Making 3D printing filament might seem very simple to most people. Put in some pellets into a machine, and catch the filament as it gets extruded. And while we are at it, why don’t we just grind down failed prints and other unwanted plastic bits and put it through the machine? Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, yes and no.
Getting your hands on an extruder machine is half the problem. The real struggle begins when you try to get the diameters within the required range or not having the proper setup to keep foreign particles out of the process.
When creating filament without expensive equipment, it is difficult to maintain the same diameter throughout the extrusion process. In addition, during the entire process from the pellet stage to the filament stage, there are many opportunities for foreign particles (dust, specifically) to sneak in and cause problems in the future during the actual printing.
These are just some of the more common issues that you can face when trying to create filament in-house with virgin pellets. If we are attempting to reuse old plastics, there are a more issues that can arise, as talked about in this 3DHubs post.
However, if you intend to invest money and time (lots of it!) into a filament production unit, you would indeed be saving money extruding your own filament in-house. On top of that, if you intend to recycle plastics, there will be an additional block of money and time investment required for research and development (type of plastics that can be combined, ratio of plastics, etc.)
In short, if you are a home user looking to get your hands on some recycled filament, it might be not be the best option to invest such amounts of time and money into a production unit. Why not let us do the hard work and try some of the recycled filament that we have?
Many of the YouTube 3D printing experts have been extremely positive about our filament – see what they have said by watching the video below:
Still not convinced? We’re so confident that you’ll be impressed with our filament quality, we offer FREE samples of our recycled PLA, recycled ABS and recycled PETg