Filament extrusion is a difficult thing.

You need to keep in mind all sorts of things just to be able to get a consistent width.

Things like:

• Plastic material type (some can only be recycled so many times)

• A single spec of dust can clog your nozzle

• combined multiple materials will give inconsistencies

• if the plastic isn't ultra mega dry, the water will form bubbles because of steam

Creating homemade filament is not for the ones that get frustrated easily, they are far away from the quality and user friendliness that modern 3D printers have. But it is a nice little project to keep you busy.

If your goal is to recycle scrap prints and support, then you might wanna watch this first from Dr. D-Flo. He talks about several things, but incoming material variance is a huge deal. He can't get consistent extrusion diameter (because inconsistent material pressure because inconsistent material size) without extruding coarse filament, then pelletizing, then extruding consistent filament.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXY1EygE4R8

If your plan is to recycle old prints, you should try shredding what you have first. That way, you will realize it is ridiculously difficult without spending thousands.

Filament is so cheap these days, it's really not worth making your own with 100% new material (+ colorant) and shredding old prints down to granule size is too difficult to be viable for low volume.

Is this to recover and recycle wasted filament?

The next challenge is filament degradation. Ideally you add some virgin plastic pellets to recycled plastic chunks so that there is enough plasticizer still left in there.

Depending on the filament material, it may be stronger than you think. Brothers Make did HDPE (which is not a common printer filament, I know) recycling 30x without serious degradation. https://youtube.com/watch?v=4v2avVAFFB8

IDK if that's applicable to PLA, but it's worth noting, IMO.

I had not heard about this but have looked into a few other solutions over the years. Is the idea here that you manually wind it to a spool? If so, that part would suuuuuck. I have a pallette 3d (broken btw) and made manual spools and it's super tedious.

If you do get it though post back about your experience.

@wordle unlimited Instead of Artme 3D, You can use Filastruder with a bigger price tag but offers a fully enclosed system and automated features.

Seems like a total waste. That buys a tremendous amount of filament. I don't think even print farms do it. There are so many filament companies out there that the margins have to be razor thin.