Kickstarter For Plastic Shredder (Page 1 of 2)

Or people can go to http://filamaker.eu/shop/ and buy it now

That pricing for the standalone Filamaker mini XXL is only for businesses and requires a VAT number in the EU. The same requirement goes for the standalone Filamaker mini. The cheapest Filamaker available to the public is the mini with its housing, which is once again $600.

There is the USA made Industrial reclaimer the filabot

https://www.filabot.com/collections/fil … 3294958148

But at over $4000 USD price tag this 600lb/  255 kilo 4 HP 3 phase powered machine is hardly a home hobby tool.

yes i am working on more prototypes. i will be doing a scale model out of steel for the shredder. The reason why i dont have one currently is that it would cost at least 500-600 dollars to make 1 full size shredder not bought in bulk in its final configuration. That is why filamaker sells them at that price because that is how much it costs to make them one by one. so i will be making like a 50% scale version using weaker steel. also i am still going to be working on the deisgn as the campaign goes on.

the plastic version out of acrylic that i made cost me 2 dollars for material and cut. it was a great proof of concept it cut paper and stuff and that one was 65% scale.

Hmm...now that shredding options are getting more interesting, it may just be time to create a sticky for the different options available, especially since this one needs early attention to take off.
So far, I know (from least to most expensive):

• Meat Grinder (picky and painful, but cheapest and doable)

• Robust Paper Shredder (automatic, but coarser and weaker than above)

• This shredder (better than above, cheapest efficient design)

• Filamaker (more durable than above, more industrial)

• Filabot Shredder and industrial shredders (most expensive, highest output)

my shredder is going to be the same or more durable as the filmmaker one. Because i am doing post treatment on the steel i am able to keep the cost low and set the strength and the ductility of the steel however i want while with his pre processed steel what you get is what you get. However he is quite a ways farther along as far as the industrial design of the housing and stuff than i am.

yea $100 doesn't even cover the cut price for waterjet (it cost about 3 dollars a minute to cut)

yea i agree about plastic that really isn't very viable as i do agree as i have designed a filament maker that resign is hella cheap to get as i got my natureworks for $1.5 a pound.

however where you will make returns is if you keep recycling unwanted prints from that 1.5 to 4 dollars a lb. lets just say that you buy that 4$ lb and you never buy a lb of resin again? Generally people print the same material so it all can be recycled together however the color is a different story. For me i have a full bag of about 5-10 lbs of plastic at home that are failed prints (i print alot about a spool a month). it would be really nice to reuse that filament. and most of that is from full price filament spools.

I agree that the numbers are pretty rough and that it is difficult to get a ROI as you have to print alot. but the demand is out there seeing from this https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16 … le_created and also all the questions i have been asked at maker faire last year.

I was just about to say that casting might be the way to go, since I can easily get a decent meat/bone grinder for under $75, but custom-manufactured units like industrial shredders always seem to cost a fortune. While the upfront costs are staggering, I could easily see a robust $150-$200 unit achieving a couple dozen grand on Kickstarter. Another $50-$100 for a motor, drive system, and safety housing, and it could be a winner.
Of course, it's a bit late to go this way for the Kickstarter, and the housing might be more expensive than my guess here, but one can hope...

the reason why shredders are more expensive is because of the versatility. Some industrial grade shredders are engineered with so much strength that they can shred cars. Try to do that with a meat shredder. I just did some analysis of the shredder and the max shear I found capable of 280Mpa if max hardened (this is for a not yet optimized design). That is enough to shear brass and aluminum and anything softer try to do that with a meat shredder.

Not from China, it would be made in the US - BigBlueSaw. It'd be less than $120, you're rounding up and not considering the discount tier after 1000 blades. I'm not sure there's value in having the shredder quite that large in terms of maximizing interested customers (if it is too large, it will be too expensive for folks to be interested). I think most folks can get their parts down to baseball size, its going from baseball size to granulate that is difficult. Remember too that the more blades you have, the more torque you need - stronger shafts, bearings, gears, and possibly motor.

The "$100" number mentioned was just for the waterjet parts.

Just trying to help.

I didn't know that a meat grinder was an effective machine. I watched a few videos and it doesn't look like it works. Is it a viable alternative?

The main problems with the grinder are heat, input size and viable output.
Like an industrial extruder, the plastic in the grinder experiences enough shear to generate heat. It becomes noticeable after grinding for about 5 minutes by hand.
Due to the size of the opening, the grinder can only handle chunks about the size of a ping-pong ball if they have an irregular shape that catches on the auger. An actual ping pong ball would have to be split into pieces before the grinder could process it.
Finally, the grinder could only manage about a cup of shredded plastic in a minute. In the best scenario, it might make double that, but only with a strong, fast motor and "quick" pieces of plastic.