Desktop 3D printers have hit price-points that make them as affordable as color laser printers. But they also share the same problem – replacing the printing medium costs an arm and a leg. A kilogram of plastic filament costs about US$50, meaning the cost of turning your ideas into reality can quickly add up. But now the Filabot, a miniature plastic recycling plant, will provide a wide variety of plastic filaments from scrap.
Invented by American college student Tyler McNaney, the Filabot can make new 3D printing filament in 3.0 or 1.75 mm (1/8 or 1/15 in) diameters using nearly any household plastic, from PET and polypropylene to Nylon-101. A two-liter soda bottle (PET) weighs about 50 grams, which will be converted into about $2.50 of 3D printing filament. The Filabot can also recycle failed, broken, or obsolete 3D printed parts, making prototype development far less costly. McNaney has even developed an extrudable conducting plastic from scrap.
The Filabot comes with a plastic grinder that converts scrap plastics into tiny pieces suitable as feedstock for the filament extruder. The plastic feedstock is gravity-fed onto a feed screw, which moves the plastic toward the extrusion die. On the way, the plastic is heated – not to melt it, but to allow extrusion at a reasonable pressure for a tabletop unit. On being formed, the new filament is air-cooled slightly, then wound onto an empty spool ready for reuse. No additional treatment or finishing is needed.
Following a successful Kickstarter campaign (the project raised US$32,330, well over the target of US$10,000), McNaney is nearly done producing the first 67 production units for his Kickstarter investors. Shortly thereafter he will begin general production of Filabot grinders and extruders. No pricing information is yet available, but the cheapest Kickstarter pledge to secure a ready-to-use Filabot was $490, so we wouldn’t expect it to sell for less than that.
An introductory Filabot video can be seen below.
Source: Filabot
BUT, what exactly did he invent??
It is a smaller scale of exactly the process the current plastic filament goes through to produce the expensive product to use in the cheap 3D printers.....
This great guy has Developed a desktop pelletiser and extrusion machine, he would have trouble filing a technology patent for it.... as it doesn't involve any non-obvious inventions) Design patent, yes (I can put a design patent on anything to stop people selling exact copies)... Technology NO, (those are real patents, the design patents are just for bitching corporations to fight over).
for $500, you still have to use/reuse 10 kg of filament before it becomes viable for the hobbyist. Most of the 3D printers sold will make lots of things for the first week, then nothing most months, so this addition the the shed will really only be useful for small home businesses, or people who are really churning out 3D plastic parts.
In fact, in the past I've heard several people state that it would be impossible to build a small-scale extruder that would produce high enough quality filament for use with a 3D printer. So although the demand for a product like this was obvious to many people, it was definitely not obvious that it would be possible to build it.
Sure, this kind of project will never be for an amateur hobbyist who might only turn on his 3D printer a couple times a month. But I know several hackerspaces and other teams who run through 1kg spools on a regular basis.