agree with Carson, that you should add a preheat before final heat.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
things that could improve print consistency
1. dual heating zones first pre-heat second working heat (which means possibly longer hot end)
2. Sift your pellets to separate them by size then workout flow rates based on pellet size used
Maybe with a proper sized sieve. Good idea!
iirc buying pellets they usually come in standard sizes/ weights for injection molding, although seperating wouldnt hurt to distinguish between anything out of tolerance in the pellets. dual heating zones might eliminate the different pellet size problem as all pellets would be forced to one size due to the taper on the injection screw.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Was going to comment the first one too. Screw based injection machines that use pellets usually have multiple heating zones and long mandrills for more even mixing of the melted material so that inconsistencies are minimized. A system long enough to have three heating zones would probably be even enough to remove any need for sifting and open options for materials that do better with heating in stages (like chocolate).
@@greenboy3d Submitted through the link in the comments, its a bit detailed and includes some stuff not mentioned in my above comment, if youre interested it should be submitted under the name alex ;) best of luck with this project ill be following along the journey my friend!
As someone who used to material handle at a plastic injection company. I knew there was something missing from 3d printing. I am looking forward to your next video.
Thank you! In the Next video I will show the Greenboy Extruder in more detail, so stay tune 🙃
This process has been available for a long time. The extruders are typically very large and costly ($2.5-6k) However there is a affordable production 3D printers with a similar design as this called the Piocreat. This current project seems more consumer oriented, universal and affordable
Any Pellet Extruder beyoned $1000 for a regular desktop 3D Printer is still to expensive @@ChrisS-oo6fl
Congratulations to a good start of your channel. Well deserved considering the way creativity translates to content.
Thank you for the kind Words! ☺
The future is in making your own filament at home, mix your own colors, reuse the same spool, ensure filament diameter without blindly trusting the manufacturer. The high cost is due to the middle man, also your comparison is based on pellets (ali) vs spools (us/eu vendor). If you look at the spool prices on ali it is already a lot less, if making filament at home becomes viable again or a community rises up like voron etc. with thousands of people putting their minds together I am sure they'll come up with something
I like your point of view and I am working on exaclty what you mentioned! 🙂
Thank you for the great input
@@greenboy3dThat would be overkill, depending on how much one prints a 500€~ would be amazing. Even for commercial use the solution by 3Devo is just really out of reach, I recall it was like 5-6k. Bet there is a lot of interest for the community to chime in with mods, imagine all those users running different mixtures finding perfect solutions. Especially for PC-CF there are barely any good option, so far only ezPCCF works for me and that's about 100€ for a 750g roll
Not that you asked for advice, but I dug through my old material processing notes to see if anything jumped out at me as far as consistent flow rate.
It appears commercial extruders have 3 zones: feed, compression, and metering. The feed zone just moves pellets and begins to heat them. In the compression zone, melting increases, as does the minor diameter of the screw. Air is expelled backwards out the feed section. In the metering section, the minor diameter of the screw either increases slightly or is uniform, but not as much as the previous section. The polymer is 100% melted and pressure builds, which will eventually force the melt through the die (nozzle).
The pitch of the screw threads has a complex relationship with flow, as (approximating polymer as a Newtonian fluid), forward flow is proportional to cos(angle)sin(angle), whereas backward flow (which is bad) is proportional to (sin(angle))^2.
At the end of of the screw, having the interior of the barrel taper similar to the screw end is preferable to a 90 degree turn in the interior barrel wall. A tapered design should control flow and allow polymer coils to relax before being extruded. A longer "land" (distance between end of screw and nozzle, after the tapering of the barrel) will give coils more time to relax, but may increase pressure and slow flow rate.
When I saw the title my thoughts immediately went to recycling print waste, glad it was covered in the video. I think it’s an important area of focus for users and designers of 3D printers.
the real question is where is he finding 1kg bags of pellets for $5?
Do you want a detailed video on where to buy pellets cheap?
@@greenboy3d I for one would love such a video.
Ye
yessss@@greenboy3d
@@greenboy3d yes please
This was a great watch and so well explained, to get bags of peelets and be able to print guilt free with such a low cost would be extremelly liberating. Pkease continue to evolve your pellet printing process and cant wait for the desktop 3d printer pellet conversion video...i have Bambu A1 Minis and Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro so hopeing these feature...fantastic work.
Adapting it to a Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro should be no problem for sure
@@greenboy3dI was thinking it might be a good mod for my unused chiron
Then you are gonna love the next video! 🙃@@Mikehatespigs
great content dude! this is big stuff youre bringing out! do you think this would also be possible for something like my secondary printer? its an neptune 4 pro@@greenboy3d
I've never seen a Video about a Pellet Hot end before. Awesome Video!
Thank you! Stay tune for the next one😃
i hope you will get recognition, this pellet printing looks interesting and seems a better choise but the problem is availability, few or none companies who would like to invest into this technology, but so far 3D printing is changing, i hope that i will see it in a near future.
Developing this technology further is bad for the big 3D printer companies. Then you won't have to buy so many spools of filament anymore and the worst of all you could reuse them 😉. This would not just be a big emotional but also financial damage for the big boys.
@@greenboy3da lot of the printer companies have their fingers somewhat in the pie of filament manufacturers, but I think they’d much rather sell you a fancy new printer for a markup. Because it’s not like they’re locking you into their brand of filament in the first place. Even when manufacturers sell filament on RFID spools, people are reusing those for other brands of filament.
Klipper is only just starting to be included with off the shelf printers, give it time before a more niche tech gets adapted. 3D printing is moving fast, but not that fast.
The good news is, since pellets are already a readily available resource, it would be very easy for shops to buy in bulk and repackage to sell to consumers in smaller quantities, if big printing companies like it or not!
@@greenboy3dThe same companies that are selling both printers and filament would still be reselling smaller containers of pellets, for those who don't want to have to search and shop for what they're looking for. They wouldn't be able to charge as much as they do now, but production would be just a matter of repackaging, at much lower cost to them.
Furthermore, most of the current leaders in the filament printing world were NOT the pioneers of the movement, and they've made almost as much money off of filament that the paper printer companies have made from ink cartridges. No tears from me.
Here's an idea...
Serialize two print heads:
1) The first is fed pellets which extrudes filament, which is cooled and has a buffer coiled area perhaps.
2) The second consumes #1's filament and now you're printing with all the abilities of FDM but you're producing your own filament from pellets.
Seems like you've missed the point: I'm sure that pellet hot end development will rapidly get to the point where it will take over the market, at which point there will be no need for filament.
@@BrightBlueJimyour missing the point of this commenters suggestion. He’s simply recommending a hypothetical solution to the volumetric consistency and flow issues by first turning the pellets into a consistent filament right before final extrusion. A two stage system with Brunson extrusion utilizing current filament extruders and nozzles. A viable solution which many have of us have also thought of. He’s not suggesting two individual print heads. It should also be noted that 3D printing with pellets isn’t a new or proprietary concept and there’s company’s that specialize in these extruders. There’s a few RUclips channels that have built machines with them.
@@ChrisS-oo6flWell, you've got your interpretation, I've got mine. What he actually DESCRIBED was having a "buffer area" between the two heads; the one printing a 3D object WHILE the other was producing filament. Which wouldn't solve the problem of inconsistent flow from the pellet extruder, because this would produce inconsistent filament diameter, which would result in a reduction of quality in the final print. Which is exactly what other people have noticed about their own efforts to print filament. If you don't like hearing constructive criticisms of ideas, you've come to the wrong place.
Glückwunsch. Die Arbeit hat sich gelohnt du Maschine!
Danke dir! 😃
how about a three phase print head, phase I sends the pellets down a shaft via your screw, phase II melts the pellets into a dripping goo within a buffer area, and phase III takes in the dripping goo out of the buffer area and extrudes it - thus eliminating the problem with the varying size pellets. Also, some sort of purge mechanism to purge the pellets out of the phase I - likely by just reversing the screw. That way there would be less waist when its time to purge the old print material out by pushing in new print material. Phase II uses an independent smaller screw to transfer the dripping goo into phase III.
Very cool, and not talked about very often. You earned my subscription!
Thank you my friend! 🙂I will do my best
Not an engineer, but have you tried a pellet screw that gets progressively tighter at the bottom? In my mind, it would make sense that the flow rate would be more averaged because pressure from threads above would be shoving the pellets down into the extrusion barrel. Excited to see your idea for recycling plastics in the future.
The Design of my Pellet Screw is indeed a bit controversial but for some good reasons 🙂
Thank you for you comment!
I had an extremely similar thought! Or possibly a two-stage screw, one cold screw and one smaller hot screw if you will. I was also thinking of tapering. Excited to see more of his design!
Excellent work! Ultimately I think this approach will only be practical in high-volume printing situations, where perfect precision isn't required, but wow your print quality really is excellent given the variance in pellet sizes. I tell myself this is something I don't need (imagining the mess of spilling pellets like spilling a bottle ot glitter), but I'm so gawd damn cheap that I can't deny that buying kilos of raw pellets for dollars or having a path to recycling is extremely appealing to me. 😅
Thank you very much for your warming comment ❤
Is there any topic or question I should discuss in one of my next videos?
Okay, you've got my sub, because I really want to see more about your pellet extruder. I really think this is the future of 3D printing, for all of the reasons you state. The clearest thing is that if recycling requires grinding into pellets anyway, the intermediate step of having spools of filament is just a big waste.
One thing I noticed when you showed your screw removed from the barrel, is that it doesn't look like your pellets are getting fully melted until just before they get to the bottom of the screw. It seems to me that this would result in some of the air between the pellets doesn't have time to rise in the screw, and therefore it might be getting mixed into the melted plastic. This would result in both inconsistent flow and lower strength in the prints. I know my suggestion will not be welcome, and of course you've got a great deal more experience with this than me, but I think the screw just needs to be longer, or perhaps the heater needs to cover more of the barrel.
Another thing comes to mind: I had a toy when I was young, back in the 1960s, that was a set of nylon molds and an injection molder for making toy soldiers and other things. The injection molder just had a vertical cylinder, about 20mm diameter, with a plastic plunger that fit in its top. The plunger was tapered at about 45 or 60 degrees, and there was a matching conical section at the bottom of the cylinder, with a small (2-3mm) hole in the bottom. Below the cylinder was a housing with a rectangular hole that you slid the mold into, and of course the mold had a hole in its top that lined up with the hole at the bottom of the cylinder. The molding system came with a few bags of pellets, which I am guessing was a mixture of paraffin and polypropylene, because it melted at a lower temperature (don't know what temperature, but low enough it was hard to burn yourself with, like maybe 90 degrees C, and it smelled like polypropylene or maybe polyethylene, but the resulting toy soldiers were softer than either of those. But my point is, the whole cylinder was the melt barrel, and you poured in as much of the pellets as would fit without being packed, and all of the molds were designed to use about the same amount of plastic, so filling up the cylinder left you with very little left over, AND you could cut that up with scissors or a knife to use on your next parts. And in fact, I cut up most of my parts to make other parts, because it was more fun making them than playing with the toy soldiers!
So all of that to say, maybe a plunger is the better way to go, to get consistent flow and strong plastic. I realize the problem, that you can't make anything bigger than the barrel will hold, but there are ways around this as well.
It's so great to see what you have accomplished, and i look forward to your future videos. Good day, and good printing!
Pellet printing will eventually get there. Ink printers are now getting more common with ink tanks instead of cartridges. It will be same for 3D printers, different hoppers full of pellets to print from.
I do my best to bring us there faster my friend 🙂
Now I wanna see if extruder can be diy for cheap similar to glue gun.
Then you need to wait for the next Video 😄
@@greenboy3d never thought I'll just have to ask and then receive. Thanks!
can't wait@@greenboy3d
@@greenboy3d You got my sub;)
A glue gun is technically extruding with a (very thick) filament tho :P
1 thing to keep in mind is fraud of pellets. You cant gauge quality of pellets as well as filament, mainly because with pellets, you wont really see a difference between new pellets vs pellets made from 30-50x recycled plastics. Where as filaments you can determine the flex/strength before hand.
In both cases you would still probably need to make test print to test the actually material properties, like cnc kitchen often does
Good ideas! 👍I definitely will convert 1 of my printer to pallet extruder printer for Big stuff which does not require precision function. All those test print & benchies can be recycled. Not only that many plastic containers can be shredded and repurposed for household use. Thanks for sharing ❤
I agree with every advantage you cited from pellets printing, from price to flexibility of mixing colors, buying smaller quantities and using different materials. I think the main limitation of this method will be speed. Now we are going to 300mm/s printers (the core XY profusion). The pellet extruder seems way heavier than the filament ones, and it will limit speed. The pellets chaking form hi speeds may also be an issue.That said, I don't believe pellets will be mainstream in FDM 3Dprinting, but I do think there will be a solid share for it if it gets sufficiently developed. Congrats!
Yea, it is definitly a trade off: Speed for lower cost 😀
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Love the open design for the the hopper! Could potentially add in color pellets as you go and do some crazy stuff!
That is exactly what such an extruder is great at 😄
By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Subscribed and awaiting your next video. This looks like a great start to your channel and I hope the best comes to you.
Thank for the comment 😘
I've actually wondered why pellets weren't used since shortly after 3D printers started to become popular. It always seemed like a lot of extra expense that could be avoided since you wouldn't need the reel filament came on as well as not repeating the forming of the plastic.
Oh, wow! This is your first video. At least on this channel of course. I subscribed! It would be very exciting if pellet printing could become practical, affordable, and widespread. I would figure the hardest part is making sure no air gets into the pellet melting process, but it doesn't seem like that's the exact issue. Very interesting. I look forward to more of your videos.
Thank you! In the next video will show the extruder in more deepth
By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I hope that you keep pushing this method forward! 🎉
If we use a 1.75mm nozzle with your extruder it would be very easy to make custom home made filament. Would you make a contraption that could make good quality filament with even thickness using your screw extruder setup? it doesn't need to be very fast. Most of us have basic filament 3d printers which we don't wanna tinker with so a cheap home assembled filament maker would actually be something I'd like to buy to go with my 3d printer.
nice video. I can't sit through many 3-d printing videos because the speaker rambles on about nothing and takes too long to get to the point. you present everything clearly and succinctly. Good work!
Thank you, I'll do my best to keep it that way 😄
Do you have a topic suggestion for my next video?
@@greenboy3d The extruder, of course :)
Awesome start to a RUclips channel, congrats. Something I've been thinking about for a while myself. One thing you might look into to help with the gaps in the feedstock is have two screws and small void between at the heat block, so you are pushing your pellets into a pool, and your second screw is pushing air-free molten material through the nozzle. Might make purging a bit more annoying, and startup will be more delicate, but I'd suggest a system like this would tend to run more continuously than a filament style printer.
Very great input! 🙃
That's actually how the older industrial patents work, and how I used to think all of the industrial machines still worked. You can still find parts for multiple screw extruders, but very little information, while all the RUclips videos about filament factories imply or show them using single screw machines.
A proper extrusion machine uses two screws that both have pregressively varying geometry to apply different forces to the material, and an offgas port near the end of the melt zone. Today you can even buy modular screws so that you can rearrange or extend the different zones. Not that any of that helps with FDM hot end designs, sadly...
Impressive work, love what you've done here!
Really good and informative video, I'll be waiting for your recycling video!
To get better consistency, your extruder screw has to be much larger than your nozzle, but doing so will increase weight of the assembly. There has to be an acceptable tradeoff. Another parameter, the average pellet size could be tweaked by grinding the pellets to a much smaller size.
You are spot on! The hard part is to decide which tradeoff is better or worse.
You are also right with grinding pellets down to smaller size, but I wonder whether you have ideas on how this could be done? 🙂
Great approach, I have been looking for this type of approach for a couple of years now. Looking forward to the next video where you will present you extruder
I am sure you will love :)
Can't wait for it. :)
As someone with 13 years of experience in the field of extrusion, particularly adept at utilizing palets and screws, it's worth noting the significant transformation we've undergone. While our primary focus used to be filament production, the intricacies of screw adjustment have become paramount.
When addressing screw depth and barrel fitment tolerance, we've observed a remarkable reduction in output variations-from potentially as high as 15% down to a mere 5%. This is achieved through meticulous adjustments, ensuring the screw depth and barrel fitment tolerances are finely tuned to operate in close proximity.
Moreover, optimizing the preheating process for palets in the hopper has proven to be a game-changer. By initiating the heating process from the nozzle end at higher temperatures and gradually decreasing towards the back, we've effectively mitigated the risk of pallets becoming lodged within the screw mechanism. This careful calibration ensures a smooth and efficient extrusion process, minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity.
Polymer engineer here, in full size extruder, there is a reason why the screw is tapered and there are multiple heating element in the chamber.
Pellet are not only melted through heating but also the grinding motion of the screw and the chamber itself.
The multiple heating element is to make sure that the pellet didnt get heat shock that would change the characteristics of the extrudite.
That’s why longer screw and barrel needed. I own plastic film factory and the mixing was better for machine with longer screw
You're right when it comes to injection molding and so.
Small scale pellet 3d printing is however a different game with different rules and goals
@@greenboy3d True, but isn't it possible that a grinding action could also help improve your extrusion consistency in this application?
@andybrice2711 not sure what you mean but to give the extruder shredded type of plastic is what it sounds like I forget the creator but he showed that proved to be way more inconsistent and best results was pellets and size and a vibrator to keep them flowing
@@Mikehatespigs No, I wasn't thinking so much of that, more a screw which breaks up larger pellets before they enter the melt zone.
Because I think 3-5 mm pellets are optimized for the larger screws of injection moulding machines. This smaller screw might function more consistently with ~0.5mm pellets.
If someone starts manufacturing pellet conversion kits for filament printers, this could become a trend. I have an Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro, which uses Klipper, and I assume that it will just require updating the settings in the slicer for how much it advances the screw stepper instead of the direct drive steppers.
I expect that one of the key things will be to work out how to safely purge the hot-end, since it's not as simple as pulling out the filament, and allowing the melted plastic to cool inside the screw might cause some issues. So long as it is electrically compatible with a direct-drive extruder and can be supplemented with a bed probe, the hobbyist can swap the print heads between the filament and pellet extruder. A quick-change carriage that accepted both types of tools would make this even easier.
Thank you for your comment :)
I think you will love the next video in which I will show the pellet extruder in more detail
Printing speed is also a factor, since you have pellets on the extruder and a large hose with more pellets inside, the added weight would make it difficult to print fast and would add a significant amount of wobble.
Your right, but where a Problem is, there also a Solution, it just needs to be found. 🙃
@@greenboy3d There's no solution that makes sense. Your primary application is cheaper 0.8 mm printing of larger parts period. That's assuming you can drive at least 120 mm/s without issues.
@@cybyrd9615Boy good thing you already know everything about everything. Everyone we can just give up now this guy knows it's impossible so why even bother.
But 0.4mm and 0.6mm does also work fine. Of course Filament is better but still
Why should there be more applications like recycling household waste with pellet 3d printing?@@cybyrd9615
@@greenboy3d have you ever printed fast? 500mm/s is 125 mm/s when you go from 0.4 to 0.8mm
Thank You. It is. VERY interesting topic. Something has to be done about costly filament and your procedures seem to have achieved that. Thank you
Could you record a guide on how to make the extruder?
Next video 🙂
This is such an awesome idea that was actually made into reality, not many can do that. Getting this extruder customized to fit onto more platforms is the next hurdle.
Thank you for your encouraging words.
"The hurdle" is exactly what I am working at right now 🙂
Any wishes for the next videos?
cool stuff! i wish you the best for your fresh channel - but since it seems like you already really know what youre doing you probably will hit it off :)
Thank you 🙃
I am glad that RUclips pushed you into my feed. Looks like a fine Benchy but I would appreciate a side by side comparison on common printing aspects: flow rate, pressure advance, stringing
Thank you for your feedback 🙂
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Hear me out: what if, extrude your own filaments from pellets.
I have plans to develop a machine for that :)
You can repurpose the filament nozzle and extrusion setup you took off from your modded printer for the waste reuse. You turn them around, funnel the waste through the hot-end whatever way (gravity or pressure if ground stuff, just the pull force on the other end if strings of bottles) and on the other end, use the extrusion to make a string, at the exit of the extruder you cut it up into bits with a rotating blade driven by the same motor as the extruder to make it simpler and sync the cutting to the extrusion rate for better size consistency.
Cool stuff. Sounds like this should be the goto method for experimental printing (parts, printer calibration, design experimentation), quality is good enough and the easier reuse gives more options to fail a print (or just reprint a broken piece from the same exact material for color consistency or something). And filament printing is much better for stuff like board games, art projects, printing services and stuff like that.
But what about retraction? I mean it would seam as if the ooze would be pretty high. Awesome idea either way.
rotating the extruder screw backwards creates under pressure that prevents ooze for a short time similar like in a filament extruder... Enough time for travel movements without ooze
@@greenboy3d The only way I see to keep this small and have good output quality is to measure the pressure in the chamber. I'm wondering if it could be done by measuring axial load on the screw.
Wow, really cool! Good job on making that. I got to see more of this in the near future.
You're on to something important here.
Thank you! Stay tune for the next video 🙃
Incredible video. I learned a lot here. Can't wait to see if this technology develops! I can imagine some really cool color mixing or multi color printing by having a dispenser dispense just the right amount of pellets combined with purging you could get some really cool stuff going.
The cartridge system from 2D printers is the reason pellet extrusion is not mainstream. Qui prodest is the only question you need to ask. All of these big filament manufactureres would go out of business in no time if pellet extrusion was the norm.
There is no "big filament". To my knowledge, there isn't a cartel either, nor is the technology in any way proprietary.
Including manufacturing, packaging, distribution and taxes, it is pretty hard to make filament for under around 16 euros per kilogram, with most being around 20 for a reason. Keep in mind you have to make very consistent filament, pack it, ship it, pay your workers, have some profit to invest and so on.
There are quite a lot of filament factories, at least in the EU and they offer a shitton of options. No need to use fancy words or start conspiracy theories.
If you want cheap filament in Europe, there is GST3D, in bulk a kg is under 10 euros, but it's not necessarily the best quality.
Total BS. Cartridges are proprietary, they are being sold by the same companies that produce printers itself, they sometimes sell cheap printers and make most of the money from cartridges. The idea is to force people to stick to their cartridges and prevent them from using ones from competition.
Filament is just a form of a material, much like sheet paper, it is industry wide standard, the same for all manufacturers, it is not proprietary in any way and there is nothing special in it to make it work only with the certain 3D printer model.
I each day open this channel and hope that you published this design, this will be a game changer❤
Just be a bit more patient :)
c'mon, the reason they're a different colour is that one is more white and one is more creamy in colour?! don't want to be a hater, but it just lowers the content quality hugely when things like that are said
You may or may not know it but upon recycling of PLA or too much heat exposure PLA starts to change its color to a darker one until it turns completely black with extremely weak mechanical performance.
Therefore, it was important to mention that the color difference is just due to a different color used in the plastic, because people might otherwise assume that my pellet extruder causes plastic to significantly degrade while printing, which is not the case.
I hope now you understand the more in-depth reasoning behind that statement "Stupid color" statement 🙂
Came here to write this
@@MrJ2thes What?
This is one of the best ideas I have seen, I will keep up with your work and hopefully one day be able to get my hands on one!
We're going to have desktop injection molds at this rate lol
We already do
@@cybyrd9615 TIL
I am planning to make my Pellet Extruder available to everyone but I need your help first
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Man, great job! I'm waiting for commercial product from you, will totally buy pellet extruder for 150-200$ even in half-diy form. But i would like to see more tests - speed test, strenth test. It is perfect thing for mass production.
Well then order your Popcorn and wait for the next video! 😉
Thank you for your kind words ❤
I just realised this could be incredibly useful for recycling filament too, since you would only need a shredder and those pieces could probably work in a pellet extruder (if you can get the shredded pieces to be a similar size)
Absolutly. I am planning to make my Pellet Extruder available to everyone 🙂
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
@@greenboy3dwill it work with BambuLab printers?
It works with a almost every 3d printer, but I haven't looked into BambuLab yet@@zachowns1023
@@greenboy3d okay nice
Awesome video; I can't wait to see where this technology goes!
To manage flow rate you could filter your pellets by size with some meshs.. So there is less variation within a print.
If you shred for example your old 3d prints into granules, then this method of using meshes works very well as I showed it in this video: ruclips.net/video/eWgzi4a1bJo/видео.html
However, normal pellets are generally speaking about the same size but have due to their shape from certain angles different sizes which make proper filter almost impossible...
Great video. I am just starting to look at 3-D printing as a hobby and this video couldn’t have come out a better time the many questions I had about for them and printing, and the newness that this has all been for me. The questions I had in my head, were answered by you without even knowing That I had those questions Haha quite the ramble. What I wanted to say is thank you !
This really is some awesome stuff. The sheer amount of freedom pellet printing would offer is insane. For one, recycling plastics into printed parts becomes essentially facile which is a pretty big deal!
Absolutly 😀 In my next video I will show the Pellet Extruder in more deepth
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I'm a little bit underwhelmed by the regular filament benchy, since you shouldn't have stripes on a properly tuned printer. Also those benchies are scaled?
So I'm not sure the comparison is fair. Though I do appreciate your work in this direction, it's a great idea and a great prototype!
Printing straight from pellet sounds fucjing awesome, prices hecking good, saves space aswell
Working very hard right now to organize the shipping of the Pellet Extruder and other tasks related to Greenboy3D like organizing a supply of pellets for everyone and a pellet extruder wiki, which is why I sometimes have trouble answering everyone immediately.
Most parts for the extruder have already arrived and have been processed & packed for shipping, however the pellet extruder screws are still in manufacturing since this is the most complicated and costly part of the pellet extruder. I believe that the first units will be shipped out by the end of October. 🙂
Use a fine grain pellet to decrease the volume of empty space - this also will help with improving even pressure in the hotend. Ali express has pla powder but I couldn’t find any pellets that are the size of sand granules. Perhaps you could diy with a grain mill, dry ice/liquid nitrogen to decrease the temps so it doesn’t melt the pellets during the grinding process? Then you’d have to use a sieve on the “grains” to get all the larger piece out.
I was just eyeing my coffee grinder thinking the same thing 😅
Keep up the good work and make this happen! This is going to be game changer in recycling, specially when combined with renewable energy.
Thank you for your appreciation ❤ I will do my best to improve it further more
By the way, you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Genius solution to print from the source material. Well done!
can't wait for the material recycling video 🙂 Well done with this one ! you're great !
Thank you for the kind words! ☺
Excellent work man! I see that this is your first video. Im looking forward to more. With the right marketing and with enough iterating, im fairly certain that youll have the demand for a product like this. Best of luck!
Thank you for your comment! 😀
By the way there is a Greenboy Discord Community Server with almost 100 people. If you'd like to join then there a link in the description
subscribed as soon as i saw this video, this is such a great idea to bring to the table, cheaper plastics for printing, recycle supports, multicolor, if only the comunity could figure out the flow inconsistencies to have fast pritings we all be set
Thank you! I love your comment ❤
Any suggestions for a next video?
@@greenboy3d it would be nice to see more about your pellet extruder and what changes to firmware are in order to make it work anyways i look forward to any content this channel has to offer
I wonder if a longer melt zone in the screw would improve the flow rate consistency? Great work! I’ve wanted this for years.
Thank you! 🙃
A longer meltzone might help with flow rate consistency, but then other new problem would arrive which I am going to cover in my next video.
Do you maybe have any questions that you would like to ask about pellet 3d printing or my extruder?
Good video . I suggest making the screw pair 50% larger, you can try it in length with an increase in heating area , or you can try it in width, it will definitely improve the stability of the material supply. It would be good if you can try this
I will :)
Man Can't wait for more, this seems like a breakthrough in 3D printing, I would be soo much better having pellets over filament, and great work really man big time
Thank you :) I will do my best to improve the extruder further more and share it with you 😃
Fascinating stuff! There was a crowdfunding campaign for a pellet based 3D printing waaaaaay back in the day that became abandonware as far as i could ever tell shortly after the campaign finished, and ive always been curious about thr potential. Thank you for the excellent proof of concept - your work shows through! The modern 3d printing hivemind is so obsessed with print quality that these demos might get marked as "poor quality", but circa 2016, youd have been trading blows with the best nozzles available. Immense potential here!!! Excited to to see what you could come up with to resolve the flow rate issues :)
Thank you so much for that comment! 😀
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
also on recycling if you are investing in an extruder to create new filament out of your scrapped plastic then you can also create your own filament out of your pellets
I've been dreaming of printing with pellets, because they are so cheap and universal. Also color/flavour/etc mixing you mentioned is interesting. Small layer inconsistencies are propably not critical to functional prototypes or parts that will have finishing steps anyway.
I'd love to see follow up videos in regards to the creation and assembly of your extruder.
Then I suggest you to order some popcorn and wait for the next video since it will be exaclty I will do! 😄
Hello!
I loved this idea! I have a suggestion to make...
What if instead of modifying your 3d printer you make a filament extruder? Then you could make the filament spool from your pellets and maybe it will be better to tweak and adjust, or make improvements without changing much the 3d printer.
I guess the extra gear needed to melt pellets may change the weight of the printing head too much, leading to imprecise prints. Having a stock printer and a separate jig to melt and make filament from pellets might be a better solution in many ways!
Hope to see more from this subject in a near future! Good video and awesome idea!
Thank you for your comment! 😀
If you add a pre-melt stage into the hot end via another component, you could probably stabilize your flow rate.
Can you explain that in more detail please? 🙂 Your idea sound very interesting
@@greenboy3d Since you use pellets, you potentially have an inconsistent flow rate. If there is a the worm drive first that is heated, it can compress and fuse the the pellets. From there, the primary feeds a smaller secondary worm drive to print. The primary worm drive would ostensibly feeding "hot filament" into the secondary. The primary being larger, can also operate at its own speed, to keep the feed consistent; you might further this by using a pressure sensor, to assist in the feed of pellets, though this may be overkill, and a future enhancement.
I really appreciate the idea and I am sure it has room to evolve even more, specially if it gets adoption. What I am a bit sceptical about it is that it gives me the impression that it can be messy and require more maintenance work.
Also curious about the implacations of retraction. Maybe still has to evolve a bit to 3d print parts that require more precision or smoother finishes (without requiring post processing). But I definitely believe it can cover a wide range of use cases and can help with volume 3D printing (like farms, for example).
Keep up the good work, I will definitely be tuned to your channel. I would like to know more about how to source the material for pellet printing and curious about your recycling idea.
Thank you for your kind words 🙃
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Already have ❤
Definitely rooting for this!
Very interested! Subscribed! Cheers from Argentina.
Thank you for your comment ❤
Great work you've done! I was genuinely surprised by the print quality
Thank you for your kind words 🙂
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Loved this video! Great work on the pellet printing development ^^ Subscribed!
Thank you my friend! 🙂
Well done! Your pellet extruder looks like a brilliant design :) To improve flow consistency, you can buy pellets with a smaller diameter (0.5 - 1.5mm) from polymer companies, that are used for micro-injection etc.
Industrial twin-screw extruders like the ones we use for research tend to feedback torque from the screw motor into the machine's UX/UI; Perhaps that feedback could be used to alter the extruder screw torque around a setpoint? Most extruders and injection moulders tend to have a feed section heater, which would be at the top of your extruder design. These tend to be set around 60C for PLA for example, to slightly pre-heat the pellets and reduce the torque needed to extrude them. Might be worth an experiment!
You should bring this to SMRFF 2024! Will the project be open-source or a product?
Nice. This seems like it’s be good to use pellets for prototyping and random parts you don’t necessarily care about being perfect to drastically cut down on cost, then use filament when you want to make a “nice final” product.
Interesting stuff, I'll be definitely following this channel in the future.
Thank you! ❤
In traditional manufacturing plastic is often pumped the entire screw setup acts as a ram to quickly inject all the plastic needed for a plastic injection. The screw does not meter out the plastic by rotating the screw in a typical setup, the length of the stroke meters it out. At it's face this approach may not seem useful for a 3d printer but perhaps a spring setup could be used to maintain a more constant pressure and allow the screw to float back and fourth a little to account for variations in pellet packing.
Advanced plastic screws have sections that pull a vacuum on the plastic to actively outgas it inside the screw, I don't know how well that could be miniaturized.
This is such an interesting are. I love the increased recyclability and customization that is possible. I would love to hear more about your development on the extrusion system. Do you monitor pressure in the meltzone to get consistent extrusion volume/mass?
Thank you for your appreciation :D
I would like to be able to monitor the pressure inside the barrel, but I don't know how to.
Do you have any ideas?
One way to get more consistent size on the pellets is to sort them by size, just like you sort gravel. That way you could use the smallest pellets to print quality prints and the larger pellets for large prints where quality matter less. First time viewer, insta-sub.
The pellets are acutally quite uniform. With 3 - 5mm difference I am meaning that some pellets of a specific manufacturer are 3-4mm and some of another manufacturer 4-5mm.
The best solution would be to have Pellets in the size of 1mm because they would stack up more evenly through out the 3D Pellet Extruder Barrel
And thank you for your comment! 🙂
@@greenboy3d Aha, then I get it.
There is definitely something very revolutionary in 3D printing here!.
Hi, that's a really interesting idea, have manufacturers already ventured in this direction? In any case, converting filament printers into pellet printers seems fairly straightforward, you just need to industrialise the manufacture of the extruder. One idea regarding the difference in size between the pellet grains, why not first pass them through a sieve to harmonise the dimensions, which should allow a more regular flow, at least that's what I thought when I saw this passage in your video. In any case, I hope that in the long term this will indeed be the future of 3D printing, as the reduced cost of materials should interest many printers and perhaps encourage printer manufacturers to look into this development.
I am planing to make my extruder available to everyone.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
@greenboy3d there you go I've answered your questions as best I could ;o)
Great video and craftsmanship. I have an idea how to fix the issues of pellet size, working at a company that among other things, makes Polypropylene pellets.
Exdrude the pellets you bought, and install a rotating fan kind of blade directly behind the opening of the nozzle, chopping the extruding string into tiny beads.
This way you can control the size of your pellets by nozzle size and blade speed.
Good job and luck with the start of your channel.
Thank you very much ❤
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
This is great, and I'm actually looking forward to the chocolate 3d print video!
Any particular things I should try out or talk about in that video? 🙂
@@greenboy3dchoc'o benchy. Yummy snack for the 3dp nerds for sure.
Or do an overhang test in chocolate😂
A great idea. Probably not good enough if you're producing something to sell but certainly a more cost-effective option for your own projects and prototyping.
Definitely! 🙂
I can see from all of the comments here, that people are pretty excited with your work, just as I am!
Thank you 😀I will do my best to improve it further more
Do you maybe have any questions that you would like to ask about pellet 3d printing or my extruder? 😃
I worked in the plastic industry. You should try adding some Magnesium Stearate with the pallets, we used it in the extrusion process as lubricant.