The aim of the project was to create a solution to the massive waste problem that plagues the consumer 3D printing world. Approximately 30% of 3D printed plastic in this market becomes waste as either a discarded protype or failed print etc. Common 3D printing materials such as PLA and PETG are not recycled or processed by most domestic recycling centres and so all this material ends up in landfill. This not only worsens the already failing environment, but unnecessarily increases costs to the user. Whilst there is a small collection of existing solutions, they are either overpriced, unnecessarily large, of poor quality or require an extremely time-consuming assembly by the user.

The solution was ReFilament Pro. A compact and affordable 3D printing filament maker that can produce high quality filament at 1.5m/ minute. The product contains three main elements: The shredder, the extruder and the spooler. The user first shreds their waste plastic, sourced from either 3D printing or household waste, down to uniform 3-4mm chip sizes. These are then fed into the hopper, which supplies the feedscrew with plastic. The feedscrew, powered by a Nema 23 stepper motor running through a 15:1 worm drive gear box feeds the plastic chips down the barrel, where they are heated in the melt zone by two 40W heating cartridges and extruded through the die/ nozzle. This filament is directed past a fan-based cooling stage to help harden the soft plastic, before being passed around two guide wheels and fed through “No Crush Wheels” which have a high pulling force whilst minimising deformation. Form here the filament is wound onto the spool by the spooler. The footprint of the design is 30x40cm, smaller than the working footprint of a i3 based 3D printer.