Does any of you have any experience with this? I’m looking at the Felfil Evo pellet extruder which seems like an acceptable option. One thing I don’t understand. Why are the shredder and spooler so ungodly expensive?

I mean, can’t you just use an old blender to grind pieces down far enough for the pellet extruder? The finer the better no? Airborne microplastic may be a concern at some point.

Also the spooler. Is that more complicated than a stepper motor that runs at a certain RPM spinning the spool around? With perhaps a mechanism that slows down a bit after X rotations to compensate for the spool getting thicker. Nothing an Arduino can’t handle. Also don’t grip the spool that tightly so pull strength is more or less equal.

Both the spooler and shredder individually cost more than a pellet extruder does…

  • nyan@lemmy.cafe
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    1 year ago

    I admit you’d be limiting your market to people who consider “helping the environment feels good” to be worth at least $5 if you price the spools at $20 USD. If you want to price it lower, you need more waste, though. So for now, the economics don’t really work out unless we’re talking about really large groups of hobbyist printers, or waste from a business. 🤷

    • TwanHE@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah and you’d be limited to a brown/black ish color if your don’t sort your waste by color