Plastic Extruder - 3D print

For our studio class we had to make an plastic extruder from off the shelf parts and materials. The aim of the class project was to make a extruder that is cheap to manufacture with simple tools and machines that people can access in one way or another.

With one class making 3D printers and the other coding the software for Rhino. These studios were very interesting. I wish I saw more of the other classes work though.

The idea that a person can walk down their own street. And pick up plastic bottles (something that is sadly prevalent in all suburbia and cities) and shred the thermo-plastic. Any plastic bottle that has a recycle symbol with the numbers 1-7 will do. And then feed it through the extruder producing a filament which is dictated by the die head on the end of the tube. Its just amazing to think that methods like these are now easily available to just about anyone.

I also just want to state that this design is not ours. It was a project by our teacher Robert Eales, he did it for his PHD research project.  And he was just allowing us to make it for our class.

Porcelain heat plates for the extruder!

Spinning the die........for the 2nd time!

Had to mill out a pocket to allow the heat plate to set flat

Assembly of the extruder in workshop

Aluminium Filament Die to the left, Brass Nut to the Right.

Die head is spun Aluminium, 2.5mm filament hole, inset Brass threaded nut.

This is Engineering guys extruder!

They got theirs hooked up to the electronics

In the end it did push through some fragmented Filament

Final product!

We didn't actually get to see the extruder we made in action. But hopefully it does get used in the studio at uni. Big shout out to Taylor Zhou, Caitlin Wood, Aileen Ng and Jon Wee! Good work guys!