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I found this unique looking extruder on TaoBao today. Honestly I'm not even sure exactly how it works, or what it does, but it looks pretty cool. The price is 2800 Yuan (about $453). Would it be worth that, do you think?
Has anyone had any luck ordering on TaoBao? I'm scared, because I doubt there are any refunds.
What do you think? Should I chance it? Can anyone see what this thing does?
http://s28.postimg.org/ir37rcc59/taobao.jpg
I tend to stay away from chinese companies like this. No refunds, high shipping, and usually poorly made products.
Creates filament from ABS or PLA powder. You'll need to find a source for the powder or a suitable shredder for recycling your failed prints.
I'm about a mile away from their office, if Massdrop or someone got interested I could go over and take a look at it.
So does this extruder directly print using powder, or does it create filament for use in printing?
Doesnt look bad in my opinion,
I doubt you can wrong that much, at the end its basicly a motor pushing the plastic to the nozzle that is heated up creating your filament for your 3D printer,
I do think you will need some additions afterwards, I've seen some using water to cool it down, and a motor to pull it, So it would keep that straight line, and afterwards roll it up automaticly on a roll.
I don't know that much about Filament extruders, But it can only go up to 205c right? is that even enough for ABS, as when you print you would need a steady 225-230c.
As high shipping goes, I almost never seen any shipping costs when buying from China, i doubt you will need to pay for shipping for this item aswell.
Can't find a review tho, But thats also as filament extruders arent that populair at all.
But at the end it doesnt look bad, When you look at homebrew units you would need a nice table to put all your wires, control panel and powersupply on.
Perhaps a machine that produces filament does not need to go into the high 200Cs since it has an auger screw that would be pushing the precursor into the extruder, and therefore the precursor does not have to be as molten as it is in the extruder head of a printer. It would be interesting to ask a company that does injection molding of plastics what the temperatures their machines work at.
The price for this machine (~ $US450) seems to be the price that DIY units are said to cost to purchase components.
Old Man Emu