[Update October 13th] Working very hard right now to organize the shipping of the Pellet Extruder and other tasks related to Greenboy3D like organizing a supply of pellets for everyone and a pellet extruder wiki, which is why I sometimes have trouble answering everyone immediately. Most parts for the extruder have already arrived and have been processed & packed for shipping, however the pellet extruder screws are still in manufacturing since this is the most complicated and costly part of the pellet extruder. I believe that the first units will be shipped out by the end of October. Due to the additional organizational tasks related to the supply of pellets, there is simply more work that needs to be done. This includes staying in contact with many companies selling different types of plastics & watching out for good offers, requesting samples, testing them, negotiating prices, organizing the transportation of tons of plastic pellets, and so on. These tasks also take up some of my time, which would otherwise have been spent on the Wiki/Knowledge Base platform and the guide videos. Just a couple days ago, for example, I ordered and paid for 8,600 kg of PLA pellets, which will likely be transported to my location from Slovenia next week. 2500 kg PETG pellets are already in my possession, but more of other types are needed like: ABS/ASA/ABS-GF/ABS-GB PET TPU/TPE (various Shore levels) PA GF/CF Additionally soon there will be a new update about the ongoing progress (including the one about pellets) 🙂 If you want to get some additional pellets along with your order then that is possible however you need to consider that, while the pellet extruder will be shipped for free there will be additional shipping costs for pellets. However I will keep you updated regarding the pellets. The only thing I am not sure about is whether I should also get these extremely elastic pellets I showed in one of my videos, after doing more research it turned out these were not Shore 5A, but Shore 30 (with out the "A") which is significantly below Shore 0A meaning even more elastic and flexible than Shore 0A The only problem is that these pellets are quite expensive compared to other plastics and could only be offered for prices like 12,99 USD/EUR per kg (way higher than the other plastic types like PLA, which will probably go for 3,5 USD/EUR) Should you have more questions or concerns please feel free to contact me anytime - I am here to help.
What if you just build a seperate extruder to produce the filament from pellets (essentially what you have right now) and then feed that into a standard fdm printer head? I imagine that should solve the consitency problems, even if it's a bit less efficient?
Consistency could be greatly improved by simply building a pellet sifter that can bin the sizes through a series of graded holes. With just 12 grades of pellets by size ("too small", ten steps about around the average pellet size, and "too big"), you'd be going from 15% variation to 1% or less variation within those 10 steps, (depending on how narrow you do your steps). A filament maker could do 1% tolerance-graded pellets by pre-sorting and binning them as a step before all the out-of-grade pellets were just loaded into their standard filament extruding machines like usual.
As an injection molding designer and engineer I can contribute with some things: A) The screw starts with low inner Ø and then gradually increases its inner Ø. This is because the pellets form air bubbles that get traped in the screw if the Ø is constant. This gives inconsistent flowrates. B) You MUST heat the entire screw, from start to finish. Even the nozzle if you can. C) Most pellets are thought to be used in injection, extrution and blow mold. The relation between the size of the pellet and the screw of those machines is many times larger. However, this is not true to this case, where the Ø of the screw only lets 2-3 pellets to get in. Tips: Make screw wider, with progressive inner Ø. Let some gap in the fit so air can go away (about 0,2 mm). Heat the entire screw, from start to finish. You may use more than one heating element. PS: Your idea is brilliant, keep on that study case.
You mean that, in commercial extenders, the screw's minor diameter (the diameter in between the threads) increases along the screw, right? Such that the gap between the screw and the barrel shrinks along the screw?
As someone who used to material handle at a plastic injection company. I knew there was something missing from 3d printing. I am looking forward to your next video.
This process has been available for a long time. The extruders are typically very large and costly ($2.5-6k) However there is a affordable production 3D printers with a similar design as this called the Piocreat. This current project seems more consumer oriented, universal and affordable
things that could improve print consistency 1. dual heating zones first pre-heat second working heat (which means possibly longer hot end) 2. Sift your pellets to separate them by size then workout flow rates based on pellet size used
iirc buying pellets they usually come in standard sizes/ weights for injection molding, although seperating wouldnt hurt to distinguish between anything out of tolerance in the pellets. dual heating zones might eliminate the different pellet size problem as all pellets would be forced to one size due to the taper on the injection screw.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Was going to comment the first one too. Screw based injection machines that use pellets usually have multiple heating zones and long mandrills for more even mixing of the melted material so that inconsistencies are minimized. A system long enough to have three heating zones would probably be even enough to remove any need for sifting and open options for materials that do better with heating in stages (like chocolate).
@@greenboy3d Submitted through the link in the comments, its a bit detailed and includes some stuff not mentioned in my above comment, if youre interested it should be submitted under the name alex ;) best of luck with this project ill be following along the journey my friend!
In commercial extrusion, in between the barrel and the tool (your nozzle) you would have a pump that holds back pressure on the barrel and maintains a constant pressure in an expansion chamber. The expansion area will have its own heater and pressure and temperature sensors. These form a closed loop system with pressure and temperature sensors to control pump speed, screw speed and temperature in both zones. A well balanced arrangement of PID controllers keeps the right flow at the right temperature at the tool. For what it's worth, the pump seal is maintained with compressed air to keep material leakage and contamination down. One really cool aspect is that you can change what material you are loading the barrel with on the fly. Color can be adjusted in real time and composition can be changed with little or no waste.
Multiple heating zones, screw/auger geometry, and back pressure are the three that I had learned about when running industrial extruders. From the quick that I saw of the screw, it looks like you had done a good bit of research into the taper of the thread. I agree with Carson, that you should add a preheat before final heat.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I purchased one of those PetG bottle kits online. After seeing how easy pellet printing is, i think i can get it modified to do this. Would be better to have a separate machine to use pellets and make filament since my printer is tuned to be faster and lighter
@@Psyden5757 I don't think it is that simple. Pretty much all those bottle filament extruders pull the filament through the nozzle. You have nothing to pull if you're cutting it at the nozzle.
@@Psyden5757 hmm, maybe you could use some rollers with blades that kinda chop the filament as it's coming out, tho this doesn't seem particularly reliable
Not that you asked for advice, but I dug through my old material processing notes to see if anything jumped out at me as far as consistent flow rate. It appears commercial extruders have 3 zones: feed, compression, and metering. The feed zone just moves pellets and begins to heat them. In the compression zone, melting increases, as does the minor diameter of the screw. Air is expelled backwards out the feed section. In the metering section, the minor diameter of the screw either increases slightly or is uniform, but not as much as the previous section. The polymer is 100% melted and pressure builds, which will eventually force the melt through the die (nozzle). The pitch of the screw threads has a complex relationship with flow, as (approximating polymer as a Newtonian fluid), forward flow is proportional to cos(angle)sin(angle), whereas backward flow (which is bad) is proportional to (sin(angle))^2. At the end of of the screw, having the interior of the barrel taper similar to the screw end is preferable to a 90 degree turn in the interior barrel wall. A tapered design should control flow and allow polymer coils to relax before being extruded. A longer "land" (distance between end of screw and nozzle, after the tapering of the barrel) will give coils more time to relax, but may increase pressure and slow flow rate.
The future is in making your own filament at home, mix your own colors, reuse the same spool, ensure filament diameter without blindly trusting the manufacturer. The high cost is due to the middle man, also your comparison is based on pellets (ali) vs spools (us/eu vendor). If you look at the spool prices on ali it is already a lot less, if making filament at home becomes viable again or a community rises up like voron etc. with thousands of people putting their minds together I am sure they'll come up with something
@@greenboy3dThat would be overkill, depending on how much one prints a 500€~ would be amazing. Even for commercial use the solution by 3Devo is just really out of reach, I recall it was like 5-6k. Bet there is a lot of interest for the community to chime in with mods, imagine all those users running different mixtures finding perfect solutions. Especially for PC-CF there are barely any good option, so far only ezPCCF works for me and that's about 100€ for a 750g roll
When I saw the title my thoughts immediately went to recycling print waste, glad it was covered in the video. I think it’s an important area of focus for users and designers of 3D printers.
i hope you will get recognition, this pellet printing looks interesting and seems a better choise but the problem is availability, few or none companies who would like to invest into this technology, but so far 3D printing is changing, i hope that i will see it in a near future.
Developing this technology further is bad for the big 3D printer companies. Then you won't have to buy so many spools of filament anymore and the worst of all you could reuse them 😉. This would not just be a big emotional but also financial damage for the big boys.
@@greenboy3da lot of the printer companies have their fingers somewhat in the pie of filament manufacturers, but I think they’d much rather sell you a fancy new printer for a markup. Because it’s not like they’re locking you into their brand of filament in the first place. Even when manufacturers sell filament on RFID spools, people are reusing those for other brands of filament. Klipper is only just starting to be included with off the shelf printers, give it time before a more niche tech gets adapted. 3D printing is moving fast, but not that fast.
The good news is, since pellets are already a readily available resource, it would be very easy for shops to buy in bulk and repackage to sell to consumers in smaller quantities, if big printing companies like it or not!
@@greenboy3dThe same companies that are selling both printers and filament would still be reselling smaller containers of pellets, for those who don't want to have to search and shop for what they're looking for. They wouldn't be able to charge as much as they do now, but production would be just a matter of repackaging, at much lower cost to them. Furthermore, most of the current leaders in the filament printing world were NOT the pioneers of the movement, and they've made almost as much money off of filament that the paper printer companies have made from ink cartridges. No tears from me.
Not an engineer, but have you tried a pellet screw that gets progressively tighter at the bottom? In my mind, it would make sense that the flow rate would be more averaged because pressure from threads above would be shoving the pellets down into the extrusion barrel. Excited to see your idea for recycling plastics in the future.
I had an extremely similar thought! Or possibly a two-stage screw, one cold screw and one smaller hot screw if you will. I was also thinking of tapering. Excited to see more of his design!
Polymer engineer here, in full size extruder, there is a reason why the screw is tapered and there are multiple heating element in the chamber. Pellet are not only melted through heating but also the grinding motion of the screw and the chamber itself. The multiple heating element is to make sure that the pellet didnt get heat shock that would change the characteristics of the extrudite.
@andybrice2711 not sure what you mean but to give the extruder shredded type of plastic is what it sounds like I forget the creator but he showed that proved to be way more inconsistent and best results was pellets and size and a vibrator to keep them flowing
@@Mikehatespigs No, I wasn't thinking so much of that, more a screw which breaks up larger pellets before they enter the melt zone. Because I think 3-5 mm pellets are optimized for the larger screws of injection moulding machines. This smaller screw might function more consistently with ~0.5mm pellets.
This was a great watch and so well explained, to get bags of peelets and be able to print guilt free with such a low cost would be extremelly liberating. Pkease continue to evolve your pellet printing process and cant wait for the desktop 3d printer pellet conversion video...i have Bambu A1 Minis and Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro so hopeing these feature...fantastic work.
great content dude! this is big stuff youre bringing out! do you think this would also be possible for something like my secondary printer? its an neptune 4 pro@@greenboy3d
Pellet printing will eventually get there. Ink printers are now getting more common with ink tanks instead of cartridges. It will be same for 3D printers, different hoppers full of pellets to print from.
Okay, you've got my sub, because I really want to see more about your pellet extruder. I really think this is the future of 3D printing, for all of the reasons you state. The clearest thing is that if recycling requires grinding into pellets anyway, the intermediate step of having spools of filament is just a big waste. One thing I noticed when you showed your screw removed from the barrel, is that it doesn't look like your pellets are getting fully melted until just before they get to the bottom of the screw. It seems to me that this would result in some of the air between the pellets doesn't have time to rise in the screw, and therefore it might be getting mixed into the melted plastic. This would result in both inconsistent flow and lower strength in the prints. I know my suggestion will not be welcome, and of course you've got a great deal more experience with this than me, but I think the screw just needs to be longer, or perhaps the heater needs to cover more of the barrel. Another thing comes to mind: I had a toy when I was young, back in the 1960s, that was a set of nylon molds and an injection molder for making toy soldiers and other things. The injection molder just had a vertical cylinder, about 20mm diameter, with a plastic plunger that fit in its top. The plunger was tapered at about 45 or 60 degrees, and there was a matching conical section at the bottom of the cylinder, with a small (2-3mm) hole in the bottom. Below the cylinder was a housing with a rectangular hole that you slid the mold into, and of course the mold had a hole in its top that lined up with the hole at the bottom of the cylinder. The molding system came with a few bags of pellets, which I am guessing was a mixture of paraffin and polypropylene, because it melted at a lower temperature (don't know what temperature, but low enough it was hard to burn yourself with, like maybe 90 degrees C, and it smelled like polypropylene or maybe polyethylene, but the resulting toy soldiers were softer than either of those. But my point is, the whole cylinder was the melt barrel, and you poured in as much of the pellets as would fit without being packed, and all of the molds were designed to use about the same amount of plastic, so filling up the cylinder left you with very little left over, AND you could cut that up with scissors or a knife to use on your next parts. And in fact, I cut up most of my parts to make other parts, because it was more fun making them than playing with the toy soldiers! So all of that to say, maybe a plunger is the better way to go, to get consistent flow and strong plastic. I realize the problem, that you can't make anything bigger than the barrel will hold, but there are ways around this as well. It's so great to see what you have accomplished, and i look forward to your future videos. Good day, and good printing!
1 thing to keep in mind is fraud of pellets. You cant gauge quality of pellets as well as filament, mainly because with pellets, you wont really see a difference between new pellets vs pellets made from 30-50x recycled plastics. Where as filaments you can determine the flex/strength before hand.
I've actually wondered why pellets weren't used since shortly after 3D printers started to become popular. It always seemed like a lot of extra expense that could be avoided since you wouldn't need the reel filament came on as well as not repeating the forming of the plastic.
how about a three phase print head, phase I sends the pellets down a shaft via your screw, phase II melts the pellets into a dripping goo within a buffer area, and phase III takes in the dripping goo out of the buffer area and extrudes it - thus eliminating the problem with the varying size pellets. Also, some sort of purge mechanism to purge the pellets out of the phase I - likely by just reversing the screw. That way there would be less waist when its time to purge the old print material out by pushing in new print material. Phase II uses an independent smaller screw to transfer the dripping goo into phase III.
I just realised this could be incredibly useful for recycling filament too, since you would only need a shredder and those pieces could probably work in a pellet extruder (if you can get the shredded pieces to be a similar size)
Absolutly. I am planning to make my Pellet Extruder available to everyone 🙂 Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Here's an idea... Serialize two print heads: 1) The first is fed pellets which extrudes filament, which is cooled and has a buffer coiled area perhaps. 2) The second consumes #1's filament and now you're printing with all the abilities of FDM but you're producing your own filament from pellets.
Seems like you've missed the point: I'm sure that pellet hot end development will rapidly get to the point where it will take over the market, at which point there will be no need for filament.
@@BrightBlueJimyour missing the point of this commenters suggestion. He’s simply recommending a hypothetical solution to the volumetric consistency and flow issues by first turning the pellets into a consistent filament right before final extrusion. A two stage system with Brunson extrusion utilizing current filament extruders and nozzles. A viable solution which many have of us have also thought of. He’s not suggesting two individual print heads. It should also be noted that 3D printing with pellets isn’t a new or proprietary concept and there’s company’s that specialize in these extruders. There’s a few TH-cam channels that have built machines with them.
@@ChrisS-oo6flWell, you've got your interpretation, I've got mine. What he actually DESCRIBED was having a "buffer area" between the two heads; the one printing a 3D object WHILE the other was producing filament. Which wouldn't solve the problem of inconsistent flow from the pellet extruder, because this would produce inconsistent filament diameter, which would result in a reduction of quality in the final print. Which is exactly what other people have noticed about their own efforts to print filament. If you don't like hearing constructive criticisms of ideas, you've come to the wrong place.
At the moment nowhere, but probably in a month from me ... 😊 If you want to be always up-to-date, then I suggest you to take the 2 question survey which you find in the video description (It's a link). At the end of it, you can enter your email, and you will be automatically notified once the pellet extruder becomes available. 🙂
Excellent work! Ultimately I think this approach will only be practical in high-volume printing situations, where perfect precision isn't required, but wow your print quality really is excellent given the variance in pellet sizes. I tell myself this is something I don't need (imagining the mess of spilling pellets like spilling a bottle ot glitter), but I'm so gawd damn cheap that I can't deny that buying kilos of raw pellets for dollars or having a path to recycling is extremely appealing to me. 😅
Could one grind down the pellets further to fill the screw extruder better?. Almost like a powder. Second couldnt you use this to create your own filaments from the pellets?. Still saving the money but making into the filament style which give the quality?.
Man Can't wait for more, this seems like a breakthrough in 3D printing, I would be soo much better having pellets over filament, and great work really man big time
I agree with every advantage you cited from pellets printing, from price to flexibility of mixing colors, buying smaller quantities and using different materials. I think the main limitation of this method will be speed. Now we are going to 300mm/s printers (the core XY profusion). The pellet extruder seems way heavier than the filament ones, and it will limit speed. The pellets chaking form hi speeds may also be an issue.That said, I don't believe pellets will be mainstream in FDM 3Dprinting, but I do think there will be a solid share for it if it gets sufficiently developed. Congrats!
Yea, it is definitly a trade off: Speed for lower cost 😀 By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Would it be possible to increase the "pool" of melted plastic so that you do not rely on only melting the plastic near the end of the extruder, but also further back? I would think this would give you more capacity to manage consistency issues. Neat idea.
It might help, but this also would increase other problems like weight, mainly because of the need for a bigger motor, that can handle the needed torque increase that a bigger meltpool would cause. By the way would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
@@greenboy3d Definitely difficult challenges, for sure. I do agree that directly using pellets is an interesting idea and has a lot of benefits if it can be achieved.
Printing speed is also a factor, since you have pellets on the extruder and a large hose with more pellets inside, the added weight would make it difficult to print fast and would add a significant amount of wobble.
@@greenboy3d There's no solution that makes sense. Your primary application is cheaper 0.8 mm printing of larger parts period. That's assuming you can drive at least 120 mm/s without issues.
@@cybyrd9615Boy good thing you already know everything about everything. Everyone we can just give up now this guy knows it's impossible so why even bother.
But 0.4mm and 0.6mm does also work fine. Of course Filament is better but still Why should there be more applications like recycling household waste with pellet 3d printing?@@cybyrd9615
The video shows a lot, I still don't use 3D printing, but I want to use it a lot for my processes. I'm studying blender...... I already knew about pallets, but not like you explained... sesancional... how could I have the parts to assemble a hotend using pallets?
Awesome start to a TH-cam channel, congrats. Something I've been thinking about for a while myself. One thing you might look into to help with the gaps in the feedstock is have two screws and small void between at the heat block, so you are pushing your pellets into a pool, and your second screw is pushing air-free molten material through the nozzle. Might make purging a bit more annoying, and startup will be more delicate, but I'd suggest a system like this would tend to run more continuously than a filament style printer.
That's actually how the older industrial patents work, and how I used to think all of the industrial machines still worked. You can still find parts for multiple screw extruders, but very little information, while all the TH-cam videos about filament factories imply or show them using single screw machines. A proper extrusion machine uses two screws that both have pregressively varying geometry to apply different forces to the material, and an offgas port near the end of the melt zone. Today you can even buy modular screws so that you can rearrange or extend the different zones. Not that any of that helps with FDM hot end designs, sadly...
I might be wrong, but wouldn't inconsistent flow rate affect the pressure inside the screw? (Less pellets= less pressure and vice versa) if so wouldn't it be possible to measure the pressure at the nozzle and use software to regulate that pressure?
You are absolutely right, this is one way how very consistent flow can be achieved. However, to implement such a pressure measurement system a lot of additional research & development needs to be conducted which is going to cost a lot of money. Additionally, I am not aware of a tiny pressure sensor which can operate at high temperature +260° even existing at the moment. Which that such a sensor needs to be developed and manufactured.... Unfortunately not easy, but with the money I get from my current ongoing Pellet Extruder Pre-order Launch, I will try to get us there. 🙁
@@greenboy3d If the pressure is higher wouldn't the motor have to push more? So wouldn't it be possible to get feedback from the motor? Or if that wouldn't be possible, the shaft of the auger should technically twist more or less based on how hard it pushes the material so wouldn't it be possible to use strain gauge stickers to check that? Of course the shaft would have lengthened to fit the stickers and be intentionally weakened in order for it to very slight (non-destructively) deform. Of course this is just a speculation and doesn't have to work at all.
Do you think the extrusion flow rate would be smoothed out at all by using a CHT nozzle? They seem to be like a legitimate magic cure all for many flow issues, I've had good experiences with them.
If we use a 1.75mm nozzle with your extruder it would be very easy to make custom home made filament. Would you make a contraption that could make good quality filament with even thickness using your screw extruder setup? it doesn't need to be very fast. Most of us have basic filament 3d printers which we don't wanna tinker with so a cheap home assembled filament maker would actually be something I'd like to buy to go with my 3d printer.
Since the extruder is in a vertical position air, bubbles move but also get pushed upwards by the screw due to gravity. You do also get less bubbles when printing with "Wet" Filament/pellets because the molten plastic is more pressurized when it comes out of the nozzle which increase the point at which water starts to vaporize Does that answer your question? 🙂
Great approach, I have been looking for this type of approach for a couple of years now. Looking forward to the next video where you will present you extruder
I'm a little bit underwhelmed by the regular filament benchy, since you shouldn't have stripes on a properly tuned printer. Also those benchies are scaled? So I'm not sure the comparison is fair. Though I do appreciate your work in this direction, it's a great idea and a great prototype!
rotating the extruder screw backwards creates under pressure that prevents ooze for a short time similar like in a filament extruder... Enough time for travel movements without ooze
@@greenboy3d The only way I see to keep this small and have good output quality is to measure the pressure in the chamber. I'm wondering if it could be done by measuring axial load on the screw.
If someone starts manufacturing pellet conversion kits for filament printers, this could become a trend. I have an Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro, which uses Klipper, and I assume that it will just require updating the settings in the slicer for how much it advances the screw stepper instead of the direct drive steppers. I expect that one of the key things will be to work out how to safely purge the hot-end, since it's not as simple as pulling out the filament, and allowing the melted plastic to cool inside the screw might cause some issues. So long as it is electrically compatible with a direct-drive extruder and can be supplemented with a bed probe, the hobbyist can swap the print heads between the filament and pellet extruder. A quick-change carriage that accepted both types of tools would make this even easier.
Is it possible to pre-melt the pellets, before it gets to the auger, and then control the flow from there? This would mean that the pellet size is irrelevant and the temperature and pressure in the auger takes over. It may also help to mitigate any bubbles that may be created in the melting process.
Hard to say whether this would work or not, but it would definitly increase the cost of the Pellet Extruder By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
cool stuff! i wish you the best for your fresh channel - but since it seems like you already really know what youre doing you probably will hit it off :)
Oh, wow! This is your first video. At least on this channel of course. I subscribed! It would be very exciting if pellet printing could become practical, affordable, and widespread. I would figure the hardest part is making sure no air gets into the pellet melting process, but it doesn't seem like that's the exact issue. Very interesting. I look forward to more of your videos.
Thank you! In the next video will show the extruder in more deepth By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I have a question. Can you replace the nozzle on the pellet printer to 1.8mm and basically make your own spool from the cheaper pellets? Then run that filament in a extruder printer?
If you have more then one printer and can find a 1.8mm nozzle then yes it would be very cool to do. Also where do you find plastic pellets? I've tried in the past as I am a Amazon shopper in the USA and couldn't find supplier nor a low cost pellet to filament machine
The cartridge system from 2D printers is the reason pellet extrusion is not mainstream. Qui prodest is the only question you need to ask. All of these big filament manufactureres would go out of business in no time if pellet extrusion was the norm.
There is no "big filament". To my knowledge, there isn't a cartel either, nor is the technology in any way proprietary. Including manufacturing, packaging, distribution and taxes, it is pretty hard to make filament for under around 16 euros per kilogram, with most being around 20 for a reason. Keep in mind you have to make very consistent filament, pack it, ship it, pay your workers, have some profit to invest and so on. There are quite a lot of filament factories, at least in the EU and they offer a shitton of options. No need to use fancy words or start conspiracy theories. If you want cheap filament in Europe, there is GST3D, in bulk a kg is under 10 euros, but it's not necessarily the best quality.
Total BS. Cartridges are proprietary, they are being sold by the same companies that produce printers itself, they sometimes sell cheap printers and make most of the money from cartridges. The idea is to force people to stick to their cartridges and prevent them from using ones from competition. Filament is just a form of a material, much like sheet paper, it is industry wide standard, the same for all manufacturers, it is not proprietary in any way and there is nothing special in it to make it work only with the certain 3D printer model.
That is exactly what such an extruder is great at 😄 By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Speaking as a complete noob, would it be possible to pre-melt pellets in a reservoir and using something like your screw feeder (in a size compatible to the printer head) feed it directly to the nozzle? The cost of materials alone (not to mention the printer) has kept me from 3d printing.
@@cybyrd9615 It sounds like your are assuming the WORLD is only the US, but infact no one was talking about US. I live in germany and all prices I mentioned are real whether for PLA, TPE or PPA GF50 It just depends on where you are looking and buying from My Friend the only one who is missleading is you 😅
c'mon, the reason they're a different colour is that one is more white and one is more creamy in colour?! don't want to be a hater, but it just lowers the content quality hugely when things like that are said
You may or may not know it but upon recycling of PLA or too much heat exposure PLA starts to change its color to a darker one until it turns completely black with extremely weak mechanical performance. Therefore, it was important to mention that the color difference is just due to a different color used in the plastic, because people might otherwise assume that my pellet extruder causes plastic to significantly degrade while printing, which is not the case. I hope now you understand the more in-depth reasoning behind that statement "Stupid color" statement 🙂
@@greenboy3dSorry it's taken me so long to see your response; I hugely appreciate the clarification. I wish you had said this in the video, because it would've been so much more clear - perhaps I was just missing context.
I am planning to make my Pellet Extruder available to everyone but I need your help first Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
nice video. I can't sit through many 3-d printing videos because the speaker rambles on about nothing and takes too long to get to the point. you present everything clearly and succinctly. Good work!
You can repurpose the filament nozzle and extrusion setup you took off from your modded printer for the waste reuse. You turn them around, funnel the waste through the hot-end whatever way (gravity or pressure if ground stuff, just the pull force on the other end if strings of bottles) and on the other end, use the extrusion to make a string, at the exit of the extruder you cut it up into bits with a rotating blade driven by the same motor as the extruder to make it simpler and sync the cutting to the extrusion rate for better size consistency. Cool stuff. Sounds like this should be the goto method for experimental printing (parts, printer calibration, design experimentation), quality is good enough and the easier reuse gives more options to fail a print (or just reprint a broken piece from the same exact material for color consistency or something). And filament printing is much better for stuff like board games, art projects, printing services and stuff like that.
Enjoyed the video. Very impressive for a first video! Always happy to find new creators. You have a new subscriber. P.S. I think you might need more light on yourself, so you can lower ISO. You're a bit grainy.
Currently I am limited with the Ender 3 V2 by speed because it cannot output enough electricity for the extruder motor. While printing the extruder motor doesn't even get warm. By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
"Standard Pellets" are already quite uniform. The main Issue is the size 3-5mm itself It would be ideal to have pellets in the size of 1mm and they can also easily be manufactured like "Standard Pellets" but no one really does that because the "Plastic processing industry" wants the bigger ones That's why my new "Home recycling method" aims to create pellets with a size between 1 to 1,5 mm which would also mean better tolerance because they can stack up more evenly in the Pellet extruder barrel
Filament is made from pellets, when the prices of pellets are higher than you are getting scammed. But don't worry, like I said, There will be videos regarding sourcing pellets teaching you have to find good pellet prices, and additionally I will use my influence to organize special deals with pellet suppliers so that you can enjoy cheap pellet prices
Retraction works with my Pellet Extruder similarly as it does with Filament Extruders, by reversing the Extruder Motor direction. Additionally, There will be “ready to use” slicer profiles and guides that will teach how to find the right slicer settings for your individual use case.
Doesn't the compression at the end off the feed screw when it enters the nozzle, doesn't that mitigate the problem with uneven flow? If the melt zone and the area of compression was longer wouldn't that solve it?
It might "even out" the flow a little bit, but I have tried it since making these "Prototype" screws is quite expensive. By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
To get better consistency, your extruder screw has to be much larger than your nozzle, but doing so will increase weight of the assembly. There has to be an acceptable tradeoff. Another parameter, the average pellet size could be tweaked by grinding the pellets to a much smaller size.
You are spot on! The hard part is to decide which tradeoff is better or worse. You are also right with grinding pellets down to smaller size, but I wonder whether you have ideas on how this could be done? 🙂
Yes, retraction works with my Pellet Extruder similarly as it does with Filament Extruders, by reversing the Extruder Motor direction. Oozing and stringing does still exist as it is the case with Filament extruders when the slicer settings are not optimized for the spefic Plastic you are using. Additionally, There will be “ready to use” slicer profiles and guides that will teach how to find the right slicer settings for your individual use case.
How do you handle pellet removal for distinct color change, or are you limited to gradient changes due to the challenges of feed stock removal/replacement mid-print?
Hi, that's a really interesting idea, have manufacturers already ventured in this direction? In any case, converting filament printers into pellet printers seems fairly straightforward, you just need to industrialise the manufacture of the extruder. One idea regarding the difference in size between the pellet grains, why not first pass them through a sieve to harmonise the dimensions, which should allow a more regular flow, at least that's what I thought when I saw this passage in your video. In any case, I hope that in the long term this will indeed be the future of 3D printing, as the reduced cost of materials should interest many printers and perhaps encourage printer manufacturers to look into this development.
I am planing to make my extruder available to everyone. Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
@@cybyrd9615 Well if go straight forward and google PLA pellets then you obviously gonna encounter all middle man resellers selling it for filament like prices😅 You have to know the tricks and the situation. But what do you mean with misleading?
@@greenboy3d Yeah, to have the best chance at success with this you would need to provide good cheap sources of obtaining the pellets worldwide not just in Europe. 🙂
If I want to dry something out, I do it in the oven. And if the pellets need to "stay" dry I put a lit on the pellet tank and the "extruder opening". Plus if you need to you can "reinforce" the pellet tank with silica gel to eliminate any moisture within the conveying system. Of course It's not completly airtight but for the most part... 😀
you might be into something here, humidity in pellets could be causing all sort of problem, including weaker parts. a dryers fitted in the upper part of the tube to push hot dry air might gives some interesting results.
Man, great job! I'm waiting for commercial product from you, will totally buy pellet extruder for 150-200$ even in half-diy form. But i would like to see more tests - speed test, strenth test. It is perfect thing for mass production.
I wonder if instead of controlling the flow out the nozzle by the auguring in of new pellets, go back to the method used in injection molding and load a chamber full of molten plastic and ram it through the nozzle by pushing with the auger (not through rotation but by moving the whole auger down).This would need special slicing such that the printhead only moves when the plastic is ready to flow (maybe load enough plastic for the layer, though that might require too much volume im not sure) I am surprised at how good enough your print quality seems. I cant help but wonder how many failed prints happened that didnt get shown. Nevertheless it will be interesting to see where you go with this, keep up the good work!
Thank you! 🙃 A longer meltzone might help with flow rate consistency, but then other new problem would arrive which I am going to cover in my next video. Do you maybe have any questions that you would like to ask about pellet 3d printing or my extruder?
Thank you for your appreciation :) In the description is a link to a short 2 question survey about how I could improve the extruder further more, but at end you can enter your email. If you do that then you will be automatically notifed once the extruder will be available if you want that 😀 Do you maybe have any questions that you would like to ask about pellet 3d printing or my extruder?
@@greenboy3d you used a wood drill, right? all plastics equipment i had to do with had nicely polished surfaces for flow and often affecting the properties of the end-product to a degree, also for general process reliability. but its expensive. the real magic is above my paygrade pretty quickly. until now, done mostly mould-making rather than injection..-
Could you pre-melt the pellets before they enter the extruder or heat the entire extruder? Seems like having a larger volume of liquid plastic would give you better control over the flow rates, since you don't have air getting trapped in the extruder with the pellets?
With the pellets being delivered through a long pipe, doesn't this result in a higher weight being put on the print head? I'm still pretty new to 3d printing, but when I read up on direct drive vs bowden, the extra weight on the moving print head was one of the downsides of direct drive.
The Pellet Extruder I have build is much lighter than other ones that you see around, it just limits a little the max sprint speed but thats almost it. By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Use a fine grain pellet to decrease the volume of empty space - this also will help with improving even pressure in the hotend. Ali express has pla powder but I couldn’t find any pellets that are the size of sand granules. Perhaps you could diy with a grain mill, dry ice/liquid nitrogen to decrease the temps so it doesn’t melt the pellets during the grinding process? Then you’d have to use a sieve on the “grains” to get all the larger piece out.
Excellent work man! I see that this is your first video. Im looking forward to more. With the right marketing and with enough iterating, im fairly certain that youll have the demand for a product like this. Best of luck!
Thank you for your comment! 😀 By the way there is a Greenboy Discord Community Server with almost 100 people. If you'd like to join then there a link in the description
I don't think that it's need a lot more heat than filament ones. That heat block may uses 60W heating element, and it's not all-time on as it's pid controlled. Btw, You won't make filaments from pellets here, you will skip that step and use the pellets directly to print.
It uses a 70 Watt heater cardrige so this a tiny amount more than normal filament printers By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Hey, can you get dr. D flow to review your hotend? He is the only other TH-camr that uses pellets. Or someone local to Germany like cnc kitchen or made with layers. Seems like it is too good to be true.
I think it would have a much bigger effect if you send for example CNC Kitchen an email with this request. Because if I email him trying to convince him to review a "product" then he might refuse, but it's different when a fan asks for that 🙂
Some newer 3d printers have force sensors in the nozzle. I wonder if it could do flow rate calibration in real time to compensate for the uneven distribution of pellets. An extra air gap between pellets? Force on the nozzle drops, the extruder turns a few extra steps to bring it back to normal.
Do you know some of the names of the 3D printers you are talking about? Would like to take a look at them. And by the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I made an PCL pellet extruder and put it on a creality ender. In prototyping, the sticky PCL got stuck EVERYWHERE. In the end, with the right pid, we got a decent benchy at decent speeds
You probably just encountered resellers that try to make some extra dollars selling pellets to unaware 3D printer users. In the future I will make a video on "How to source pellets". it will help you. 🙂 By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
If you shred for example your old 3d prints into granules, then this method of using meshes works very well as I showed it in this video: th-cam.com/video/eWgzi4a1bJo/w-d-xo.html However, normal pellets are generally speaking about the same size but have due to their shape from certain angles different sizes which make proper filter almost impossible...
Good ideas! 👍I definitely will convert 1 of my printer to pallet extruder printer for Big stuff which does not require precision function. All those test print & benchies can be recycled. Not only that many plastic containers can be shredded and repurposed for household use. Thanks for sharing ❤
[Update October 13th]
Working very hard right now to organize the shipping of the Pellet Extruder and other tasks related to Greenboy3D like organizing a supply of pellets for everyone and a pellet extruder wiki, which is why I sometimes have trouble answering everyone immediately.
Most parts for the extruder have already arrived and have been processed & packed for shipping, however the pellet extruder screws are still in manufacturing since this is the most complicated and costly part of the pellet extruder. I believe that the first units will be shipped out by the end of October.
Due to the additional organizational tasks related to the supply of pellets, there is simply more work that needs to be done. This includes staying in contact with many companies selling different types of plastics & watching out for good offers, requesting samples, testing them, negotiating prices, organizing the transportation of tons of plastic pellets, and so on.
These tasks also take up some of my time, which would otherwise have been spent on the Wiki/Knowledge Base platform and the guide videos.
Just a couple days ago, for example, I ordered and paid for 8,600 kg of PLA pellets, which will likely be transported to my location from Slovenia next week.
2500 kg PETG pellets are already in my possession, but more of other types are needed like:
ABS/ASA/ABS-GF/ABS-GB
PET
TPU/TPE (various Shore levels)
PA GF/CF
Additionally soon there will be a new update about the ongoing progress (including the one about pellets) 🙂
If you want to get some additional pellets along with your order then that is possible however you need to consider that, while the pellet extruder will be shipped for free there will be additional shipping costs for pellets.
However I will keep you updated regarding the pellets.
The only thing I am not sure about is whether I should also get these extremely elastic pellets I showed in one of my videos, after doing more research it turned out these were not Shore 5A, but Shore 30 (with out the "A") which is significantly below Shore 0A meaning even more elastic and flexible than Shore 0A
The only problem is that these pellets are quite expensive compared to other plastics and could only be offered for prices like 12,99 USD/EUR per kg (way higher than the other plastic types like PLA, which will probably go for 3,5 USD/EUR)
Should you have more questions or concerns please feel free to contact me anytime - I am here to help.
Done and it is great that you had made it.
Thank you so much ❤@@j3novauh
The tank should be called a pellet hopper. Its a more standard term.
What if you just build a seperate extruder to produce the filament from pellets (essentially what you have right now) and then feed that into a standard fdm printer head? I imagine that should solve the consitency problems, even if it's a bit less efficient?
Consistency could be greatly improved by simply building a pellet sifter that can bin the sizes through a series of graded holes. With just 12 grades of pellets by size ("too small", ten steps about around the average pellet size, and "too big"), you'd be going from 15% variation to 1% or less variation within those 10 steps, (depending on how narrow you do your steps).
A filament maker could do 1% tolerance-graded pellets by pre-sorting and binning them as a step before all the out-of-grade pellets were just loaded into their standard filament extruding machines like usual.
As an injection molding designer and engineer I can contribute with some things:
A) The screw starts with low inner Ø and then gradually increases its inner Ø. This is because the pellets form air bubbles that get traped in the screw if the Ø is constant. This gives inconsistent flowrates.
B) You MUST heat the entire screw, from start to finish. Even the nozzle if you can.
C) Most pellets are thought to be used in injection, extrution and blow mold. The relation between the size of the pellet and the screw of those machines is many times larger. However, this is not true to this case, where the Ø of the screw only lets 2-3 pellets to get in.
Tips: Make screw wider, with progressive inner Ø. Let some gap in the fit so air can go away (about 0,2 mm). Heat the entire screw, from start to finish. You may use more than one heating element.
PS: Your idea is brilliant, keep on that study case.
Love it!
You mean that, in commercial extenders, the screw's minor diameter (the diameter in between the threads) increases along the screw, right? Such that the gap between the screw and the barrel shrinks along the screw?
@@coltongerber1879 exactly. This achieves a progressive melting of the thermoplastic since you heat the barrel from the outside (not the inside).
great comment! thanks. what do you think one could get down to in terms of size and weight for a reliable micro-size extruder?
apart from screws, are there other types of "pumps" used anywhere to extrude plastics?
As someone who used to material handle at a plastic injection company. I knew there was something missing from 3d printing. I am looking forward to your next video.
Thank you! In the Next video I will show the Greenboy Extruder in more detail, so stay tune 🙃
This process has been available for a long time. The extruders are typically very large and costly ($2.5-6k) However there is a affordable production 3D printers with a similar design as this called the Piocreat. This current project seems more consumer oriented, universal and affordable
Any Pellet Extruder beyoned $1000 for a regular desktop 3D Printer is still to expensive @@ChrisS-oo6fl
things that could improve print consistency
1. dual heating zones first pre-heat second working heat (which means possibly longer hot end)
2. Sift your pellets to separate them by size then workout flow rates based on pellet size used
Maybe with a proper sized sieve. Good idea!
iirc buying pellets they usually come in standard sizes/ weights for injection molding, although seperating wouldnt hurt to distinguish between anything out of tolerance in the pellets. dual heating zones might eliminate the different pellet size problem as all pellets would be forced to one size due to the taper on the injection screw.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Was going to comment the first one too. Screw based injection machines that use pellets usually have multiple heating zones and long mandrills for more even mixing of the melted material so that inconsistencies are minimized. A system long enough to have three heating zones would probably be even enough to remove any need for sifting and open options for materials that do better with heating in stages (like chocolate).
@@greenboy3d Submitted through the link in the comments, its a bit detailed and includes some stuff not mentioned in my above comment, if youre interested it should be submitted under the name alex ;) best of luck with this project ill be following along the journey my friend!
In commercial extrusion, in between the barrel and the tool (your nozzle) you would have a pump that holds back pressure on the barrel and maintains a constant pressure in an expansion chamber. The expansion area will have its own heater and pressure and temperature sensors. These form a closed loop system with pressure and temperature sensors to control pump speed, screw speed and temperature in both zones. A well balanced arrangement of PID controllers keeps the right flow at the right temperature at the tool. For what it's worth, the pump seal is maintained with compressed air to keep material leakage and contamination down.
One really cool aspect is that you can change what material you are loading the barrel with on the fly. Color can be adjusted in real time and composition can be changed with little or no waste.
Multiple heating zones, screw/auger geometry, and back pressure are the three that I had learned about when running industrial extruders. From the quick that I saw of the screw, it looks like you had done a good bit of research into the taper of the thread. I agree with Carson, that you should add a preheat before final heat.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I think ill be switching to this. Filament is crazy expensive for just being plastic string. Thanks
I purchased one of those PetG bottle kits online. After seeing how easy pellet printing is, i think i can get it modified to do this. Would be better to have a separate machine to use pellets and make filament since my printer is tuned to be faster and lighter
@@jayzazuYou could just kinda have the extruded bottle filament be cut at the nozzle into pellets, with something like a motor with a razor blade
@@Psyden5757 I don't think it is that simple. Pretty much all those bottle filament extruders pull the filament through the nozzle. You have nothing to pull if you're cutting it at the nozzle.
You are going into to the right direction with your ideas my friend! 🙃@@Psyden5757
@@Psyden5757 hmm, maybe you could use some rollers with blades that kinda chop the filament as it's coming out, tho this doesn't seem particularly reliable
Congratulations to a good start of your channel. Well deserved considering the way creativity translates to content.
Thank you for the kind Words! ☺
Not that you asked for advice, but I dug through my old material processing notes to see if anything jumped out at me as far as consistent flow rate.
It appears commercial extruders have 3 zones: feed, compression, and metering. The feed zone just moves pellets and begins to heat them. In the compression zone, melting increases, as does the minor diameter of the screw. Air is expelled backwards out the feed section. In the metering section, the minor diameter of the screw either increases slightly or is uniform, but not as much as the previous section. The polymer is 100% melted and pressure builds, which will eventually force the melt through the die (nozzle).
The pitch of the screw threads has a complex relationship with flow, as (approximating polymer as a Newtonian fluid), forward flow is proportional to cos(angle)sin(angle), whereas backward flow (which is bad) is proportional to (sin(angle))^2.
At the end of of the screw, having the interior of the barrel taper similar to the screw end is preferable to a 90 degree turn in the interior barrel wall. A tapered design should control flow and allow polymer coils to relax before being extruded. A longer "land" (distance between end of screw and nozzle, after the tapering of the barrel) will give coils more time to relax, but may increase pressure and slow flow rate.
The future is in making your own filament at home, mix your own colors, reuse the same spool, ensure filament diameter without blindly trusting the manufacturer. The high cost is due to the middle man, also your comparison is based on pellets (ali) vs spools (us/eu vendor). If you look at the spool prices on ali it is already a lot less, if making filament at home becomes viable again or a community rises up like voron etc. with thousands of people putting their minds together I am sure they'll come up with something
I like your point of view and I am working on exaclty what you mentioned! 🙂
Thank you for the great input
@@greenboy3dThat would be overkill, depending on how much one prints a 500€~ would be amazing. Even for commercial use the solution by 3Devo is just really out of reach, I recall it was like 5-6k. Bet there is a lot of interest for the community to chime in with mods, imagine all those users running different mixtures finding perfect solutions. Especially for PC-CF there are barely any good option, so far only ezPCCF works for me and that's about 100€ for a 750g roll
When I saw the title my thoughts immediately went to recycling print waste, glad it was covered in the video. I think it’s an important area of focus for users and designers of 3D printers.
i hope you will get recognition, this pellet printing looks interesting and seems a better choise but the problem is availability, few or none companies who would like to invest into this technology, but so far 3D printing is changing, i hope that i will see it in a near future.
Developing this technology further is bad for the big 3D printer companies. Then you won't have to buy so many spools of filament anymore and the worst of all you could reuse them 😉. This would not just be a big emotional but also financial damage for the big boys.
@@greenboy3da lot of the printer companies have their fingers somewhat in the pie of filament manufacturers, but I think they’d much rather sell you a fancy new printer for a markup. Because it’s not like they’re locking you into their brand of filament in the first place. Even when manufacturers sell filament on RFID spools, people are reusing those for other brands of filament.
Klipper is only just starting to be included with off the shelf printers, give it time before a more niche tech gets adapted. 3D printing is moving fast, but not that fast.
The good news is, since pellets are already a readily available resource, it would be very easy for shops to buy in bulk and repackage to sell to consumers in smaller quantities, if big printing companies like it or not!
@@greenboy3dThe same companies that are selling both printers and filament would still be reselling smaller containers of pellets, for those who don't want to have to search and shop for what they're looking for. They wouldn't be able to charge as much as they do now, but production would be just a matter of repackaging, at much lower cost to them.
Furthermore, most of the current leaders in the filament printing world were NOT the pioneers of the movement, and they've made almost as much money off of filament that the paper printer companies have made from ink cartridges. No tears from me.
Not an engineer, but have you tried a pellet screw that gets progressively tighter at the bottom? In my mind, it would make sense that the flow rate would be more averaged because pressure from threads above would be shoving the pellets down into the extrusion barrel. Excited to see your idea for recycling plastics in the future.
The Design of my Pellet Screw is indeed a bit controversial but for some good reasons 🙂
Thank you for you comment!
I had an extremely similar thought! Or possibly a two-stage screw, one cold screw and one smaller hot screw if you will. I was also thinking of tapering. Excited to see more of his design!
Polymer engineer here, in full size extruder, there is a reason why the screw is tapered and there are multiple heating element in the chamber.
Pellet are not only melted through heating but also the grinding motion of the screw and the chamber itself.
The multiple heating element is to make sure that the pellet didnt get heat shock that would change the characteristics of the extrudite.
That’s why longer screw and barrel needed. I own plastic film factory and the mixing was better for machine with longer screw
You're right when it comes to injection molding and so.
Small scale pellet 3d printing is however a different game with different rules and goals
@@greenboy3d True, but isn't it possible that a grinding action could also help improve your extrusion consistency in this application?
@andybrice2711 not sure what you mean but to give the extruder shredded type of plastic is what it sounds like I forget the creator but he showed that proved to be way more inconsistent and best results was pellets and size and a vibrator to keep them flowing
@@Mikehatespigs No, I wasn't thinking so much of that, more a screw which breaks up larger pellets before they enter the melt zone.
Because I think 3-5 mm pellets are optimized for the larger screws of injection moulding machines. This smaller screw might function more consistently with ~0.5mm pellets.
This was a great watch and so well explained, to get bags of peelets and be able to print guilt free with such a low cost would be extremelly liberating. Pkease continue to evolve your pellet printing process and cant wait for the desktop 3d printer pellet conversion video...i have Bambu A1 Minis and Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro so hopeing these feature...fantastic work.
Adapting it to a Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro should be no problem for sure
@@greenboy3dI was thinking it might be a good mod for my unused chiron
Then you are gonna love the next video! 🙃@@Mikehatespigs
great content dude! this is big stuff youre bringing out! do you think this would also be possible for something like my secondary printer? its an neptune 4 pro@@greenboy3d
I've never seen a Video about a Pellet Hot end before. Awesome Video!
Thank you! Stay tune for the next one😃
Pellet printing will eventually get there. Ink printers are now getting more common with ink tanks instead of cartridges. It will be same for 3D printers, different hoppers full of pellets to print from.
I do my best to bring us there faster my friend 🙂
Okay, you've got my sub, because I really want to see more about your pellet extruder. I really think this is the future of 3D printing, for all of the reasons you state. The clearest thing is that if recycling requires grinding into pellets anyway, the intermediate step of having spools of filament is just a big waste.
One thing I noticed when you showed your screw removed from the barrel, is that it doesn't look like your pellets are getting fully melted until just before they get to the bottom of the screw. It seems to me that this would result in some of the air between the pellets doesn't have time to rise in the screw, and therefore it might be getting mixed into the melted plastic. This would result in both inconsistent flow and lower strength in the prints. I know my suggestion will not be welcome, and of course you've got a great deal more experience with this than me, but I think the screw just needs to be longer, or perhaps the heater needs to cover more of the barrel.
Another thing comes to mind: I had a toy when I was young, back in the 1960s, that was a set of nylon molds and an injection molder for making toy soldiers and other things. The injection molder just had a vertical cylinder, about 20mm diameter, with a plastic plunger that fit in its top. The plunger was tapered at about 45 or 60 degrees, and there was a matching conical section at the bottom of the cylinder, with a small (2-3mm) hole in the bottom. Below the cylinder was a housing with a rectangular hole that you slid the mold into, and of course the mold had a hole in its top that lined up with the hole at the bottom of the cylinder. The molding system came with a few bags of pellets, which I am guessing was a mixture of paraffin and polypropylene, because it melted at a lower temperature (don't know what temperature, but low enough it was hard to burn yourself with, like maybe 90 degrees C, and it smelled like polypropylene or maybe polyethylene, but the resulting toy soldiers were softer than either of those. But my point is, the whole cylinder was the melt barrel, and you poured in as much of the pellets as would fit without being packed, and all of the molds were designed to use about the same amount of plastic, so filling up the cylinder left you with very little left over, AND you could cut that up with scissors or a knife to use on your next parts. And in fact, I cut up most of my parts to make other parts, because it was more fun making them than playing with the toy soldiers!
So all of that to say, maybe a plunger is the better way to go, to get consistent flow and strong plastic. I realize the problem, that you can't make anything bigger than the barrel will hold, but there are ways around this as well.
It's so great to see what you have accomplished, and i look forward to your future videos. Good day, and good printing!
1 thing to keep in mind is fraud of pellets. You cant gauge quality of pellets as well as filament, mainly because with pellets, you wont really see a difference between new pellets vs pellets made from 30-50x recycled plastics. Where as filaments you can determine the flex/strength before hand.
In both cases you would still probably need to make test print to test the actually material properties, like cnc kitchen often does
I've actually wondered why pellets weren't used since shortly after 3D printers started to become popular. It always seemed like a lot of extra expense that could be avoided since you wouldn't need the reel filament came on as well as not repeating the forming of the plastic.
Now I wanna see if extruder can be diy for cheap similar to glue gun.
Then you need to wait for the next Video 😄
@@greenboy3d never thought I'll just have to ask and then receive. Thanks!
can't wait@@greenboy3d
@@greenboy3d You got my sub;)
A glue gun is technically extruding with a (very thick) filament tho :P
how about a three phase print head, phase I sends the pellets down a shaft via your screw, phase II melts the pellets into a dripping goo within a buffer area, and phase III takes in the dripping goo out of the buffer area and extrudes it - thus eliminating the problem with the varying size pellets. Also, some sort of purge mechanism to purge the pellets out of the phase I - likely by just reversing the screw. That way there would be less waist when its time to purge the old print material out by pushing in new print material. Phase II uses an independent smaller screw to transfer the dripping goo into phase III.
Glückwunsch. Die Arbeit hat sich gelohnt du Maschine!
Danke dir! 😃
I just realised this could be incredibly useful for recycling filament too, since you would only need a shredder and those pieces could probably work in a pellet extruder (if you can get the shredded pieces to be a similar size)
Absolutly. I am planning to make my Pellet Extruder available to everyone 🙂
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
@@greenboy3dwill it work with BambuLab printers?
It works with a almost every 3d printer, but I haven't looked into BambuLab yet@@zachowns1023
@@greenboy3d okay nice
Here's an idea...
Serialize two print heads:
1) The first is fed pellets which extrudes filament, which is cooled and has a buffer coiled area perhaps.
2) The second consumes #1's filament and now you're printing with all the abilities of FDM but you're producing your own filament from pellets.
Seems like you've missed the point: I'm sure that pellet hot end development will rapidly get to the point where it will take over the market, at which point there will be no need for filament.
@@BrightBlueJimyour missing the point of this commenters suggestion. He’s simply recommending a hypothetical solution to the volumetric consistency and flow issues by first turning the pellets into a consistent filament right before final extrusion. A two stage system with Brunson extrusion utilizing current filament extruders and nozzles. A viable solution which many have of us have also thought of. He’s not suggesting two individual print heads. It should also be noted that 3D printing with pellets isn’t a new or proprietary concept and there’s company’s that specialize in these extruders. There’s a few TH-cam channels that have built machines with them.
@@ChrisS-oo6flWell, you've got your interpretation, I've got mine. What he actually DESCRIBED was having a "buffer area" between the two heads; the one printing a 3D object WHILE the other was producing filament. Which wouldn't solve the problem of inconsistent flow from the pellet extruder, because this would produce inconsistent filament diameter, which would result in a reduction of quality in the final print. Which is exactly what other people have noticed about their own efforts to print filament. If you don't like hearing constructive criticisms of ideas, you've come to the wrong place.
Very cool, and not talked about very often. You earned my subscription!
Thank you my friend! 🙂I will do my best
Subscribed and awaiting your next video. This looks like a great start to your channel and I hope the best comes to you.
Thank for the comment 😘
brooo, where can we get the suplies or the things to build this ourselves
At the moment nowhere, but probably in a month from me ... 😊
If you want to be always up-to-date, then I suggest you to take the 2 question survey which you find in the video description (It's a link). At the end of it, you can enter your email, and you will be automatically notified once the pellet extruder becomes available. 🙂
Excellent work! Ultimately I think this approach will only be practical in high-volume printing situations, where perfect precision isn't required, but wow your print quality really is excellent given the variance in pellet sizes. I tell myself this is something I don't need (imagining the mess of spilling pellets like spilling a bottle ot glitter), but I'm so gawd damn cheap that I can't deny that buying kilos of raw pellets for dollars or having a path to recycling is extremely appealing to me. 😅
Thank you very much for your warming comment ❤
Is there any topic or question I should discuss in one of my next videos?
Could one grind down the pellets further to fill the screw extruder better?. Almost like a powder. Second couldnt you use this to create your own filaments from the pellets?. Still saving the money but making into the filament style which give the quality?.
Yes and Yes :)
Could you record a guide on how to make the extruder?
Next video 🙂
Man Can't wait for more, this seems like a breakthrough in 3D printing, I would be soo much better having pellets over filament, and great work really man big time
Thank you :) I will do my best to improve the extruder further more and share it with you 😃
I agree with every advantage you cited from pellets printing, from price to flexibility of mixing colors, buying smaller quantities and using different materials. I think the main limitation of this method will be speed. Now we are going to 300mm/s printers (the core XY profusion). The pellet extruder seems way heavier than the filament ones, and it will limit speed. The pellets chaking form hi speeds may also be an issue.That said, I don't believe pellets will be mainstream in FDM 3Dprinting, but I do think there will be a solid share for it if it gets sufficiently developed. Congrats!
Yea, it is definitly a trade off: Speed for lower cost 😀
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Would it be possible to increase the "pool" of melted plastic so that you do not rely on only melting the plastic near the end of the extruder, but also further back? I would think this would give you more capacity to manage consistency issues.
Neat idea.
It might help, but this also would increase other problems like weight, mainly because of the need for a bigger motor, that can handle the needed torque increase that a bigger meltpool would cause.
By the way would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
@@greenboy3d Definitely difficult challenges, for sure. I do agree that directly using pellets is an interesting idea and has a lot of benefits if it can be achieved.
Printing speed is also a factor, since you have pellets on the extruder and a large hose with more pellets inside, the added weight would make it difficult to print fast and would add a significant amount of wobble.
Your right, but where a Problem is, there also a Solution, it just needs to be found. 🙃
@@greenboy3d There's no solution that makes sense. Your primary application is cheaper 0.8 mm printing of larger parts period. That's assuming you can drive at least 120 mm/s without issues.
@@cybyrd9615Boy good thing you already know everything about everything. Everyone we can just give up now this guy knows it's impossible so why even bother.
But 0.4mm and 0.6mm does also work fine. Of course Filament is better but still
Why should there be more applications like recycling household waste with pellet 3d printing?@@cybyrd9615
@@greenboy3d have you ever printed fast? 500mm/s is 125 mm/s when you go from 0.4 to 0.8mm
The video shows a lot, I still don't use 3D printing, but I want to use it a lot for my processes. I'm studying blender...... I already knew about pallets, but not like you explained... sesancional... how could I have the parts to assemble a hotend using pallets?
Probably this month I will release a purchasable DIY KIT for my Pellet Extruder
Awesome start to a TH-cam channel, congrats. Something I've been thinking about for a while myself. One thing you might look into to help with the gaps in the feedstock is have two screws and small void between at the heat block, so you are pushing your pellets into a pool, and your second screw is pushing air-free molten material through the nozzle. Might make purging a bit more annoying, and startup will be more delicate, but I'd suggest a system like this would tend to run more continuously than a filament style printer.
Very great input! 🙃
That's actually how the older industrial patents work, and how I used to think all of the industrial machines still worked. You can still find parts for multiple screw extruders, but very little information, while all the TH-cam videos about filament factories imply or show them using single screw machines.
A proper extrusion machine uses two screws that both have pregressively varying geometry to apply different forces to the material, and an offgas port near the end of the melt zone. Today you can even buy modular screws so that you can rearrange or extend the different zones. Not that any of that helps with FDM hot end designs, sadly...
I might be wrong, but wouldn't inconsistent flow rate affect the pressure inside the screw? (Less pellets= less pressure and vice versa) if so wouldn't it be possible to measure the pressure at the nozzle and use software to regulate that pressure?
You are absolutely right, this is one way how very consistent flow can be achieved. However, to implement such a pressure measurement system a lot of additional research & development needs to be conducted which is going to cost a lot of money.
Additionally, I am not aware of a tiny pressure sensor which can operate at high temperature +260° even existing at the moment. Which that such a sensor needs to be developed and manufactured....
Unfortunately not easy, but with the money I get from my current ongoing Pellet Extruder Pre-order Launch, I will try to get us there. 🙁
@@greenboy3d If the pressure is higher wouldn't the motor have to push more? So wouldn't it be possible to get feedback from the motor?
Or if that wouldn't be possible, the shaft of the auger should technically twist more or less based on how hard it pushes the material so wouldn't it be possible to use strain gauge stickers to check that? Of course the shaft would have lengthened to fit the stickers and be intentionally weakened in order for it to very slight (non-destructively) deform.
Of course this is just a speculation and doesn't have to work at all.
Really good and informative video, I'll be waiting for your recycling video!
Do you think the extrusion flow rate would be smoothed out at all by using a CHT nozzle? They seem to be like a legitimate magic cure all for many flow issues, I've had good experiences with them.
I don't think so, but did it really "even-out" your flow? Or did it just increased your max flowrate?
If we use a 1.75mm nozzle with your extruder it would be very easy to make custom home made filament. Would you make a contraption that could make good quality filament with even thickness using your screw extruder setup? it doesn't need to be very fast. Most of us have basic filament 3d printers which we don't wanna tinker with so a cheap home assembled filament maker would actually be something I'd like to buy to go with my 3d printer.
Is there air bubble inside pellets?
Since the extruder is in a vertical position air, bubbles move but also get pushed upwards by the screw due to gravity.
You do also get less bubbles when printing with "Wet" Filament/pellets because the molten plastic is more pressurized when it comes out of the nozzle which increase the point at which water starts to vaporize
Does that answer your question? 🙂
Great approach, I have been looking for this type of approach for a couple of years now. Looking forward to the next video where you will present you extruder
I am sure you will love :)
Can't wait for it. :)
I'm a little bit underwhelmed by the regular filament benchy, since you shouldn't have stripes on a properly tuned printer. Also those benchies are scaled?
So I'm not sure the comparison is fair. Though I do appreciate your work in this direction, it's a great idea and a great prototype!
But what about retraction? I mean it would seam as if the ooze would be pretty high. Awesome idea either way.
rotating the extruder screw backwards creates under pressure that prevents ooze for a short time similar like in a filament extruder... Enough time for travel movements without ooze
@@greenboy3d The only way I see to keep this small and have good output quality is to measure the pressure in the chamber. I'm wondering if it could be done by measuring axial load on the screw.
If someone starts manufacturing pellet conversion kits for filament printers, this could become a trend. I have an Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro, which uses Klipper, and I assume that it will just require updating the settings in the slicer for how much it advances the screw stepper instead of the direct drive steppers.
I expect that one of the key things will be to work out how to safely purge the hot-end, since it's not as simple as pulling out the filament, and allowing the melted plastic to cool inside the screw might cause some issues. So long as it is electrically compatible with a direct-drive extruder and can be supplemented with a bed probe, the hobbyist can swap the print heads between the filament and pellet extruder. A quick-change carriage that accepted both types of tools would make this even easier.
Thank you for your comment :)
I think you will love the next video in which I will show the pellet extruder in more detail
the real question is where is he finding 1kg bags of pellets for $5?
Do you want a detailed video on where to buy pellets cheap?
@@greenboy3d I for one would love such a video.
Ye
yessss@@greenboy3d
@@greenboy3d yes please
Is it possible to pre-melt the pellets, before it gets to the auger, and then control the flow from there? This would mean that the pellet size is irrelevant and the temperature and pressure in the auger takes over. It may also help to mitigate any bubbles that may be created in the melting process.
Hard to say whether this would work or not, but it would definitly increase the cost of the Pellet Extruder
By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
cool stuff! i wish you the best for your fresh channel - but since it seems like you already really know what youre doing you probably will hit it off :)
Thank you 🙃
Impressive work, love what you've done here!
Oh, wow! This is your first video. At least on this channel of course. I subscribed! It would be very exciting if pellet printing could become practical, affordable, and widespread. I would figure the hardest part is making sure no air gets into the pellet melting process, but it doesn't seem like that's the exact issue. Very interesting. I look forward to more of your videos.
Thank you! In the next video will show the extruder in more deepth
By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
I have a question. Can you replace the nozzle on the pellet printer to 1.8mm and basically make your own spool from the cheaper pellets? Then run that filament in a extruder printer?
😂 Sound like an interessting idea!
Should I try this out in one of my next videos?
If you have more then one printer and can find a 1.8mm nozzle then yes it would be very cool to do. Also where do you find plastic pellets? I've tried in the past as I am a Amazon shopper in the USA and couldn't find supplier nor a low cost pellet to filament machine
The cartridge system from 2D printers is the reason pellet extrusion is not mainstream. Qui prodest is the only question you need to ask. All of these big filament manufactureres would go out of business in no time if pellet extrusion was the norm.
There is no "big filament". To my knowledge, there isn't a cartel either, nor is the technology in any way proprietary.
Including manufacturing, packaging, distribution and taxes, it is pretty hard to make filament for under around 16 euros per kilogram, with most being around 20 for a reason. Keep in mind you have to make very consistent filament, pack it, ship it, pay your workers, have some profit to invest and so on.
There are quite a lot of filament factories, at least in the EU and they offer a shitton of options. No need to use fancy words or start conspiracy theories.
If you want cheap filament in Europe, there is GST3D, in bulk a kg is under 10 euros, but it's not necessarily the best quality.
Total BS. Cartridges are proprietary, they are being sold by the same companies that produce printers itself, they sometimes sell cheap printers and make most of the money from cartridges. The idea is to force people to stick to their cartridges and prevent them from using ones from competition.
Filament is just a form of a material, much like sheet paper, it is industry wide standard, the same for all manufacturers, it is not proprietary in any way and there is nothing special in it to make it work only with the certain 3D printer model.
Love the open design for the the hopper! Could potentially add in color pellets as you go and do some crazy stuff!
That is exactly what such an extruder is great at 😄
By the Way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
You're on to something important here.
Thank you! Stay tune for the next video 🙃
Speaking as a complete noob, would it be possible to pre-melt pellets in a reservoir and using something like your screw feeder (in a size compatible to the printer head) feed it directly to the nozzle? The cost of materials alone (not to mention the printer) has kept me from 3d printing.
I am not fully understanding your Question. Can you clarifiy it a bit more? 🙂
@@cybyrd9615 It sounds like your are assuming the WORLD is only the US, but infact no one was talking about US.
I live in germany and all prices I mentioned are real whether for PLA, TPE or PPA GF50
It just depends on where you are looking and buying from
My Friend the only one who is missleading is you 😅
c'mon, the reason they're a different colour is that one is more white and one is more creamy in colour?! don't want to be a hater, but it just lowers the content quality hugely when things like that are said
You may or may not know it but upon recycling of PLA or too much heat exposure PLA starts to change its color to a darker one until it turns completely black with extremely weak mechanical performance.
Therefore, it was important to mention that the color difference is just due to a different color used in the plastic, because people might otherwise assume that my pellet extruder causes plastic to significantly degrade while printing, which is not the case.
I hope now you understand the more in-depth reasoning behind that statement "Stupid color" statement 🙂
Came here to write this
@@MrJ2thes What?
@@greenboy3dSorry it's taken me so long to see your response; I hugely appreciate the clarification. I wish you had said this in the video, because it would've been so much more clear - perhaps I was just missing context.
Please invent a similar method for resin printing. Looking forward to your video "Emulsified Vegetable Oil or vs Bottled Resin, which is the future?"
Is there a similar issue with resin 3D printing like "Filament / Pellets"? 🤔
@@greenboy3d No this guy is just confused
Is there really no issue?@@cybyrd9615
@@greenboy3d issue?? I said there’s no way to do what this guy suggested Resin printing will always be extremely toxic and expensive
Hear me out: what if, extrude your own filaments from pellets.
I have plans to develop a machine for that :)
Where did you get that prices? Good filaments costs 15-22EU per 1kg
Ok, please show me at least 1 "Good Filament" offer for Nylon Carbon Fiber Filament for 15-22EU per 1kg
We're going to have desktop injection molds at this rate lol
We already do
@@cybyrd9615 TIL
I am planning to make my Pellet Extruder available to everyone but I need your help first
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
nice video. I can't sit through many 3-d printing videos because the speaker rambles on about nothing and takes too long to get to the point. you present everything clearly and succinctly. Good work!
Thank you, I'll do my best to keep it that way 😄
Do you have a topic suggestion for my next video?
@@greenboy3d The extruder, of course :)
You can repurpose the filament nozzle and extrusion setup you took off from your modded printer for the waste reuse. You turn them around, funnel the waste through the hot-end whatever way (gravity or pressure if ground stuff, just the pull force on the other end if strings of bottles) and on the other end, use the extrusion to make a string, at the exit of the extruder you cut it up into bits with a rotating blade driven by the same motor as the extruder to make it simpler and sync the cutting to the extrusion rate for better size consistency.
Cool stuff. Sounds like this should be the goto method for experimental printing (parts, printer calibration, design experimentation), quality is good enough and the easier reuse gives more options to fail a print (or just reprint a broken piece from the same exact material for color consistency or something). And filament printing is much better for stuff like board games, art projects, printing services and stuff like that.
Enjoyed the video. Very impressive for a first video! Always happy to find new creators. You have a new subscriber.
P.S. I think you might need more light on yourself, so you can lower ISO. You're a bit grainy.
Thank you! 🙂
It was indeed a bit dark, so I bumped the light a bit while editing. Probably that's why people keep asking why I look AI generated 😅
Do have an idea about how these extruders perform within highspeed printing?
Currently I am limited with the Ender 3 V2 by speed because it cannot output enough electricity for the extruder motor. While printing the extruder motor doesn't even get warm.
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Could you sort the pellet sizes to improve flow rate tolerance?
"Standard Pellets" are already quite uniform. The main Issue is the size 3-5mm itself
It would be ideal to have pellets in the size of 1mm and they can also easily be manufactured like "Standard Pellets" but no one really does that because the "Plastic processing industry" wants the bigger ones
That's why my new "Home recycling method" aims to create pellets with a size between 1 to 1,5 mm which would also mean better tolerance because they can stack up more evenly in the Pellet extruder barrel
Where i can buy pellets? It is not that accessible. I can't find in amazon or aliexpress
Filament is made from pellets, when the prices of pellets are higher than you are getting scammed. But don't worry, like I said, There will be videos regarding sourcing pellets teaching you have to find good pellet prices, and additionally I will use my influence to organize special deals with pellet suppliers so that you can enjoy cheap pellet prices
How does this system perform nozzle retraction?
Retraction works with my Pellet Extruder similarly as it does with Filament Extruders, by reversing the Extruder Motor direction.
Additionally, There will be “ready to use” slicer profiles and guides that will teach how to find the right slicer settings for your individual use case.
Doesn't the compression at the end off the feed screw when it enters the nozzle, doesn't that mitigate the problem with uneven flow? If the melt zone and the area of compression was longer wouldn't that solve it?
It might "even out" the flow a little bit, but I have tried it since making these "Prototype" screws is quite expensive.
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
To get better consistency, your extruder screw has to be much larger than your nozzle, but doing so will increase weight of the assembly. There has to be an acceptable tradeoff. Another parameter, the average pellet size could be tweaked by grinding the pellets to a much smaller size.
You are spot on! The hard part is to decide which tradeoff is better or worse.
You are also right with grinding pellets down to smaller size, but I wonder whether you have ideas on how this could be done? 🙂
what speed can you print at vs filament?
interesting! how does retraction and retraction speed work? does it build up hydraulic pressure? does it cause oozing or stringing?
Yes, retraction works with my Pellet Extruder similarly as it does with Filament Extruders, by reversing the Extruder Motor direction.
Oozing and stringing does still exist as it is the case with Filament extruders when the slicer settings are not optimized for the spefic Plastic you are using.
Additionally, There will be “ready to use” slicer profiles and guides that will teach how to find the right slicer settings for your individual use case.
How do you handle pellet removal for distinct color change, or are you limited to gradient changes due to the challenges of feed stock removal/replacement mid-print?
All your qustions will be answered in the next video. Pellet removal is easier than you think, so stay tune for my next video 🙂
Hi, that's a really interesting idea, have manufacturers already ventured in this direction? In any case, converting filament printers into pellet printers seems fairly straightforward, you just need to industrialise the manufacture of the extruder. One idea regarding the difference in size between the pellet grains, why not first pass them through a sieve to harmonise the dimensions, which should allow a more regular flow, at least that's what I thought when I saw this passage in your video. In any case, I hope that in the long term this will indeed be the future of 3D printing, as the reduced cost of materials should interest many printers and perhaps encourage printer manufacturers to look into this development.
I am planing to make my extruder available to everyone.
Would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
@greenboy3d there you go I've answered your questions as best I could ;o)
Where do you source your pellets? On ebay its more expensive than filament.
I will make a video about that topic in the next weeks,
@@cybyrd9615 Well if go straight forward and google PLA pellets then you obviously gonna encounter all middle man resellers selling it for filament like prices😅
You have to know the tricks and the situation.
But what do you mean with misleading?
@@greenboy3d Yeah, to have the best chance at success with this you would need to provide good cheap sources of obtaining the pellets worldwide not just in Europe. 🙂
What if you anneal the 3d print, would that even out the strengt differences?
Maybe, haven't tried it yet. Does that work?
@@greenboy3dCNC Kitchen did that with printed parts made from bottles and it significantly improved strength
Then it probably would also work with pellet 3d prints@@zUltra3D
How do you dry out your pellets? I assume using a filament dryer, but what do you use to hold the pellets in the dryer?
If I want to dry something out, I do it in the oven.
And if the pellets need to "stay" dry I put a lit on the pellet tank and the "extruder opening". Plus if you need to you can "reinforce" the pellet tank with silica gel to eliminate any moisture within the conveying system.
Of course It's not completly airtight but for the most part... 😀
Thank you@@greenboy3d
you might be into something here, humidity in pellets could be causing all sort of problem, including weaker parts. a dryers fitted in the upper part of the tube to push hot dry air might gives some interesting results.
I hope that you keep pushing this method forward! 🎉
Man, great job! I'm waiting for commercial product from you, will totally buy pellet extruder for 150-200$ even in half-diy form. But i would like to see more tests - speed test, strenth test. It is perfect thing for mass production.
Well then order your Popcorn and wait for the next video! 😉
Thank you for your kind words ❤
Genius solution to print from the source material. Well done!
I wonder if instead of controlling the flow out the nozzle by the auguring in of new pellets, go back to the method used in injection molding and load a chamber full of molten plastic and ram it through the nozzle by pushing with the auger (not through rotation but by moving the whole auger down).This would need special slicing such that the printhead only moves when the plastic is ready to flow (maybe load enough plastic for the layer, though that might require too much volume im not sure)
I am surprised at how good enough your print quality seems. I cant help but wonder how many failed prints happened that didnt get shown. Nevertheless it will be interesting to see where you go with this, keep up the good work!
Be assured, the graveyard is hugh 😅
But what I showed you is just the current progress and I am sure it can be done even better
I wonder if a longer melt zone in the screw would improve the flow rate consistency? Great work! I’ve wanted this for years.
Thank you! 🙃
A longer meltzone might help with flow rate consistency, but then other new problem would arrive which I am going to cover in my next video.
Do you maybe have any questions that you would like to ask about pellet 3d printing or my extruder?
impressive result so far!
how about machining an actual screw? i want to try this, hopefully soon..plus, i remember seeing some on alibaba. pretty big still, though..
Thank you for your appreciation :)
In the description is a link to a short 2 question survey about how I could improve the extruder further more, but at end you can enter your email. If you do that then you will be automatically notifed once the extruder will be available if you want that 😀
Do you maybe have any questions that you would like to ask about pellet 3d printing or my extruder?
@@greenboy3d you used a wood drill, right?
all plastics equipment i had to do with had nicely polished surfaces for flow and often affecting the properties of the end-product to a degree, also for general process reliability. but its expensive. the real magic is above my paygrade pretty quickly. until now, done mostly mould-making rather than injection..-
@@greenboy3d already done. will send you an email, hopefully even this month! :)
Could you pre-melt the pellets before they enter the extruder or heat the entire extruder? Seems like having a larger volume of liquid plastic would give you better control over the flow rates, since you don't have air getting trapped in the extruder with the pellets?
With the pellets being delivered through a long pipe, doesn't this result in a higher weight being put on the print head? I'm still pretty new to 3d printing, but when I read up on direct drive vs bowden, the extra weight on the moving print head was one of the downsides of direct drive.
The Pellet Extruder I have build is much lighter than other ones that you see around, it just limits a little the max sprint speed but thats almost it.
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Wow, really cool! Good job on making that. I got to see more of this in the near future.
Use a fine grain pellet to decrease the volume of empty space - this also will help with improving even pressure in the hotend. Ali express has pla powder but I couldn’t find any pellets that are the size of sand granules. Perhaps you could diy with a grain mill, dry ice/liquid nitrogen to decrease the temps so it doesn’t melt the pellets during the grinding process? Then you’d have to use a sieve on the “grains” to get all the larger piece out.
I was just eyeing my coffee grinder thinking the same thing 😅
Awesome video; I can't wait to see where this technology goes!
Excellent work man! I see that this is your first video. Im looking forward to more. With the right marketing and with enough iterating, im fairly certain that youll have the demand for a product like this. Best of luck!
Thank you for your comment! 😀
By the way there is a Greenboy Discord Community Server with almost 100 people. If you'd like to join then there a link in the description
And what about the energy consumption of each, is it worth to make the processing of ballets in to filament your self?
I don't think that it's need a lot more heat than filament ones. That heat block may uses 60W heating element, and it's not all-time on as it's pid controlled. Btw, You won't make filaments from pellets here, you will skip that step and use the pellets directly to print.
It uses a 70 Watt heater cardrige so this a tiny amount more than normal filament printers
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Hey, can you get dr. D flow to review your hotend? He is the only other TH-camr that uses pellets. Or someone local to Germany like cnc kitchen or made with layers.
Seems like it is too good to be true.
I think it would have a much bigger effect if you send for example CNC Kitchen an email with this request.
Because if I email him trying to convince him to review a "product" then he might refuse, but it's different when a fan asks for that 🙂
Thank You. It is. VERY interesting topic. Something has to be done about costly filament and your procedures seem to have achieved that. Thank you
Some newer 3d printers have force sensors in the nozzle. I wonder if it could do flow rate calibration in real time to compensate for the uneven distribution of pellets. An extra air gap between pellets? Force on the nozzle drops, the extruder turns a few extra steps to bring it back to normal.
Do you know some of the names of the 3D printers you are talking about? Would like to take a look at them.
And by the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. Your opinion would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
all the bamboo labs printer do. even the A1 mini @@greenboy3d
I made an PCL pellet extruder and put it on a creality ender. In prototyping, the sticky PCL got stuck EVERYWHERE. In the end, with the right pid, we got a decent benchy at decent speeds
What is the website where you can buy pellets for $3 - $8? The cheapest I can find is about $10, but I want to try this to save money
You probably just encountered resellers that try to make some extra dollars selling pellets to unaware 3D printer users. In the future I will make a video on "How to source pellets". it will help you. 🙂
By the way, would you mind answering 2 questions which I need to improve my Pellet Extruder before I make it available? In the description is a link to a short survey. It would help me a lot to improve the Extruder 🙂
Would it be possible to have the pellets go into a grinder first to reduce their size ? or would that just bind up in the screw more
As long as your pellets are in the range of 0.3 to 5mm you're be good.
What is the solution to the air pockets that form around the pellets? This is the main reason we use filament instead of pellets.
What do you mean by that?
I'd love to see follow up videos in regards to the creation and assembly of your extruder.
Then I suggest you to order some popcorn and wait for the next video since it will be exaclty I will do! 😄
To manage flow rate you could filter your pellets by size with some meshs.. So there is less variation within a print.
If you shred for example your old 3d prints into granules, then this method of using meshes works very well as I showed it in this video: th-cam.com/video/eWgzi4a1bJo/w-d-xo.html
However, normal pellets are generally speaking about the same size but have due to their shape from certain angles different sizes which make proper filter almost impossible...
Good ideas! 👍I definitely will convert 1 of my printer to pallet extruder printer for Big stuff which does not require precision function. All those test print & benchies can be recycled. Not only that many plastic containers can be shredded and repurposed for household use. Thanks for sharing ❤
This is one of the best ideas I have seen, I will keep up with your work and hopefully one day be able to get my hands on one!