Ever since 3D printing has become a popular tool, the question of waste has been looming in the background. The sad reality of rapid prototyping is that you’re going to generate a lot of prints that just aren’t fit for purpose, even if your printer runs them off perfectly every time. Creality has some products on the way aimed at solving that problem, and [Embrace Making] on YouTube has got his hands on a pre-production prototype of the Creality M1 Filament Maker to give the community a first look.
The M1 is actually only half of the system; Creality is also working on an R1 shredder to reduce your prints into re-usable shreds. [Embrace Making] hasn’t gotten his hands on that, but shredding prints isn’t the hard part. We’ve featured plenty of DIY shredders in the past. Extruding filament reliably at home has traditionally proven much more difficult, which is why we mostly outsource it to professionals.
Lacking the matching shredder, and wanting to give the M1 the fairest possible shake, [Embrace] tests the machine out first using Creality-supplied PLA pellets. The filament diameter isn’t as stable as we’ve gotten used to, and the spool rolling setup needs a bit more work.
Again, this is an early prototype. Creality says they’re working on it and claims they’ll get to ±0.05 mm precision in the production models. Doubtless they’ll also fix the errors that led to [Embrace]’s messy spool. That’s probably just software given that the winding mechanism did a pretty good job on the Creality-supplied spool.
Most importantly, the M1-produced filament does print. The prints aren’t perfect due to the variation in diameter, but they turn out surprisingly well for home-made filament. [Embrace] also shows off the ability to mix custom colors and gradients, but, again, using raw PLA rather than shredded material. Hopefully Creality lets him test drive the R1 shredder once its design is further along.
This is hardly the first time we’ve seen a filament extruder. The goal of this product is to pair with a shredder and use it for recycling, but if you’re going to stick with raw plastic pellets, you may as well print them directly.
Baby steps, but at least it’s something.
Baby steps?
This isnt really anything new. Its just a big brand entry to the market. Its been 13 years since Filastruder’s kickstarter campaign. Similar machines have been available from no name ali sellers ever since.
Don’t be so dismissive.
Cost, reliability, and ease of use are what most for widespread usage. Ease of use and reliability have very much been lacking in prior works and this prototype addresses those issues.
Yes, I’ll recycle my filament while billionaires fly around in their private jets. It’ll certainly help the environment.
pretty sure this is more about long term money savings of being able to reclaim and reuse your waste more than some hug a tree save the planet push.
Well, I guess the key takeaway here is that it’s beter to recycle your leftover plastic than throwing it away, buy new spools, and sponsor those billionaires private jets. You have to start small.
Except it’s literally cheaper to buy new spools. You’d need to print massively and have a high failure rate to even dream of getting an ROI as the M1 is expected to be over $1000. Using Virgin filament means you pay less and don’t waste time on producing some of the worst filament you can imagine.
Okay, buy it as a group then. Buy it for a maker space and then people can buy pellets which are cheaper than filament or recycle unneeded large projects.
It might not change the world, but it changes your world.
To take onself out of this crazyness is where things start. If nobody made a personal change nothing would ever change at global scale. So, precisely because others create pollution could be a good reason to not do the same, to not just add the own share because it doesn’t seem to matter. The range is broad, from private jets to coffee-to-go-mugs. Just choose whatever suits you.
I mean, what’s the point in making, hacking etc? Part of the joy is sourced from being different, non-mainstream, self-contained, creating things from what others threw away. That’s overlapping motivation patterns, I believe.
Thanks for putting my thoughts into writing so well. 👍
I agree with you rumpel. I’m also curious if you could use say PET bottles and recycle them into filament or legos for abs. If it’s PLA only that’s still really cool for me, but not having to buy filament at all would be super cool!
There are folks looking to replace plastic for food containers–but with models and other items you want something that can last.
With smaller power plants being considered, I’d like to see a return of the technique:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UAiggoGBXD8&pp=ygUWc2NvdHQgbWFubGV5IHRveSBhdHRpYw%3D%3D
Here perhaps you could print spaceship miniatures that can retain their shape if dropped.
Counterproductive, performative BS.
The cost of any filament recycler exceeds the (value of the crap filament it will make – cost of operation), in it’s life.
Do the accounting in $, CO2 or ‘virtue’.
Same answer.
What is the value of a spool of recycled, brittle, inconsistent thickness filament?
The cost of the problems will exceed the value of spool of new.
“Why should I stop texting and driving when there’s still drunk drivers out there?”
Because they are a scarce and rare resource. Eventually they sober up
yes, this is definitely about class warfare. Great observation
with any of these machines i’m more curious about polymer degradation than about anything else. But sadly the manufacturer can not answer that because who knows if they are using recycled materials in their batches and that will further compound the degradation of the plastics. There is a reason why there really is so little plastic that actually gets recycled, but then again these are 3d prints and 99.9999999% of them are just stupid things (e-waste) that end up getting thrown away anyway so it might not even matter in this case…….
It’d be interesting to see what volume of waste (rafts, supports, spaghetti and purge “pellets”) is needed to fill a standard 500g spool. Also how many spools to you have to recycle to offset the cost of the filament maker.
Hopefully this doesn’t lead to distribution of nurdles to consumers who will inevitably dispose of some of them in landfill.
“Hopefully this doesn’t lead to distribution of nurdles to consumers who will inevitably dispose of some of them in landfill.”
Seriously doubt that will be a significant impact. Home users arent going to be wasting a ton of their plastic pellets. The shop I used to work at spilled a handful or two everyday filling hoppers. They would hit the floor, janitorial would sweep them up, and off the landfill they would go. Pretty much every injection molding shop in the world pretty much operates that way.
“Hopefully this doesn’t lead to distribution of nurdles to consumers who will inevitably dispose of some of them in landfill.”
Cant speak to the landfill aspect but it most certainly leads to distribution of nurdles to consumers.
“To achieve the stated ±0.05 mm diameter tolerance Creality recommends a 1:1 ratio mix of scrap and virgin plastic pellets. Otherwise, they say the tolerance drops to ±0.1 mm – double the “worst” variance we see in most commercial filaments, and a huge drop in quality from the ±0.02 mm spec we see from higher-end materials.”
The screen (useless) on the top left and all the fancy “design” stuff will make this absurdly expensive. Since you’ll also need a shredder, I doubt you’d get below $1000 to $1500. This is not even including the price for your time to operate the machine and prepare the materials. And the replacement parts for when it’ll break. For the current price of filament spools, it doesn’t make any economical sense to bother recycling it (unless you’re printing more than 50 to 100 spools per year, IMHO).
The hard reality is that plastic is way too cheap to recycle. Oil price should go up a factor of 10 at least to make this viable.
I go through more than 100 spools a year, did the math, and it still doesn’t make sense. Between the high price of the devices, the labor involved and the awful quality of the filament, it just cannot be justified. Creality is currently offering $800 discounts to early adopters, so you’re right when you say that this system will be over $1000. I’m glad someone is taking the risk of developing such a system, but we’re not there yet IMHO.
PLA pellets are somewhat cheaper than filament, so theoretically you could save money if time & the machine cost are not considered. Throwing the recycled stuff in with the fresh pellets would be just an extra benefit.
What I want isn’t a personal shredder and filament shredder but there to be free locations all around to get it recycled for you.
It makes more sense for something like this to service many people instead of individuals.
I actually find the supports often more interesting than what’s being printed.
It gives things that Space:1999 Eagle backbone look.
Control of the waste material type and cleanliness is a notable problem even for enthusiasts who try to recycle their own waste materials. I can’t imagine it working well at scale.
If it can do most common materials. Then it would be a cool accessory. We live in a plastic world, why not recycle and use what we have laying around. Provides an option to buying spool after spool.
while cool I just cant see spending the money these are gonna cost. Im sure they will cost as much as you buying 60-70 rolls of filament. then all that coms out this is nasty grey brown mixed color filament from your scraps so unless you got a need for lots of recycled blah colored filament. You gotta keep your types of scrap all separate so kinds dont get mixed… these things just seem more trouble and expense then they will save plus the downside of just making rolls of grey brown which I have no mass use for. I for see lots of people buying these relizing they arent a great idea and then lots being on marketplace with in months.