3d Filament Extruder

Edited!!

Now with CAD design on Solidworks

Please Vote if you like this instructable :)

Instead of buying filament produced from plastic pellets. Why not use your own plastic waste and produce filament much cheaper and eco-friendly?

It’s environmental project that will help sustain plastic problem

Step 1: How It Works

Plastic shreds are inserted through hopper.

the heater starts to heat the room

when heater reaches 100C, the screw will push melting plastic to the nozzle

nozzle will extrude plastic 2 mm in diameter

Step 2: Mechanical Mechanism

Components:

1- Screw

Using screw with big depth and pitch isbetter, it helps transferring plastic to the nozzle faster, as it will hold more plastic.

The screw is 240 mm long, 25 mm outer diameter, 19 mm inner diameter. With shaft 11mm diameter.

2- Heating room

-Two Pipes welded together of inner diameter 29 mm and outer diameter 31 mm. One for heating room and the other one acts as hopper

-Two sheet-metal parts welded at each end with 2.5mm hole to fix nozzle and to close the heating room

3- Motor

AC (220V), 8000 W, 4 RPM

4- Coupler

flexible coupler 5- 12 inner diameter

5- Bearing

6- Screw bolts and nuts

Step 3: Heater

First attempt is making heating room was using nickel chrome coil, fixing it by clay.

The clay cracked when heater reached high temperature.

Our second attempt is using isolated coil 1m high, 6 mm diameter, 1000 watt output power.

It reached 200C in almost 2 min

Tip:

heating store recommended we roll heater on the pipe prior to welding to make coil more stable

Step 4: Insulator

use Glass wool to insulate heat

Glass wool can insulate up to 200C with conductivity rate of 0.043 watt/ms

Step 5: Assemble Mechanical Components

-insert bearing to screw as interference fit.

-mount screw with motor through coupler.

-fix nozzle with pins.

Step 6: Wood Structure

The wood structure is drawn on SolidWorks CAD software

using laser cutter with power 80% and speed 15 mm/sec

DXF files is attached

Step 7: Control Unit

Components:

1- AC power source

2- Arduino UNO

3- Relay board

5V activation coil

220V output

4- Temperature sensor

5- NTC 100K Thermistor

6- 2 Diodes

7- 2 Transistors

NPN 2n222

8- Resistors

100k, 2*1K

Arduino software define motor, heater, temperature sensor.

When heating room reaches 100C or when plastic is in sintering form the motor starts to rotates to extrude plastic.

It prevents heater from reaching value over 120C

Proteus schematics file is attached

Arduino file is attached

Step 8: Plastic

Plastic used is HDPE type

It can be found in milk bottles, shampoos and many other products

It has relatively low melting point about 130C.

Of course you can use any kind of plastic, change the code according to it's melting point and thermal properties.

file contains thermal properties of HDPE is attached

Step 9: Assembly of Final Project

and this is how the fonal product looks

Just place the heating room over the wood structure and attach the control ciruit behind the motor!

Enjoy the plastic coming out and save the enviroment!!

If you have any questions please let me know =))