What is recently happening with this connected community (especially in this series which is almost "Teamwork"), absolutely is crazy and restores "faith in humanity" 💯 - i absolutely love it, also a huge thanks to every single one and to you for starting this❤
@@soundsparkawesome, backup screw doesnt hurt and i probably would get one too... i dont want to ruin your excitement, but are you aware that you dont need to switch screw for another polymer material ?
@3DWolfEngineering The 2 screw option gives one each of low and high compression. Accordig to Artme3d, low compression for many pellet types and high compression for regrind and some pellet types.
Dude. I felt that pain of having to scrap 80% of a build because of a fundamental flaw in the design/process. I've been there before. And while that moment of grief is kinda devastating, once you get past it, it becomes so much more satisfying when your second attempt starts to come together even better than your original vision. Props to powering through it!
I often say that I wish maker channels would show mistakes and missteps more often, because it is truly part of the process. Failing to show that can give viewers a warped perception of what working on projects like this are really like.
Agreed. Leaving aside the fact that it really helps to see what the rest of us might run into when it comes time to replicate (because I'm definitely building one of these things when I get more workshop space), it shows a real strength of character. That makes it a lot easier to trust what they're saying, and makes projects like this feel more attainable.
I absolutely love your ability to take criticism, with that alone your going to do great things. Don't quit being you. I also really like the realness of failure and admission, two things you don't see on RUclips much.
The easiest and cheapest welding system is "Flux-Cored Wire Welding." It's as easy as MIG and very similar in handling, but you do not need any gas bottles for it. It uses a special welding wire where the flux, which is normally on the outside of a welding stick, is housed inside the wire. You can get these welders as cheap as stick welders, but the wire is more expensive than that from a MIG machine. However, it's ideal for hobby welding.
^ This. And be wary of people and manufacturers confusing MIG (Metal Inert Gas), with Flux Core Wire welding. Anyone who uses the two terms interchangeably either doesn't know what they're doing, or are victims of the confusion themselves.
Yep, flux-core is the way to go if you want cheap, easy, and accessible. I would be a little suspicious of the 3 in 1 machines that are flux/tig/stick. Generally a single use machine is a safer bet for both funtion and reliability. If you were in the US I would recommend the titanium flux core welder from harbor freight, but I'm not sure what your options are in Israel.
The only issue with the majority of self shielded flux core wire, is that they are not structurally rated, and will only hold about as good as a slightly deeper penetrating 6013
@@adriandawkins5500 6013 is the easier rod to start with, but it's not deep penetrating. That would be 6010 and 6011. Journeyman most commonly use the 6013 for sheet metal or something like a body panel just like flux core. Flux core also comes in different tensile strengths like arc rods and can achieve the same 70,000 lbs per square inch as 70xx rods.
@@generic0000 flux/tig is not a good combination, but many best in class tig welders can also do stick welding. I have a Miller Dynasty 200DX that has more features than I know how to use, and is great at stick welding. My cheap Lincoln mig welder does stick welding too. So stick you can combine with about anything, but combining mig and tig into one machine probably doesn't result in a great welder.
I think it would be interesting to explore a hand cranked shredder, could save a fair bit of money. Or maybe a DIY "gearbox" using old bicycle gears/chain. Not sure if it would be strong enough but they are cheap to buy or even free from old bikes if it does work. Maybe this bike gearbox could be powered by a drill/driver?
Great series! Love the information and the honest look at the REAL PROCESS and JOURNEY! That's the most important part that so many others just edit out. What is there to learn from that!? You did it perfectly!
Regarding drying the ground product, you should be able to loop screen mesh around used spools and then just toss those in your filament dryers. You could even just print a mesh wall to connect two sides of a Bambu spool (or other splittable spool)
While watching this video and part 1, the one thing I kept thinking was moisture. Im glad you mention it at the end of this video. Does moisture damage the filament in anyway? My thinking is if you have a backlog of scraps from a year ago, even if you dry them out the plastic may be damaged and unusable. Im new to 3D printing so Im not entirely sure this is even a concern.
Yeah, that's a good call out, gear reduction for more torque is very valid, the VFD would only affect speed, guess my brain just kinda assumed that ~2KW of power (~2.7HP) would be enough oomph to cover it, but then if we go down the rabbit hole, friction from the shreader might be high if it's very tight, then as it gets hot the metal will expand something like "0.0000072 inches per degree Fahrenheit" for steal, so, that will take more power to overcome unless you are going to dump coolant over it as well.
Big, complicated projects are always full of mistakes. It's just how you learn. Thank you for sharing where you went wrong and how you fixed it so others can learn with you!
Thanks for making this video! I just got into 3D printing but have been modeling/ rigging for games most of my life but I also really like to recycle when I can. Not because a politician says it is good for the environment but because it is the right thing to do and efficient when made practical. We just need to make it practical for individuals in the community and it will become second nature. That is why I instantly wanted to know of solutions for my 3D printing junk. Please keep up the good work and I will definitely be watching your videos a lot closer. Subscribed =)
I plan to order recycled PLA in bulk (100kg+), extruding it, and printing parts for worthy causes, such as schools, learning groups, toys for disadvantaged kids, Ukraine, etc.
wouldn't aluminum extrusions be sufficient for the whole frame and stand? i mean if they can hold up for CNC machines, wouldn't they be able to hold up shredding plastics?
Please look into better helps history more, back in 2018 there was so much bad stuff and controversy around them. They basically got ran off the platform but they waited till about this year and last year to come back on when everybody forgot but they’re not a good company.
@@thenextlayer Yeah one of the problems has been that they have been shipping data of customers (and potentially non-customers who did the sign-up questionnaire without signing up) to Facebook for ad targeting purposes. The data allowed personally identifiable conclusions as to medical/mental conditions that the person possibly has, as well as religious affiliation as well as being LGBTQ. But Facebook's ad division isn't equipped to handle confidential data like that; data that could be abused to harm a person, deliberately or inadvertently, there is a lot of stigma associated with mental disorder around the world and many people are closeted for very strong reasons. This was also not disclosed, and deceptive labelling on the website made people trust it more filling out the questionnaire than they should have. So the company institutionally lacks awareness of what sort of business they're in and what sensitive data they're handling and how to do it safely.
I feel like if they did something bad, you should be able to describe exactly what they did instead of saying “there was so much bad stuff and controversy”. I’m not saying that isn’t true, but just that you should give the facts before repeating vague claims that you heard on the internet. Companies and individuals can get cancelled for absurd reasons, so you shouldn’t just automatically assume that if someone has been cancelled, it is legitimate. But again, I don’t have any facts either, so I’m open to being persuaded if you have real evidence of wrongdoing.
@@nonchalanto I did exactly that in this very thread but my reply is shadowbanned. In short they deliberately shipped personally identifiable information about mental disease, sexual orientatio and religion to a major advertisement agency which isn't equipped to handle it safely and responsibly, with no agrement in place that the data be handled safely and responsibly. All the while misleading people about how safely they handle the data. And they did this not once but for years.
Loving this series! Everything I’ve seen on this always says it’s just not affordable to recycle filament. Thanks for bringing us along with you on the journey.
You have to tune your printing profile for dimensional accuracy, and this must be repeated for each printer, each material (even different colours), and each nozzle if you want really good precision. There are a number of guides online. Mainly, there are a couple of slicer settings for handling tolerances and material shrinkage compensation you need to account for. These two factors alone can get you within 0.05-0.1mm, which should be enough for fitting stuff like what you're doing. PLA typically has low shrinkage so that might be a good choice for this prototyping.
New slogan is awesome 😊 I would like to see the drying costs as some viewers may be new to 3d printing and may not have all of the tools and knowledge that more experienced makers have.
I did wonder if a condensing clothes dryer would work. They are designed to pull moisture out of things. You'd probably have to do it after shredding and have some sort of mesh bag.
This is something that I had to learn from after 2 projects I did very early on where I learned most of the parts were incompatible with one another and was basically just sitting on a bunch of junk that couldnt do anything. The best part of the experience is tho that you learn ALOT from those experiences. I have now gotten to the point where I realize and could see in your video when you are rushing into a project. Getting the right parts for a job can sometimes be more work than actually making the thing. It is always important to analyze each step and ensure you are getting the right parts before you buy. Good news is here that you learned a lot of valuable lessons and about a lot of different things. I try to teach friends about this issue but most of the time if this never happens to you once, then it's basically inevitable to happen sometime. Keep the parts around and save them for a project you do in like 2 years from now. I will be randomly doing a project and come across old parts I never used sometimes and just think "SCORE" when I have it and dont need to buy it after the object has been sitting on a shelf for years.
I can relate to this. I tried to build an ERCF, printed all the parts and when the non-printed parts arrived I realised I printed all the parts for a V2 kit and brought a V1 kit.
Have you considered putting castor wheels on one side of the frame? Then you can move it around if needed, but it will still be stationary with only 2 legs and 2 wheels. You can get locking castors too!
Love the new motto! I'd be curious to see if you can put PET bottles (without the caps) into it to make longer spools of PET filament than the other diy solutions out there.
when you mention the drying, I am thinking of a small tumbler type system to dry the bits after shredding. something that feeds in, tumbles through a spinning cone. something similar to plastic sorters, or how some compost places use the same process to speed up and sort out the compost.
Thank you for taking this project on!!! The whole issue of what to do with failed prints and purge has stopped me from diving deeper into 3d printing because it seems so wasteful thank you for helping find a solution!!!
For mixing the filament scrap. If I build one of these, I'm going to use the recycled filament on things where I don't care about the color as much anyway.
Excelentes videos! Quiero la 3er parte! Going to do my shredder, but I want to do it cheaper. Hope I can $.$ I was thinking of doing the dryer with a Peltier cell. Please test how uniform the shreddered chips must be to use your filament maker. I have read that the size of the chips are really important.
@thenextlayer their are cheep flux mig welders that work well for small projects like this. But yes looking at the first one just before this; yhea cleaning was a big issue. VFD is good to have anyway on top of the mechanical gearbox. Now you can drive it both forward and backwards if something gets stuck.
In short I love that you document your failures. An addition that I would like to see is a close to accurate amount of time invested, both including your failures and assuming all goes well how much time it would take to complete said project.
For drying, consider making a small greenhouse, and store your scrap/shreddings there. It won't dry things out, but it will give you a much lower baseline of relative humidity. Monitor a hygrometer, and tune it accordingly. I live in a place that is known to be cold and _wet_ in the winter, but have some space that gets good sun exposure. I Plan to make a small cabinet with the north side, and all equipment painted black, some water tanks for thermal mass, and greenhouse double layer poly-sheets. If It can be set up so that it seals itself up when it's cool (avoid night condensation), and allows _some_ fresh-air to cycle through it, my hope is that it acts as a pre-drier.
Terrific video! I appreciate your honesty over mistakes and lack of skills/knowledge. Failing is the best way to learn! I designed and built 5 iterations (so far) of a camera motion control rig, and it is only by trying out and then improving a design that you really get to understand what makes it work. I’m really looking forward to your success with this project, as it is the next thing I would like to build, and I really need to do something with the 30kg of failed prints I have.
You can also incorporate a chain drive between the shredder and the output of the gearbox. Hub sprockets and chain are cheap and readily available. Also if your VFD is struggling at low speeds, increase the gain compensation. You might want shoot an email to VFD manufacturer as the naming and setting of the parameter varies between different brands.
Awesome segment on therapy to segway to the sponsor based on your own experience. Glad that it's helping your growth! BetterHelp is problematic because they have been misbehaving and fined on the most important aspects including qualification and privacy, selling the most personal data. I hope that better competitors will replace them including as sponsors. But everything you said about why therapy matters still stands, especially in a creative & engineering field like 3D printing where a large % are neurodivergent like with ADHD, ASD, bipolar and have to cope with an unaccommodating world.
good comment. I would like to specify that it is personal HEALTH and MEDICAL data. Under European law (GDPR) this falls under sensitive data. This is not to be taken lightly. This type of data can do more than just identify you, this can ruin people's lives, this can compromise people's actual security. Privacy is your first layer of security. The less they know the less they can compromise you.
I would make a press type extruder and have it in stages so stage one would be the cold end/ hopper part, stage two would be warm up the plastic to half of melting point and the final stage would be the hot end. then cold water bath into a die of 1.75 give or take than spool it.
I imagine this project isn't great for the algo, which I know loves hyper focused channels, but got to say I'm loving it. I really enjoy when makers venture outside their comfort/expertise zone a bit. FWIW, yes to totalling up actual spend and also doing cost to recreate without waste. We have all gone through that "oops, that was a waste" and it's just one more layer of transparency to share what it is.
oh... and yeah I'd TOTALLY tell you to go get a wire feed welder of any kind (US$100). YesWelder is good for hobbyists (like me) but there are a lot brands now. Harbor Frieght (US), etc... Stick welding is good for fixing farm equipment., but not really what you want to be using to make a nice metal frame that'll sit indoors. You can use flux core wire and forego gas tanks. Still going to be way better than a stick.
Glad you found a great gearbox for an absolute steal, though a specific reduction ratio favoring high torque is necessary for a given output. I was on the hunt for a very long time but finally scored a 1:745 reduction gearbox for my project and it even came with salvage but functional controllers. I looked at the ebay specials but couldn't find a gearbox that looked like it would do the job I needed and still come in as 'affordable'. This box spins at 6 rpm on the low end, but can handle all the pressure of spinning a 20lb injection screw under load. And yes, the burnished "built Sh!t" logo board was noticed and gets my full approval. 👍 For printing geometrically accurate parts, there's a few requisites that need to be addressed with engineering-grade materials. A true heated chamber for filled filaments is a must to avoid warping. There's also an inherent amount of shrink involved with FDM (and even resin, which I'll get to in a moment), but needs to be accounted for in addition to machined-equivalent clearances in metal (imperial is typically .001" or .02mm). Due to the way most FDM printers operate, there's an inherent amount of 'slop' in the travel motions that will transfer directly into the part(s). It's hard to calculate into part design other than running belt-less machines for optimum accuracy, but that generally necessitates rather expensive commercial//industrial equipment. I typically prototype my parts with photopolymer resin printers and use them to cast tougher parts with more suitable materials; composites, two part tooling urethane, etc. When done correctly, I can hit very good accuracy and have usable parts for ~80% right from the resin, but again I typically prefer to mold and cast hard duty parts. With resin printing, despite what you'll read, you Can get geometrically accurate parts, but your results will definitely benefit from extra effort in the model prep. I've been requested very often to write all this into a technical novel, which I may get around to one day, but time dictates other needs at present. I do have a blog that has quite a lot of it written down already but isn't organized like a written book or white paper would be.
A great video, thanks! For the drying: a close-meshed sieve at the bottom of a tube through which a mass of warm and preferably dry air flows through should do the trick. I do not know your habits, but if you were making pizza, you normally waste a lot of "nice dry and warm air" from your oven, which could be ideal for drying filament. Or perhaps a cupboard that closes tightly and contains a dehumidifier would also be good. I am pretty sure you will find a nice solution.
For functional and accurate 3d printing, especially to those tolerances, you should go with a smaller, not larger nozzle. .4 or smaller if possible, tune for the filament you are using and slow things down a ton, like 50mm/s max. This will get you much better tolerances
So I have been looking into making custom colored filaments. There are 3d files where you can print dual colors, but thats not really what I am looking for. Not only that, they print in a hexagon shape which isnt great. I was looking into these recyclers because they essentially extrude a new rounded 1.75mm filament. I am wondering if you could use a dual extruder (2 in, one out) instead of the single, which would make a dual color. Then make two batches of that. and then run those two through again (creating a 4 color), which might be better blended. not sure. also not sure if re-melting multiple times removes some components that are important to the longevity or other properties of the plastic. I mention this because as you pointed out, the CNC video shows that the output is very streaky. But if you ran it through again like I describe, it might reduce that color banding. But my idea does require a dual extruder. And 3x the extruding step. As a last point about dust. I doubt its going to cause problems because there are already filaments with "gunk" in them that print mostly fine. Like the wood, CF, glitter, etc. . Cant hurt to run a vacuum or compressed air over your filament though. But I wouldn't do more work than that to clean it.
for fit test you should probably use something like pla that is easy to print and don’t shrink, as cool as petcf is it isn’t a good fit test material also for mixing colors, you can extrude to a 3mm “filament” and cut it to form a pallet before extrude again into 1.75mm filament. this is good for material and color consistency. this also make drying easy
love the video so keen on the idea of being able to recycle old prints. though if you haven't seen the controversies round the sponsor better help i would suggest anyone thinking of using it to look into them, they were exposed years ago for their practices and now they are popping back up everywhere
The VFD is not a waste of money. Electric motors especially cheap ones have a hard start which is also commonly referred to cross the line. This means that the motor will require up to 3x the amount of amperage at start up as it will running. The VFD will solve this problem. This will bring down your overall power requirements. There is a data plate on the motor that will list FLA on it. This means full load amps. If you have a VFD your FLA will be the most amperage your motor will require. Without the VFD you will need 3x the FLA listed to start the motor. The VFD will be your friend. I hope this helps. I size generators for Electric motors all the time and this often trips people up.
On the tolerances you have 3 factors. 1 shrink of plastic. 2 inaccuracy of 3d print. 3 imperfections in the print like the seam. For pretty much all to be truly accurate you have to do compensation in the cad. You can get away with bulk scaling for the shrink but different cross sections shrink differently so to be truly accurate you need to adjust the cad for the important measurements. For the other 2 it's your specific printer and slicer setting so something like a clearance test will help, and rounds are generally worse than flats. If it has to be really tight then it will probably always require some post processing due to the limit of 3d printer precision. Try printing many parts and measuring the variance a good printer will probably vary by about .1mm. Some printers actually spec that repeatability. Post processing often needed in machining too beyond a certain accuracy: example if you drill a hole you will need to use a reamer for final sizing if it needs to be really precise. Just for reference when I was working with a 250k cnc machine years ago it's repeatability was measured by a calibration firm at .025mm. Which might be able to be improved a little by doing all the cuts from the same direction. And funny our expensive calipers .025--.05mm depending which one. Expensive micrometers around .01mm. Of course for those accuracies you need a temperature controlled room anyway.
and more consistent, and easier to assemble using standardized brackets, and possibly easier to source worldwide. I don't know about "locally", though.
Started giggling about the Logo prior to your comment. I wish more people lived by it! You asked about shred drying at the end of the video, and I know not everyone will have an enclosed printer, but why not print a PET or stronger box with venting (much like a huge desiccant box)? You can then use the built in filament drying function of your enclosed printer.
You might be able to use a wacky wirily to make soda straws up to make like short links of wiring harness so you don’t have to go buy any and make it easier to get into if you gotta do patchwork
Maybe something like a DIY vibratory polisher and some fast food warming heat lamps for post-washing? Or maybe something like a DIY vacuum chamber to lower the boiling temp of the water and a cheap induction cook top that you could rig up to a Adreno to off gas the chamber from time to time while cycleing the pump and modulating the induction heating? You would only need to get to ~27.75 Hg (93972.286 Pascal) to boil water at ~40C.
I was surprised to see you had issues with the dimensions on your test parts. When I got my first 3D printer, I needed some support blocks to hold a lamp on my fish tank. I came from a CNC background so I had dial calipers and all that stuff. I wasn't sure how accurate a 3D printer would be so I just popped out a 1" cube and 1" cylinder in Microsoft 3D builder and sent them to the printer. They were within .010". I was quite surprised and happy with that. I didn't use anything fancy. Just a Creality clone (Longer LK5 Pro), PLA and a .4 nozzle with .2 layers. Take the easiest printer you have to work with and plain PLA and just print a 1" cube with a .4 nozzle and measure it with some calipers. See if it's different from different CAD programs vs 3D Builder. I'd be curious to see what you get. Maybe you over complicated it.
I dried my regrinds using a forced air dehydration machine, and putting the grinds into a mesh bag meant for putting delicates (such as ladies hose/socks/pantyhose) into a typical laundry drier. I'd dry it a few hours, then agitate it by shaking the bag a bit and dry a few more hours. This worked well enough for about 1kg of material. You might find that you get more consistent filament by extruding, then pelletizing, then extruding again.
I honestly I don't understand the need of melt plastic to transform into filament, then melt the filament to print. Why not skip one step and print directly using the pellets/regrind, I mean "pellet extruder".
He roughly explained it at munute 16:23. Pellets are mostly for industrial usage and are quite consistent in size, material characteristics, etc... making pellets out of normal scraps is already difficult enough. Not to mention that eventho pellets are printable they need their own system to reload and dont have quite the same accuracy that filament has. Another reason could very well be storage. If you have a winded up filament its easy to store and put on the printer. However if you have a big idk 30 kg bag of pellets you somehow have to dose that amount and position it somewhere over the printer (if you want gravity to do the work and not a pump-like system) for you to be able to put them into your extruder. The grinder and nozzel also need to be heated which also results in a lot of energy usage for a really small amount of print material. So in my opinion making filament out of it, even if it has mushed colors and doesent look as clean, is quite more efficient.
I would after making the filament dry it on the spool and then cut it to pallets to make a second extrution and the filament more consistent in diameter and the moisture will be gone
Great video, really appreciate the honesty in accepting the mistakes you made and learning from them. These kinds of projects almost never go as planned and posting the whole process buith failures and successes means we can all learn and replicate the successes. For washing the filament shreds I would assume drying them wouldn't be needed if your melt zone in the extruder is long enough. You're melting the plastic at 200+C so any water trapped in the material should boil off. The key thing would be making sure the material is molten for long enough for the moisture to escape. That's just my theory based on my basic knowledge of moisture absorbsion in polymers. 😂 I'd say adding in 10-20% virgin material/resin will definitely help out in producing a higher quality filament. This is common in all forms of metal and plastics recycling as it helps reduce the concentration of impurities that are bound to be added to the mix. Once you have this all up and running you also could experiment with recycling broken/old standard injection moulded plastics into filament. With lots of the plastics you'll find around the house being ABS(cases on electronics, LEGO, car parts, etc.) you could potentially combine waste ABS prints with broken injection moulded ABS and some virgin ABS resin to produce ABS filament. The main concern here would be the fumes produced, but putting the extruder in an eclosure with a few nevermores could solve that.
If you have a klipper core xy you can get the calibration flower that vector 3d sells and do a skew correction along with the file you get his math formula page to type all measurents in then copy and paste what you need into your cfg. That is one of the best ways to get accurate measurements in and out
Cnc kitchen has a great guide on using the califlower. The key is to use shrink factor for different materials. If he is only having problems with one material, this is a better solution. The calculator has instructions for marlin as well as slicer tweaks for compensation. Really helped me tune my machine. Just need to remember to recalibrate new brands and materials.
@@Speedgaming802 absolutely, it also lets you compensate for skew in your frame. However if you run marlin you need to compile the firmware, not too difficult if you have a common machine. Then you have plenty of examples.
I wasn't sure if it would work on a bedslinger I haven't tried it so I never suggested what I didn't know but good to know it does work and it does help to get the measurements right in and out
I'm rather new to the 3D print community but my younger brother is a destructive/nondestructive testing engineer and uses a set of industrial CNC and 3D printing devices so I g to him for advice. When I did ask him about the most accurate method of printing without CNC work he stated the small and slow method they use is always best. Highest resolution printhead and done at speeds that are as slow as can be done while still keeping the print material uniformly extruded. I'm going to try a few various methods with my new S1 Pro and Sonic Pad set.
I find that printing in resin can be a way to test fit better instead of fdm. Although it can be more brutal and is a little more difficult to work with it was way more accurate. Love the series!
Did you make the rack out of galvanized box tubing? Did you get headaches? Welding galvanized steel releases fumes that will give you a headache. Not acutely dangerous, but we don't weld galvanized steel. But... this is a great few videos. I want to build one of these, I hate tossing all this filament. If you separate the colors as best as you can, how much do they vary? I'd just have to start separating by material type.
i protype all the time starting with 3d printed part and then move on to cnc machined part. I worked in plastics for a while and so i have a rough understanding of how plastics react during manufacturing. my process goes something like this when i am using a new printer or filament that i have not used before i take my time and dial in my 3d printer to make it as accurate as possible by printing a number of different shaped parts recording all data specifically paying attention to the amount the material shrinks after extrusion and cooling. I always drill any holes that are meant for screws/ hardware. and i also print very slow and steady with prettymuch 100% infill for the learning process and once i can get the sizes bolting on with nearly zero post processing then i make adjustments and tweaks that allow me to save money and filament. its a slow process at first b ut before you know it you will have a library of all different filaments and settings and you will instinctively predict how a certain part/ material should be printed.
If you calculate in the working hours to the final cost, did you save money with it, or did the total cost (parts + labour) go over a commercial "plug and play" solution?
I'm taking the same approach with artme3d's extruder, I picked up both screws as to process the shredder turn them into pellets and then on final product do a mixture of virgin material with recycled, and them from there try to see howich recycled material I can process % to the least % of virgin and make good filament, I would definetly wash in the screened bag and then could possibly dry in dryer on low setting, though I will not be running pla as much, not sure if a dryer would get too hot for pla,
something to consider is a way to control the size of the shreds to make sure they aren't to big, getting consistent sizing in your shreds could be an issue to work out, just food for thought
Little tip for your drilling problem when you weld the metal pieces together the steel gets verry verry hot than letting it cool in ambiant air will cause it to harden ita not going to get sword or knife hard however it dose mean the steel your drilling after you weld is harder than to drill thru than the samw piece of steel before you weldee it can use a tiger torch and good insulation to heat it back up red and keep it there a good 10-15 minutes then cool it as slow as possible an oven works good cuz u can set a temp and lower it over a time but doing that will anneal it or make it softer and will let u drill thru it easily with dollar store bits alternatively drill before you weld lol
I suddenly got a mental image of one of these filament extruders producing filament but instead of it being wound around a spool it being fed into a 3D printer which is printing off the parts for other extruders. I REALLY like the idea of recycling the waste from 3D printing to make new tools to further recycle more waste from 3D printing. This is a fantastic series and TBH I would seriously consider a tabletop system that I could just feed waste into one end and have useable filament come out the other end. Now as for how to dry the shreds, I'm not sure how you'd set this up but I work in the plastics industry and we regularly ship bulk PE/PP pellets via rail. Sometimes they arrive wet and have to be dried out. Some of the customers have a device that blows in warm, dry air into the hopper from the bottom. This serves to dry out the material and stir it up all at the same time. In your case I don't think it would have to be a huge volume of air but it would need to be a good pressure to ensure it could force it's way though the dense grind. this might even serve to help remove some of the dust and finer debris. this of course is all off the top of my head.
I think you should include the cost of drying the filament as some people might have and some might not and it would just be good information to have for those who want to recreate the project.
I work with injection molding. There we know the exact shrinkage of said material and compensate for that. We use PP and it shrinks up to 24h. The initial cooling also impacts how much it will shrink the following 24h. We compensate the molds for said shrinkage. Then we use the cooling for fine tuning it.
Generally the plastic materials used in production manufacturing have known material properties even how much regrind material to safely add. My main concern with this and other projects is using 100% regrind. I think moisture is the least of his concerns at this point. Also funnily enough in every plastics manufacturing plant I’ve worked in there was zero concern of plastic bead moisture content. I mean we would have train cars of the stuff just parked outside and feeder hoses just stuck on the lower manifolds. They just sucked plastic out and into the color mixer and into the extruders. I’m guessing the extreme heat generated by the extruders took care of any moisture issues. But with the size of the screw he had I’m wondering if there is enough room to deal with steam buildup. I doubt temperature is an issue if it gets hot enough to extrude it’s getting plenty hot.
As far as the drying of the shredded plastic once it's in shredded form put it in those bags you were talking about and chuck the bag in a cloths dryer on low heat to draw out the moisture
People pay extra to mix colors in stripes on their filament. Mixing red and yellow with orange I bet would look pretty good, assuming the objects you're printing would lend themselves to that.
About the plastic colours, maybe shred them all separately and after try to make different mixes while making the filament to see the results, I think would even be a cool video about that on it self!
I'm really glad to see the artme3d extruder taking off! I posted about it a few times months ago when i first found them before sending it off to Stefan to investigate. Apparently they've had to massively step up production to keep up with demand since!
@@thenextlayer yeah, when I first found the design there was basically nothing online about them. I posted a few places before reaching out to Stefan directly to point him to it. I've been working on the recycling dream for a while now, and it's awesome to see a modern and affordable extruder on the market.
Okay sooo i dont even know where to start, there is so much in this video i could talk about... I love to see and congratulations on your progress you're doing really well and its really interesting to see how you approach it... as i am currently attending a mechanical engineering college and i am almost done with it - i am just astonished by how much theory and knowledge actually is popping up in my puberty brain (which usually tends to forget stuff😂) while watching this. And thinking of how i would do it - starting with making the frame rigid, welding,... and how it might be possible to do for example the washing (like you said propably put it in a net and give it a quick rinse - maybe in the washing machine... and then drying it... where i thought of how the professional injection moulding machines dry their pellets...and how it might be possible to recreate this fairly simple The worm gear is an excellent choice, sorry i only thought about complex stuff like planetary gears or a HarmonicDrive... anyways before i write an essay while breaking the world record for the longest youtube comment and the most awkward one too because i absolutely am the worst in explaining and writing good texts😓 In case you are interested in my ideas /help... you may always reach out to me on discord :)) (and sorry for everyone in advance when regretting to read this )
Love your videos but I did find the audio on this video a fair bit lower than other videos of your and other content creators I watch. Keep up the great work.
This project is so awesome. You’ve inspired me to reach out to the local library’s which have 3d printers and look into funding options for starting a recycling program locally. It is bonkers that government facilities such as a library wouldn’t already do so, or at least it seems like oversight to me. Either way seems like it’ll be a great thing for those involved to learn. Keep up the awesome work.
Off course we care ! On my side i got like 2 kg of fail print and stuff and im still keeping those in separate bags by color in case when somehow i can recycle this into new filament.
I think there are some ways to do this very smartly. First to consider, is that the plastic can be melted many times without consiquence as long as the plastic is not overheated. I think that the "can only melt it so many times" thing is a myth. The Brothers Make you tube guys proved this through testing. On the nozzle end of things; one thing to do is to melt the recycled plastic twice. Once to a large diameter without regard for consitancy or hydroscopic quality. Then take the large diameter filament, and chop it into pellets. On the second round, the fact that it is in pellets will allow for easier qualtiy managment. And it can be mixed with new plastic pellets. Another thing to consider, is to use a really large diameter nozzle to make 5/16" x 4" mini glue gun sticks.
With the welding make sure you paint the welds with a rust proof paint, otherwise you're going to have to deal with rust down the track. One important fundamental thing with welding is penetration. How much of the weld has penetrated into the parent metal. If something breaks at a weld point it's not the weld that broke as a weld is typically stronger than the parent metal, what has happened is the weld didn't penetrate into the parent metal enough.
I think dust per se might not be that much of an issue, it's basically a pigment... potentially an unwanted one but it can take a small percentage... however i think it's best to wash out particulate under certain size since it can be highly surface degraded plastic with a lot of surface area for little volume - and i'm not sure how much damage sunlight-drying could be causing. Maybe an outdoor drying box which is actualy shielded from light might be a consideration, just a black box with a little convection ventillation.
@@soundsparkYup I got that from the video (the self printing requirement) I don't need it so I won't purchase but still, it's good stuff! I'm fascinated by the recently announced pellet extruder by Greenboy3D also.
He can still run FC through a MiG setup with the polarity reversed. My dad was gifted a Lincoln ProMig 140 that the original owner insisted was broken while I was in welding school years ago, I opened it up and saw he was trying to run MiG wire with no gas. Anyway I reversed the polarity and tried to return it to him but he insisted I keep it, he just asked me to weld a few things around his house. 12 years later and it still runs like a champ. I still never run any MiG though, I just Tig when I want stuff to look pretty lol.
Regarding the measurements large offset, it may be due to conversion issue, when converting a file from one type to other, I had the same issue as well but backwards. It reads as 9mm in diameter on screen, but prints less than 6mm, when checked in CAD software (ThinkerCAD, FreeCAD, OnShape), it reads as 9mm, but prints 6mm, even though it is listing as 9mm in slicer software too. The file was not mine, but was interesting to see, how come an imprecise tolerance is sometimes caused by software and not hardware, I recreated the file myself and it was accurate, just to check where the issue may be.
Hi. 1) Thanks to your first video i decide to buy a shredder machine as i want it for long time now and havent find any economic ones (Thanks to your post i bought one from the same vendor you bought yours ) . 2) I think that you have assemble your shredder knifes to work backwards and not to the right direction and maybe that is one of the reason to failed to shredder the plastic . The knifes / Blades should face the side with the spacer blades (i think)
I love this project. Would like to make a version that's optimized for just recycling the poops from bambu printers and spate filament from the end of rolls
THANK YOU for watching, and for all of your helpful comments. Let me know what you think of the video. We're in this together!
What is recently happening with this connected community (especially in this series which is almost "Teamwork"), absolutely is crazy and restores "faith in humanity" 💯
- i absolutely love it, also a huge thanks to every single one and to you for starting this❤
I just ordered a MK2.5 version. I ordered the version with both screws so I can switch between materials.
@@soundsparkawesome, backup screw doesnt hurt and i probably would get one too... i dont want to ruin your excitement, but are you aware that you dont need to switch screw for another polymer material ?
@3DWolfEngineering The 2 screw option gives one each of low and high compression. Accordig to Artme3d, low compression for many pellet types and high compression for regrind and some pellet types.
@@soundsparkoh sorry, thought it was 2x the same... musthave missed that part...
with low and high compression... then its a must have
Dude. I felt that pain of having to scrap 80% of a build because of a fundamental flaw in the design/process. I've been there before. And while that moment of grief is kinda devastating, once you get past it, it becomes so much more satisfying when your second attempt starts to come together even better than your original vision. Props to powering through it!
As an amateur hobby game dev, that's like half my process.
Thanks for your supportive words! I really appreciate it.
I love this comment. Failing forward is so important in life. Those hard won victories sure stick in the mind a lot longer.
This is what making is all about. Somebody trying something new, not being afraid to fail, and getting support from the community.
I often say that I wish maker channels would show mistakes and missteps more often, because it is truly part of the process. Failing to show that can give viewers a warped perception of what working on projects like this are really like.
Agreed. Leaving aside the fact that it really helps to see what the rest of us might run into when it comes time to replicate (because I'm definitely building one of these things when I get more workshop space), it shows a real strength of character. That makes it a lot easier to trust what they're saying, and makes projects like this feel more attainable.
I absolutely love your ability to take criticism, with that alone your going to do great things. Don't quit being you. I also really like the realness of failure and admission, two things you don't see on RUclips much.
The easiest and cheapest welding system is "Flux-Cored Wire Welding." It's as easy as MIG and very similar in handling, but you do not need any gas bottles for it. It uses a special welding wire where the flux, which is normally on the outside of a welding stick, is housed inside the wire. You can get these welders as cheap as stick welders, but the wire is more expensive than that from a MIG machine. However, it's ideal for hobby welding.
^ This. And be wary of people and manufacturers confusing MIG (Metal Inert Gas), with Flux Core Wire welding. Anyone who uses the two terms interchangeably either doesn't know what they're doing, or are victims of the confusion themselves.
Yep, flux-core is the way to go if you want cheap, easy, and accessible. I would be a little suspicious of the 3 in 1 machines that are flux/tig/stick. Generally a single use machine is a safer bet for both funtion and reliability. If you were in the US I would recommend the titanium flux core welder from harbor freight, but I'm not sure what your options are in Israel.
The only issue with the majority of self shielded flux core wire, is that they are not structurally rated, and will only hold about as good as a slightly deeper penetrating 6013
@@adriandawkins5500 6013 is the easier rod to start with, but it's not deep penetrating. That would be 6010 and 6011. Journeyman most commonly use the 6013 for sheet metal or something like a body panel just like flux core. Flux core also comes in different tensile strengths like arc rods and can achieve the same 70,000 lbs per square inch as 70xx rods.
@@generic0000 flux/tig is not a good combination, but many best in class tig welders can also do stick welding. I have a Miller Dynasty 200DX that has more features than I know how to use, and is great at stick welding. My cheap Lincoln mig welder does stick welding too. So stick you can combine with about anything, but combining mig and tig into one machine probably doesn't result in a great welder.
I think it would be interesting to explore a hand cranked shredder, could save a fair bit of money. Or maybe a DIY "gearbox" using old bicycle gears/chain. Not sure if it would be strong enough but they are cheap to buy or even free from old bikes if it does work. Maybe this bike gearbox could be powered by a drill/driver?
Great series! Love the information and the honest look at the REAL PROCESS and JOURNEY! That's the most important part that so many others just edit out. What is there to learn from that!? You did it perfectly!
Thanks for this comment! It is so reassuring!
Regarding drying the ground product, you should be able to loop screen mesh around used spools and then just toss those in your filament dryers. You could even just print a mesh wall to connect two sides of a Bambu spool (or other splittable spool)
While watching this video and part 1, the one thing I kept thinking was moisture. Im glad you mention it at the end of this video. Does moisture damage the filament in anyway? My thinking is if you have a backlog of scraps from a year ago, even if you dry them out the plastic may be damaged and unusable. Im new to 3D printing so Im not entirely sure this is even a concern.
Yeah, that's a good call out, gear reduction for more torque is very valid, the VFD would only affect speed, guess my brain just kinda assumed that ~2KW of power (~2.7HP) would be enough oomph to cover it, but then if we go down the rabbit hole, friction from the shreader might be high if it's very tight, then as it gets hot the metal will expand something like "0.0000072 inches per degree Fahrenheit" for steal, so, that will take more power to overcome unless you are going to dump coolant over it as well.
I'm loving this project. Reminds me alot of how projects typically go for me. 😁
Big, complicated projects are always full of mistakes. It's just how you learn.
Thank you for sharing where you went wrong and how you fixed it so others can learn with you!
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for making this video! I just got into 3D printing but have been modeling/ rigging for games most of my life but I also really like to recycle when I can. Not because a politician says it is good for the environment but because it is the right thing to do and efficient when made practical. We just need to make it practical for individuals in the community and it will become second nature. That is why I instantly wanted to know of solutions for my 3D printing junk. Please keep up the good work and I will definitely be watching your videos a lot closer. Subscribed =)
I plan to order recycled PLA in bulk (100kg+), extruding it, and printing parts for worthy causes, such as schools, learning groups, toys for disadvantaged kids, Ukraine, etc.
Good on ya!
wouldn't aluminum extrusions be sufficient for the whole frame and stand?
i mean if they can hold up for CNC machines, wouldn't they be able to hold up shredding plastics?
That was my thought also
I would use slotted angle, no welding required, easy to reconfigure if you have a change of plans etc
It would probably work but aluminium extrusions are often kinda expensive...
Please look into better helps history more, back in 2018 there was so much bad stuff and controversy around them. They basically got ran off the platform but they waited till about this year and last year to come back on when everybody forgot but they’re not a good company.
Personally, I had a very positive experience in 2017, and it really helped me, as I said… but I’ll research it. Thanks for the tip!
My fiance wanted to go through them but couldn't afford it. It was extremely expensive and we both have good jobs in the medical industry
@@thenextlayer Yeah one of the problems has been that they have been shipping data of customers (and potentially non-customers who did the sign-up questionnaire without signing up) to Facebook for ad targeting purposes. The data allowed personally identifiable conclusions as to medical/mental conditions that the person possibly has, as well as religious affiliation as well as being LGBTQ. But Facebook's ad division isn't equipped to handle confidential data like that; data that could be abused to harm a person, deliberately or inadvertently, there is a lot of stigma associated with mental disorder around the world and many people are closeted for very strong reasons. This was also not disclosed, and deceptive labelling on the website made people trust it more filling out the questionnaire than they should have. So the company institutionally lacks awareness of what sort of business they're in and what sensitive data they're handling and how to do it safely.
I feel like if they did something bad, you should be able to describe exactly what they did instead of saying “there was so much bad stuff and controversy”. I’m not saying that isn’t true, but just that you should give the facts before repeating vague claims that you heard on the internet.
Companies and individuals can get cancelled for absurd reasons, so you shouldn’t just automatically assume that if someone has been cancelled, it is legitimate. But again, I don’t have any facts either, so I’m open to being persuaded if you have real evidence of wrongdoing.
@@nonchalanto I did exactly that in this very thread but my reply is shadowbanned. In short they deliberately shipped personally identifiable information about mental disease, sexual orientatio and religion to a major advertisement agency which isn't equipped to handle it safely and responsibly, with no agrement in place that the data be handled safely and responsibly. All the while misleading people about how safely they handle the data. And they did this not once but for years.
Hi, I have seen on one of the videos, that you can use strong magnets to collect sinner metal dust from shredded parts. Seems useful to me
Yes it made me chuckle, as for an easy dryer ,box and a reptile warming pad.
Loving this series! Everything I’ve seen on this always says it’s just not affordable to recycle filament. Thanks for bringing us along with you on the journey.
You have to tune your printing profile for dimensional accuracy, and this must be repeated for each printer, each material (even different colours), and each nozzle if you want really good precision. There are a number of guides online.
Mainly, there are a couple of slicer settings for handling tolerances and material shrinkage compensation you need to account for. These two factors alone can get you within 0.05-0.1mm, which should be enough for fitting stuff like what you're doing. PLA typically has low shrinkage so that might be a good choice for this prototyping.
New slogan is awesome 😊
I would like to see the drying costs as some viewers may be new to 3d printing and may not have all of the tools and knowledge that more experienced makers have.
I did wonder if a condensing clothes dryer would work. They are designed to pull moisture out of things.
You'd probably have to do it after shredding and have some sort of mesh bag.
white vinger strips the galvanised coating of the steel if you can soak the parts in the vinger
leaves a nice clean none toxic part to weld too
This is something that I had to learn from after 2 projects I did very early on where I learned most of the parts were incompatible with one another and was basically just sitting on a bunch of junk that couldnt do anything. The best part of the experience is tho that you learn ALOT from those experiences. I have now gotten to the point where I realize and could see in your video when you are rushing into a project. Getting the right parts for a job can sometimes be more work than actually making the thing. It is always important to analyze each step and ensure you are getting the right parts before you buy. Good news is here that you learned a lot of valuable lessons and about a lot of different things. I try to teach friends about this issue but most of the time if this never happens to you once, then it's basically inevitable to happen sometime. Keep the parts around and save them for a project you do in like 2 years from now. I will be randomly doing a project and come across old parts I never used sometimes and just think "SCORE" when I have it and dont need to buy it after the object has been sitting on a shelf for years.
I can relate to this. I tried to build an ERCF, printed all the parts and when the non-printed parts arrived I realised I printed all the parts for a V2 kit and brought a V1 kit.
Have you considered putting castor wheels on one side of the frame? Then you can move it around if needed, but it will still be stationary with only 2 legs and 2 wheels. You can get locking castors too!
Love the new motto! I'd be curious to see if you can put PET bottles (without the caps) into it to make longer spools of PET filament than the other diy solutions out there.
We shall find out
when you mention the drying, I am thinking of a small tumbler type system to dry the bits after shredding. something that feeds in, tumbles through a spinning cone. something similar to plastic sorters, or how some compost places use the same process to speed up and sort out the compost.
Shit that’s a good idea….
Thank you for taking this project on!!! The whole issue of what to do with failed prints and purge has stopped me from diving deeper into 3d printing because it seems so wasteful thank you for helping find a solution!!!
Soon I hope people on every continent will do this project and accept waste
For mixing the filament scrap. If I build one of these, I'm going to use the recycled filament on things where I don't care about the color as much anyway.
Excelentes videos! Quiero la 3er parte!
Going to do my shredder, but I want to do it cheaper. Hope I can $.$
I was thinking of doing the dryer with a Peltier cell.
Please test how uniform the shreddered chips must be to use your filament maker. I have read that the size of the chips are really important.
@thenextlayer their are cheep flux mig welders that work well for small projects like this. But yes looking at the first one just before this; yhea cleaning was a big issue.
VFD is good to have anyway on top of the mechanical gearbox. Now you can drive it both forward and backwards if something gets stuck.
In short I love that you document your failures. An addition that I would like to see is a close to accurate amount of time invested, both including your failures and assuming all goes well how much time it would take to complete said project.
For drying, consider making a small greenhouse, and store your scrap/shreddings there. It won't dry things out, but it will give you a much lower baseline of relative humidity. Monitor a hygrometer, and tune it accordingly.
I live in a place that is known to be cold and _wet_ in the winter, but have some space that gets good sun exposure. I Plan to make a small cabinet with the north side, and all equipment painted black, some water tanks for thermal mass, and greenhouse double layer poly-sheets. If It can be set up so that it seals itself up when it's cool (avoid night condensation), and allows _some_ fresh-air to cycle through it, my hope is that it acts as a pre-drier.
Terrific video! I appreciate your honesty over mistakes and lack of skills/knowledge. Failing is the best way to learn! I designed and built 5 iterations (so far) of a camera motion control rig, and it is only by trying out and then improving a design that you really get to understand what makes it work. I’m really looking forward to your success with this project, as it is the next thing I would like to build, and I really need to do something with the 30kg of failed prints I have.
You can also incorporate a chain drive between the shredder and the output of the gearbox. Hub sprockets and chain are cheap and readily available. Also if your VFD is struggling at low speeds, increase the gain compensation. You might want shoot an email to VFD manufacturer as the naming and setting of the parameter varies between different brands.
For the artme3d extruder, print and install the dial gauge mod for it to help you dial in the tolerances on the filament.
Oh snap on it!
@@thenextlayerIts on printables to save you the search. Cant wait to see this project come together.
Another fantastic video! It's been so awesome and fun to watch this channel grow. This is quality content.
I love this channel so much already
Awesome segment on therapy to segway to the sponsor based on your own experience. Glad that it's helping your growth!
BetterHelp is problematic because they have been misbehaving and fined on the most important aspects including qualification and privacy, selling the most personal data. I hope that better competitors will replace them including as sponsors.
But everything you said about why therapy matters still stands, especially in a creative & engineering field like 3D printing where a large % are neurodivergent like with ADHD, ASD, bipolar and have to cope with an unaccommodating world.
good comment. I would like to specify that it is personal HEALTH and MEDICAL data. Under European law (GDPR) this falls under sensitive data. This is not to be taken lightly. This type of data can do more than just identify you, this can ruin people's lives, this can compromise people's actual security.
Privacy is your first layer of security. The less they know the less they can compromise you.
Yeah. I can give a little slack but... BetterHelp is _not_ a good company to sponsor or associate yourself with.
I love the video and am making my own shredder that is 3d printed and would love if you calculate and share the final torque of the motor + gearbox
I would make a press type extruder and have it in stages so stage one would be the cold end/ hopper part, stage two would be warm up the plastic to half of melting point and the final stage would be the hot end. then cold water bath into a die of 1.75 give or take than spool it.
I imagine this project isn't great for the algo, which I know loves hyper focused channels, but got to say I'm loving it. I really enjoy when makers venture outside their comfort/expertise zone a bit. FWIW, yes to totalling up actual spend and also doing cost to recreate without waste. We have all gone through that "oops, that was a waste" and it's just one more layer of transparency to share what it is.
oh... and yeah I'd TOTALLY tell you to go get a wire feed welder of any kind (US$100). YesWelder is good for hobbyists (like me) but there are a lot brands now. Harbor Frieght (US), etc... Stick welding is good for fixing farm equipment., but not really what you want to be using to make a nice metal frame that'll sit indoors. You can use flux core wire and forego gas tanks. Still going to be way better than a stick.
Just a thought for an addition to the ARTME3D. Attach a fin to the extruder screw that “mixes” the filament in the hopper.
Glad you found a great gearbox for an absolute steal, though a specific reduction ratio favoring high torque is necessary for a given output. I was on the hunt for a very long time but finally scored a 1:745 reduction gearbox for my project and it even came with salvage but functional controllers. I looked at the ebay specials but couldn't find a gearbox that looked like it would do the job I needed and still come in as 'affordable'. This box spins at 6 rpm on the low end, but can handle all the pressure of spinning a 20lb injection screw under load.
And yes, the burnished "built Sh!t" logo board was noticed and gets my full approval. 👍
For printing geometrically accurate parts, there's a few requisites that need to be addressed with engineering-grade materials. A true heated chamber for filled filaments is a must to avoid warping. There's also an inherent amount of shrink involved with FDM (and even resin, which I'll get to in a moment), but needs to be accounted for in addition to machined-equivalent clearances in metal (imperial is typically .001" or .02mm). Due to the way most FDM printers operate, there's an inherent amount of 'slop' in the travel motions that will transfer directly into the part(s). It's hard to calculate into part design other than running belt-less machines for optimum accuracy, but that generally necessitates rather expensive commercial//industrial equipment. I typically prototype my parts with photopolymer resin printers and use them to cast tougher parts with more suitable materials; composites, two part tooling urethane, etc. When done correctly, I can hit very good accuracy and have usable parts for ~80% right from the resin, but again I typically prefer to mold and cast hard duty parts. With resin printing, despite what you'll read, you Can get geometrically accurate parts, but your results will definitely benefit from extra effort in the model prep. I've been requested very often to write all this into a technical novel, which I may get around to one day, but time dictates other needs at present. I do have a blog that has quite a lot of it written down already but isn't organized like a written book or white paper would be.
A great video, thanks!
For the drying: a close-meshed sieve at the bottom of a tube through which a mass of warm and preferably dry air flows through should do the trick. I do not know your habits, but if you were making pizza, you normally waste a lot of "nice dry and warm air" from your oven, which could be ideal for drying filament. Or perhaps a cupboard that closes tightly and contains a dehumidifier would also be good. I am pretty sure you will find a nice solution.
For functional and accurate 3d printing, especially to those tolerances, you should go with a smaller, not larger nozzle. .4 or smaller if possible, tune for the filament you are using and slow things down a ton, like 50mm/s max. This will get you much better tolerances
So I have been looking into making custom colored filaments. There are 3d files where you can print dual colors, but thats not really what I am looking for. Not only that, they print in a hexagon shape which isnt great. I was looking into these recyclers because they essentially extrude a new rounded 1.75mm filament. I am wondering if you could use a dual extruder (2 in, one out) instead of the single, which would make a dual color. Then make two batches of that. and then run those two through again (creating a 4 color), which might be better blended. not sure. also not sure if re-melting multiple times removes some components that are important to the longevity or other properties of the plastic.
I mention this because as you pointed out, the CNC video shows that the output is very streaky. But if you ran it through again like I describe, it might reduce that color banding. But my idea does require a dual extruder. And 3x the extruding step.
As a last point about dust. I doubt its going to cause problems because there are already filaments with "gunk" in them that print mostly fine. Like the wood, CF, glitter, etc. . Cant hurt to run a vacuum or compressed air over your filament though. But I wouldn't do more work than that to clean it.
Amazing vid and interesting project, I think you can use a regular oven on low to dry the PLA scraps.
for fit test you should probably use something like pla that is easy to print and don’t shrink, as cool as petcf is it isn’t a good fit test material
also for mixing colors, you can extrude to a 3mm “filament” and cut it to form a pallet before extrude again into 1.75mm filament. this is good for material and color consistency. this also make drying easy
love the video so keen on the idea of being able to recycle old prints. though if you haven't seen the controversies round the sponsor better help i would suggest anyone thinking of using it to look into them, they were exposed years ago for their practices and now they are popping back up everywhere
The VFD is not a waste of money. Electric motors especially cheap ones have a hard start which is also commonly referred to cross the line. This means that the motor will require up to 3x the amount of amperage at start up as it will running. The VFD will solve this problem. This will bring down your overall power requirements. There is a data plate on the motor that will list FLA on it. This means full load amps. If you have a VFD your FLA will be the most amperage your motor will require. Without the VFD you will need 3x the FLA listed to start the motor. The VFD will be your friend. I hope this helps. I size generators for Electric motors all the time and this often trips people up.
On the tolerances you have 3 factors. 1 shrink of plastic. 2 inaccuracy of 3d print. 3 imperfections in the print like the seam. For pretty much all to be truly accurate you have to do compensation in the cad. You can get away with bulk scaling for the shrink but different cross sections shrink differently so to be truly accurate you need to adjust the cad for the important measurements. For the other 2 it's your specific printer and slicer setting so something like a clearance test will help, and rounds are generally worse than flats. If it has to be really tight then it will probably always require some post processing due to the limit of 3d printer precision. Try printing many parts and measuring the variance a good printer will probably vary by about .1mm. Some printers actually spec that repeatability. Post processing often needed in machining too beyond a certain accuracy: example if you drill a hole you will need to use a reamer for final sizing if it needs to be really precise. Just for reference when I was working with a 250k cnc machine years ago it's repeatability was measured by a calibration firm at .025mm. Which might be able to be improved a little by doing all the cuts from the same direction. And funny our expensive calipers .025--.05mm depending which one. Expensive micrometers around .01mm. Of course for those accuracies you need a temperature controlled room anyway.
Another possibility for the frame is to simply use extruded aluminium. While it is a bit more expensive, it is much easier for everyone to use.
and more consistent, and easier to assemble using standardized brackets, and possibly easier to source worldwide. I don't know about "locally", though.
I forgot to mention but it would actually be cheaper, if you include buying a welding machine into the cost of the original frame idea
this mite help in your slicer change the setting to print `outside to inside` walls, this will help keep your sizes in spec.
Started giggling about the Logo prior to your comment. I wish more people lived by it!
You asked about shred drying at the end of the video, and I know not everyone will have an enclosed printer, but why not print a PET or stronger box with venting (much like a huge desiccant box)? You can then use the built in filament drying function of your enclosed printer.
You might be able to use a wacky wirily to make soda straws up to make like short links of wiring harness so you don’t have to go buy any and make it easier to get into if you gotta do patchwork
Maybe something like a DIY vibratory polisher and some fast food warming heat lamps for post-washing? Or maybe something like a DIY vacuum chamber to lower the boiling temp of the water and a cheap induction cook top that you could rig up to a Adreno to off gas the chamber from time to time while cycleing the pump and modulating the induction heating? You would only need to get to ~27.75 Hg (93972.286 Pascal) to boil water at ~40C.
I was surprised to see you had issues with the dimensions on your test parts. When I got my first 3D printer, I needed some support blocks to hold a lamp on my fish tank. I came from a CNC background so I had dial calipers and all that stuff. I wasn't sure how accurate a 3D printer would be so I just popped out a 1" cube and 1" cylinder in Microsoft 3D builder and sent them to the printer. They were within .010". I was quite surprised and happy with that. I didn't use anything fancy. Just a Creality clone (Longer LK5 Pro), PLA and a .4 nozzle with .2 layers.
Take the easiest printer you have to work with and plain PLA and just print a 1" cube with a .4 nozzle and measure it with some calipers. See if it's different from different CAD programs vs 3D Builder. I'd be curious to see what you get. Maybe you over complicated it.
I dried my regrinds using a forced air dehydration machine, and putting the grinds into a mesh bag meant for putting delicates (such as ladies hose/socks/pantyhose) into a typical laundry drier. I'd dry it a few hours, then agitate it by shaking the bag a bit and dry a few more hours. This worked well enough for about 1kg of material.
You might find that you get more consistent filament by extruding, then pelletizing, then extruding again.
Good ideas all around! On it.
I honestly I don't understand the need of melt plastic to transform into filament, then melt the filament to print. Why not skip one step and print directly using the pellets/regrind, I mean "pellet extruder".
He roughly explained it at munute 16:23. Pellets are mostly for industrial usage and are quite consistent in size, material characteristics, etc... making pellets out of normal scraps is already difficult enough. Not to mention that eventho pellets are printable they need their own system to reload and dont have quite the same accuracy that filament has. Another reason could very well be storage. If you have a winded up filament its easy to store and put on the printer. However if you have a big idk 30 kg bag of pellets you somehow have to dose that amount and position it somewhere over the printer (if you want gravity to do the work and not a pump-like system) for you to be able to put them into your extruder. The grinder and nozzel also need to be heated which also results in a lot of energy usage for a really small amount of print material. So in my opinion making filament out of it, even if it has mushed colors and doesent look as clean, is quite more efficient.
I would after making the filament dry it on the spool and then cut it to pallets to make a second extrution and the filament more consistent in diameter and the moisture will be gone
Great video, really appreciate the honesty in accepting the mistakes you made and learning from them. These kinds of projects almost never go as planned and posting the whole process buith failures and successes means we can all learn and replicate the successes.
For washing the filament shreds I would assume drying them wouldn't be needed if your melt zone in the extruder is long enough. You're melting the plastic at 200+C so any water trapped in the material should boil off. The key thing would be making sure the material is molten for long enough for the moisture to escape. That's just my theory based on my basic knowledge of moisture absorbsion in polymers. 😂
I'd say adding in 10-20% virgin material/resin will definitely help out in producing a higher quality filament. This is common in all forms of metal and plastics recycling as it helps reduce the concentration of impurities that are bound to be added to the mix.
Once you have this all up and running you also could experiment with recycling broken/old standard injection moulded plastics into filament. With lots of the plastics you'll find around the house being ABS(cases on electronics, LEGO, car parts, etc.) you could potentially combine waste ABS prints with broken injection moulded ABS and some virgin ABS resin to produce ABS filament. The main concern here would be the fumes produced, but putting the extruder in an eclosure with a few nevermores could solve that.
If you have a klipper core xy you can get the calibration flower that vector 3d sells and do a skew correction along with the file you get his math formula page to type all measurents in then copy and paste what you need into your cfg. That is one of the best ways to get accurate measurements in and out
Cnc kitchen has a great guide on using the califlower. The key is to use shrink factor for different materials. If he is only having problems with one material, this is a better solution.
The calculator has instructions for marlin as well as slicer tweaks for compensation.
Really helped me tune my machine. Just need to remember to recalibrate new brands and materials.
Would it work with a bed slinger
@@Speedgaming802 absolutely, it also lets you compensate for skew in your frame. However if you run marlin you need to compile the firmware, not too difficult if you have a common machine. Then you have plenty of examples.
I wasn't sure if it would work on a bedslinger I haven't tried it so I never suggested what I didn't know but good to know it does work and it does help to get the measurements right in and out
I'm rather new to the 3D print community but my younger brother is a destructive/nondestructive testing engineer and uses a set of industrial CNC and 3D printing devices so I g to him for advice. When I did ask him about the most accurate method of printing without CNC work he stated the small and slow method they use is always best. Highest resolution printhead and done at speeds that are as slow as can be done while still keeping the print material uniformly extruded.
I'm going to try a few various methods with my new S1 Pro and Sonic Pad set.
What a great pairing of sponsorship for this video!
I find that printing in resin can be a way to test fit better instead of fdm. Although it can be more brutal and is a little more difficult to work with it was way more accurate. Love the series!
Did you make the rack out of galvanized box tubing? Did you get headaches? Welding galvanized steel releases fumes that will give you a headache. Not acutely dangerous, but we don't weld galvanized steel. But... this is a great few videos. I want to build one of these, I hate tossing all this filament. If you separate the colors as best as you can, how much do they vary? I'd just have to start separating by material type.
Nevermind about the filament, just got to the last part of the video. LOL.
i protype all the time starting with 3d printed part and then move on to cnc machined part. I worked in plastics for a while and so i have a rough understanding of how plastics react during manufacturing. my process goes something like this when i am using a new printer or filament that i have not used before i take my time and dial in my 3d printer to make it as accurate as possible by printing a number of different shaped parts recording all data specifically paying attention to the amount the material shrinks after extrusion and cooling. I always drill any holes that are meant for screws/ hardware. and i also print very slow and steady with prettymuch 100% infill for the learning process and once i can get the sizes bolting on with nearly zero post processing then i make adjustments and tweaks that allow me to save money and filament. its a slow process at first b ut before you know it you will have a library of all different filaments and settings and you will instinctively predict how a certain part/ material should be printed.
If you calculate in the working hours to the final cost, did you save money with it, or did the total cost (parts + labour) go over a commercial "plug and play" solution?
I'm taking the same approach with artme3d's extruder, I picked up both screws as to process the shredder turn them into pellets and then on final product do a mixture of virgin material with recycled, and them from there try to see howich recycled material I can process % to the least % of virgin and make good filament, I would definetly wash in the screened bag and then could possibly dry in dryer on low setting, though I will not be running pla as much, not sure if a dryer would get too hot for pla,
something to consider is a way to control the size of the shreds to make sure they aren't to big, getting consistent sizing in your shreds could be an issue to work out, just food for thought
Yep! I have a 5mm siev in the shredder
Little tip for your drilling problem when you weld the metal pieces together the steel gets verry verry hot than letting it cool in ambiant air will cause it to harden ita not going to get sword or knife hard however it dose mean the steel your drilling after you weld is harder than to drill thru than the samw piece of steel before you weldee it can use a tiger torch and good insulation to heat it back up red and keep it there a good 10-15 minutes then cool it as slow as possible an oven works good cuz u can set a temp and lower it over a time but doing that will anneal it or make it softer and will let u drill thru it easily with dollar store bits alternatively drill before you weld lol
Always down for experimentation! Love the candid lessons learned here!
I suddenly got a mental image of one of these filament extruders producing filament but instead of it being wound around a spool it being fed into a 3D printer which is printing off the parts for other extruders. I REALLY like the idea of recycling the waste from 3D printing to make new tools to further recycle more waste from 3D printing. This is a fantastic series and TBH I would seriously consider a tabletop system that I could just feed waste into one end and have useable filament come out the other end.
Now as for how to dry the shreds, I'm not sure how you'd set this up but I work in the plastics industry and we regularly ship bulk PE/PP pellets via rail. Sometimes they arrive wet and have to be dried out. Some of the customers have a device that blows in warm, dry air into the hopper from the bottom. This serves to dry out the material and stir it up all at the same time. In your case I don't think it would have to be a huge volume of air but it would need to be a good pressure to ensure it could force it's way though the dense grind. this might even serve to help remove some of the dust and finer debris. this of course is all off the top of my head.
rgd the pellet extruder, the algorithm recently pointed me to Greenboy3D and his custom pellet extruder /watch?v=f0rVNFXp9IA
I think you should include the cost of drying the filament as some people might have and some might not and it would just be good information to have for those who want to recreate the project.
I work with injection molding. There we know the exact shrinkage of said material and compensate for that. We use PP and it shrinks up to 24h. The initial cooling also impacts how much it will shrink the following 24h. We compensate the molds for said shrinkage. Then we use the cooling for fine tuning it.
Generally the plastic materials used in production manufacturing have known material properties even how much regrind material to safely add.
My main concern with this and other projects is using 100% regrind. I think moisture is the least of his concerns at this point. Also funnily enough in every plastics manufacturing plant I’ve worked in there was zero concern of plastic bead moisture content. I mean we would have train cars of the stuff just parked outside and feeder hoses just stuck on the lower manifolds. They just sucked plastic out and into the color mixer and into the extruders. I’m guessing the extreme heat generated by the extruders took care of any moisture issues. But with the size of the screw he had I’m wondering if there is enough room to deal with steam buildup. I doubt temperature is an issue if it gets hot enough to extrude it’s getting plenty hot.
I’ve seen a vid of someone using the printer bed heated with a box over the filament to dry it out. No extra equipment needed.
About filament drying: what if you put the shreds in a metal tray on the bed of your Voron? Close it up and put some desiccant in?
As far as the drying of the shredded plastic once it's in shredded form put it in those bags you were talking about and chuck the bag in a cloths dryer on low heat to draw out the moisture
That's a smart idea. I have a dryer, though, and I can't control the heat, it's a combo dryer /washer and I don't trust it.
People pay extra to mix colors in stripes on their filament. Mixing red and yellow with orange I bet would look pretty good, assuming the objects you're printing would lend themselves to that.
About the plastic colours, maybe shred them all separately and after try to make different mixes while making the filament to see the results, I think would even be a cool video about that on it self!
Bingo!
I'm really glad to see the artme3d extruder taking off! I posted about it a few times months ago when i first found them before sending it off to Stefan to investigate. Apparently they've had to massively step up production to keep up with demand since!
You are to thank?! Nice. Yeah they’re inundated apparently
@@thenextlayer yeah, when I first found the design there was basically nothing online about them. I posted a few places before reaching out to Stefan directly to point him to it. I've been working on the recycling dream for a while now, and it's awesome to see a modern and affordable extruder on the market.
Okay sooo i dont even know where to start, there is so much in this video i could talk about...
I love to see and congratulations on your progress you're doing really well and its really interesting to see how you approach it... as i am currently attending a mechanical engineering college and i am almost done with it - i am just astonished by how much theory and knowledge actually is popping up in my puberty brain (which usually tends to forget stuff😂) while watching this.
And thinking of how i would do it - starting with making the frame rigid, welding,... and how it might be possible to do for example the washing (like you said propably put it in a net and give it a quick rinse - maybe in the washing machine... and then drying it... where i thought of how the professional injection moulding machines dry their pellets...and how it might be possible to recreate this fairly simple
The worm gear is an excellent choice, sorry i only thought about complex stuff like planetary gears or a HarmonicDrive...
anyways before i write an essay while breaking the world record for the longest youtube comment and the most awkward one too because i absolutely am the worst in explaining and writing good texts😓
In case you are interested in my ideas /help... you may always reach out to me on discord :))
(and sorry for everyone in advance when regretting to read this )
Love your videos but I did find the audio on this video a fair bit lower than other videos of your and other content creators I watch. Keep up the great work.
This project is so awesome. You’ve inspired me to reach out to the local library’s which have 3d printers and look into funding options for starting a recycling program locally. It is bonkers that government facilities such as a library wouldn’t already do so, or at least it seems like oversight to me. Either way seems like it’ll be a great thing for those involved to learn. Keep up the awesome work.
DO IT!!!!
Off course we care !
On my side i got like 2 kg of fail print and stuff and im still keeping those in separate bags by color in case when somehow i can recycle this into new filament.
I think there are some ways to do this very smartly. First to consider, is that the plastic can be melted many times without consiquence as long as the plastic is not overheated. I think that the "can only melt it so many times" thing is a myth. The Brothers Make you tube guys proved this through testing.
On the nozzle end of things; one thing to do is to melt the recycled plastic twice. Once to a large diameter without regard for consitancy or hydroscopic quality. Then take the large diameter filament, and chop it into pellets. On the second round, the fact that it is in pellets will allow for easier qualtiy managment. And it can be mixed with new plastic pellets.
Another thing to consider, is to use a really large diameter nozzle to make 5/16" x 4" mini glue gun sticks.
With the welding make sure you paint the welds with a rust proof paint, otherwise you're going to have to deal with rust down the track. One important fundamental thing with welding is penetration. How much of the weld has penetrated into the parent metal. If something breaks at a weld point it's not the weld that broke as a weld is typically stronger than the parent metal, what has happened is the weld didn't penetrate into the parent metal enough.
I think dust per se might not be that much of an issue, it's basically a pigment... potentially an unwanted one but it can take a small percentage... however i think it's best to wash out particulate under certain size since it can be highly surface degraded plastic with a lot of surface area for little volume - and i'm not sure how much damage sunlight-drying could be causing. Maybe an outdoor drying box which is actualy shielded from light might be a consideration, just a black box with a little convection ventillation.
The quality of the Artme you showed looks so good that I'm tempted to get one despite really not needing it 😄 Just wow.
Beware there is a 20 day wait and you need to 3D print nearly all of the plastic pieces.
@@soundsparkYup I got that from the video (the self printing requirement) I don't need it so I won't purchase but still, it's good stuff!
I'm fascinated by the recently announced pellet extruder by Greenboy3D also.
I loved seeing you using this setup because it is the same I want to have when I get the money.
Get an FCAW welder instead of a mig. You don't need to use an inert gas to weld with. Much easier than arc welding.
He can still run FC through a MiG setup with the polarity reversed. My dad was gifted a Lincoln ProMig 140 that the original owner insisted was broken while I was in welding school years ago, I opened it up and saw he was trying to run MiG wire with no gas. Anyway I reversed the polarity and tried to return it to him but he insisted I keep it, he just asked me to weld a few things around his house. 12 years later and it still runs like a champ. I still never run any MiG though, I just Tig when I want stuff to look pretty lol.
@@acduran82 yeah, fcaw will never look pretty unless you grind tf out of it. Lol
Regarding the measurements large offset, it may be due to conversion issue, when converting a file from one type to other, I had the same issue as well but backwards.
It reads as 9mm in diameter on screen, but prints less than 6mm, when checked in CAD software (ThinkerCAD, FreeCAD, OnShape), it reads as 9mm, but prints 6mm, even though it is listing as 9mm in slicer software too. The file was not mine, but was interesting to see, how come an imprecise tolerance is sometimes caused by software and not hardware, I recreated the file myself and it was accurate, just to check where the issue may be.
Hi. 1) Thanks to your first video i decide to buy a shredder machine as i want it for long time now and havent find any economic ones (Thanks to your post i bought one from the same vendor you bought yours ) . 2) I think that you have assemble your shredder knifes to work backwards and not to the right direction and maybe that is one of the reason to failed to shredder the plastic . The knifes / Blades should face the side with the spacer blades (i think)
Only a person who does nothing cannot make a mistake and a negative experience is much more valuable than only a positive one.
Glad to hear you will be getting a Mig welder. Remember nothing is truly lost if you have learnt from it.
True
MAKERS UNITE!!! Gotta love it!
I love this project. Would like to make a version that's optimized for just recycling the poops from bambu printers and spate filament from the end of rolls
True, but don’t you get failed prints once in a while too?
5 month late, but I'd love to see some more with welding. I'm primarily here for 3D printing, but other skills never hurt a makers' repertoire!