Filament Recycler

Brainstorming

We did extensive market and patent research on filament recycling methods and brainstormed many conceptual sketches. Isolating our favorite ideas, we made a decision matrix and settled on a recycled filament welder.

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Preliminary Design

Researching the heating elements that work in a 3D-Printer, we flowcharted the electrical components and code necessary. From there we breadboarded all our electronics together for debugging and I modeled everything into Fusion 360 to create a final model.

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Fabrication

We used an aluminum tube as the main barrel along with a caulking gun to push filament waste through the device. The nozzle was machined on a CNC machine using brass stock and the electronics housing was 3D-Printed and fastened with 1/4-20 hardware. A hole was drilled into the side of the nozzle for the heating cartridge and the whole tube was wrapped in fiberglass exhaust wrap to insulate the heat generated.

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Reflection

It was rewarding to see the resemblance between the final CAD model and finished product with this project, especially considering all the design iterations we went through. We learned a lot about the design process and if I were to revisit this project, I would include a second or third heating element to better disperse heat along the whole barrel of the device as opposed to just the nozzle, and I would spend more time designing the plunger of the device that pushed filament through the barrel as both these issues together made our device difficult to function.