Homemade filament spools

The Filastruder works fine now, so I was thinking about how to get some cheap spools for all the future filament. There are some printed version, which would work if I'm the only user but if I want to sell a bit filament to my local 3D printing community I will need a cheap alternative.

I did not find a lot of offers which would suit my needs for a spool so I glued together two toilet paper roll to make the core diameter bigger and put some cardboard on the sides, drilled holes in the sides and voilà a nice filament spool basically no cost.

I'm gonna test its functionality tonight but it looks promising.

Filastruder working!

Seeing how much hassle I still have with my printer I´m positively surprised how well the Filastruder and Filawinder work together.

Everything comes together nicely and the documentation is good, but the "hobbyists charm" is not lost.

This is our configuration. The Filastruder is angled 45° in order for the plastic to exit in a nice curve. In the final configuration the machine will stand completely upright so that the hot and soft plastic can exit smoothly.

This is the laser meter. I find it the most genius solution of all. The laser project a line onto photocells. Depending on how high or low he shadow of the filament is it tells the winder to speed up or slow down, so that constant tension is applied.

The last step is spooling. On the left side of the blue box is a little servo that controls the arm in a way that distributes the filament evenly on the spool.

There are some minor details still to work on like finding a good equilibrium between temperature, speed and filament diameter, but I´m already printing with self produced filament. Ill report on that next time.

Recycling test

Since out Filastruder is doing so well I was looking into reusing my print scrap.

First I just put the parts in my kitchen blender. Everything bigger than 2-3mm did not get shredded

Then I melted down some pieces in the oven and got a niece sheet of plastic.

 After freezing the sheet for 15 min I put it in the blender again. This worked better, but nearly destroyed the blender. You can see the clear plastic pieces broken of from the blender it self.

Maybe with a glass blender, more time in the oven to get the sheet thinner, and more freezing this will work better, but a blender with a glass case is not cheap to come by.

Final judgment for filament producers

Comparing all machines brought some interesting insight, but judge for yourself.

Here is a judged comparison (for raw data see below).

	Filabot	Filastruder	Extrusionbot	Filafab
Price in €	475	205	460	850
Crusher	In planning	No	No	Yes
ABS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PLA	Yes	limited	Yes	Yes
Speed cm/min	12-50/1kg in 6.6h	15-60/1kg in 12h	60-91	120
Spooling	No	Yes +120€	Yes	No
Kit/Assembled	Kit	Kit	Assembled	Assembled
Max 21	13	13	17	17

Red = 1 points; Yellow = 2 points; Green 3= points

Filabot:  Relatively high priced for its capabilities. For the same price the Extrusionbot looks much better.

Filastruder: The big plus here is the price however the specs show that this machine only covers the very basics and the PLA issue troubles me.

Extrusionbot: Has the best cost benefit ratio, combines a medium price with high extrusion speed and crusher and spooling are built in.

Filafab: Leads with some impressive speed, but is also double as expensive as all other models.

These are the raw data.

	Filabot	Filastruder	Extrusionbot	Filafab
Price in €	475	205	460	850
Crusher	In planning	No	No	Yes
ABS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
PLA	Yes	limited	Yes	Yes
Speed cm/min	12-50/1kg in 6.6h	15-60/1kg in 12h	60-91/n.a.	120/n.a.
Spooling	No	Yes +120€	Yes	No
Kit/Assembled	Kit	Kit	Assembled	Assembled

Filament producer options - Extrusionbot

The Extrusionbot

A mid priced machine (625$) from a successful kickstarter campaign looks like it was designed for desktop use with a small foot print and a convenient auto spooling feature, claims to be very fast and doesn't seem to discriminate against PLA.

This seems to be it for available filament producers. There some building templates and how to´s for DIY machines and 2-3 more in the development phase I didn´t consider so far.

Next time: A comparison of all machines

Filament producer options - Filafab

The Filafab 

A successful kickstarter project as well, priced at the high end at 699 pounds, which is double the price the kickstarter models sold. The machine looks sleek and well designed, claims to be suited for ABS and PLA and has a build in crusher, which could account for some parts of the raised price.

Next time: Extrusionbot

Filament producer options - Filastruder

The Filastruder.

The Filastruder is on the cheaper end of the spectrum. With 279.99$ (excl shipping) so cheap indeed that I question why the Filabot is comparatively so expensive or what the mechanical/technical differences are. They claim to have sold 1000 units already which would speak for the machine and the kickstarter campaign  seems to have run smoothly. The machine looks a bit simpler but the basic mechanism looks very similar to the Filabot.



I especially like the Filawinder upgrade and the plastic filter to avoid filament with contaminants.
The main contra I see with this machine is that they particularly say that the primary use is ABS, because PLA is more delicate to handle and requires good control of dryness and cooling.

Conclusion: This seems to be a  good starter because of the relatively low price however I would like to understand the price difference to the filabot.

Next time: Filafab

Filament producer options - Filabot

Getting to produce our own filament should reduce the cost to 10-20% of the normal 30€/spool price.
Models range from 300-800€. Most of them are still in the Kickstarter process so we will focus on the ones already out.

First up the Filabot (649$ excl shipping). If I remember correctly the Filabot kickstarter campain is started 1.5-2 years ago and as we see produced a working machine. It seems to do its job but as we know from the Eventorbot campaign that doesnt have to mean anything. The Filabot was featured in Make magazine which means even less, since the only repeat what the manufacturer is saying.
Nonetheless the machine looks solid to me and the price seems high enough for some quality parts to be in the kit.
I already contacted the makers for some details on the their recycling unit.

I´d like to hear from you what you think of this kit. What impression do you have of its workings (Youtube search link) and what have you read on 3D Printings blogs etc?

Next time: the Filastruder

P.S.: Try out the "Filament Tag" to find all post about the machines I considered.