Peter Stoneham published a new build:

Read more about this build...

 

Have been purchasing all the components over the last few days. Being down under in NZ it might take a while to get everything. I am planning on building my own pellet extruder. There aren't many off the shelf available. Have bought a Nema17 with planetary gearbox and a 8mm compression auger to start with. Am thinking of getting a Titan extruder in the meantime.

 

Here is a photo and sketch of the auger I am going to use. I am thinking of designing a PEEK tube for it to fit into and use inductive heating to directly heat the auger. The aim is to give me finer regulation over the melt temperature. I have a reel of Litz wire in stock which I will wind over the PEEK tube. I will experiment with varying the spacing to give me an ideal thermal spread over the auger transition and metering zones. All theoretical at present as I haven't even received the auger as yet and it might be austenitic SS...

 

I think the best looking 3D printer pellet extruder design I have found so far is one by Mahor Muñiz Cadenas; mahor store

 

Hi, do you have a real name? Anyway, I have ordered pretty much all of the parts but haven't done a final roundup of costs. Since I am down-under in New Zealand I have to indent everything overseas and my go to source for parts is AliExpress so some parts are still in transit. When I posted there were some custom parts that I hadn't costed. One of them was the laser cutting of 56 x 6061-T6 3mm alloy plates which hold everything together. This is now underway locally and came in at $US220. I will get them anodised $US140 which probably isn't necessary if you were penny pinching. The 30kgs of 2040 extrusion arrived cut to precise lengths from China and the freight on this was a big cost $US170. The z-axis belts (I have gone kevlar) definitely reduced the cost of the build once again due to freighting long ball screws. I am going with a MKS Gen V1.3 controller and Discount Smart Controller LCD which is what I have on my Rigidbot printer and is perfectly adequate for my needs. For my build plate I am going for a honeycomb alloy sheet which is a building cladding product. It's well supported and with mesh bed leveling it will be perfectly fine. Currently not planning to heat the bed which would definitely be a big cost. In fact I am planning to put a thin sheet of plywood on top of my build plate so I can staple the parts skirt to the build plate. Remember that I am planning to extrude at a minimum of 0.8mm in recycled plastic so I am not aiming for extremely high tolerances. I will also be designing models to suit this build size. I just did a quick tally up and even with the anodising I am still a little under the $US1k goal. This does not include an extruder by-the-way... Peter

 

Hi Hannah,
it is built and working. The stability is extremely good which is primarily attributed to the unique Double H Belt design. At the design stage I considered many extrusion options and now that it is built I wouldn't go back and change any of the extrusions if I made it again.

 

@Mark Carew - thanks for your feedback and thanks to OpenBuilds as it would not have been created without your collective vision!

 

Hi Peter, sorry for the very late response... I see you are a long standing member of the OpenBuilds team based in South Africa. I have such a bad memory - did you own a Rigidbot 'back in the day'? I still have mine and have followed the Rigidbot/Reliabuild crowd over to MeWe. Currently building a zoetrope called Whirling Dervishes to take to a music festival in Feb
.

 

Such a late response but Thanks Mark for your very encouraging response - much appreciated!