Revolutionary extruder,plastic shredder, winder

[AndyGabbo]

Hey, We have been working on a extruder that would allow us not just use already existing pellets but any plastic object you can find around the house. with inbuilt shredder, barrel with 4 independent heated zones we achieved precise filament thickness. we are planning on adding air filtering too, as the smell of melting plastic is not what you should have in your house.

we are planning on making this to a consumer targeted device so everyone who have a 3D printer can afford a extruder to it. The price based on our calculations should be around 600-650$ without shipping for a complete set of extruder with shredder.


the question is would any of you be interested in a product like this ? any tips ?

[curious aardvark]

Seen a couple in action the filabot was fairly impressive.

But given just how much filament I can buy for that kind of money, and also given that it's much better quality than the stuff I'd be able to make and the fact that commercial filament is getting cheaper all the time.
I just don't see a mass market for this kind of thing.

Okay you've got your treehugger vegan types who actually believe they can make a difference by doing this kind of thing - but they're (thankfully) pretty scarce.

Good luck with your project - but were it me I'd be looking at something else to actually make money as a business.

A cheap add on laser engraver/cutter to fit any standard 3d printer - for example. I'd like one of those.

[Sebastian Finke]

Overall a good idea. However it really isn't much use for the average 'I just wanna print stuff' user. Most people can't the difference between plastics, let alone the different grade of each plastic. You'll find them chucking everything into the hopper (?)... PET, polyethylene, polystyrene, ABS, etc and then wondering why the print looks awful.

In the right hands it would be awesome. I sort through our recyclables every week and the amount of plastic boggles the mind. would be good to reuse it.