Feeding a print farm

"Print Farm"...wasn't that a Spinal Tap song?

-Kevin

Here I thought $25 per Kg for PETG was rough. Man $10 must be horrible. I wish you luck in your business. You might succeed where many have failed. I think however you might find it hard to keep your farm fed unless buy like 50/50 of raw pellets and already packaged filament. I don't think your Filastruders will be able to keep up. What about a failure or mechanical issues?

There is 1.2KG of polymer in each unit of my product. Wholesale price feedstock will allow me to compete directly on price with my closest competitor. Otherwise I would have to depend on my position as a "boutique" product.

I took 2 years off from having fun in my shop to self study World economics, various business models and how to actually run a business. My investment in my printers is a business decision to support the production of a specific product. I tried other processes for my product before buying the big printers. This is not a hobby for me.

If you sit down and do the Math, the Robot Digg Extruder system output is in the same ball park as the Filastruder. Even just looking at the power consumption. Extrusion is not Rocket Science, it is more about attention to the proper details.

I could build my own extruder for half the price of a Filastruder but I have a another $150 to pay which will save me weeks and also direct support for getting myself started. As for the winder, I could not do the electronics so it is worth full price for me.

In doing my research, I have found filament extrusion for 1KG spools to require a lot of hand labor. Hand Labor and shipping cost. Well that is another thread.

Hi Carl
Thanks for the well wishes. I outlined my reason above why $10 is horrible. But most importantly, I am coming into this for business reasons rather than as a hobby. A 1KG hobby spool of PETG at $25 is fair price if it is actually extruded in the US. There are a few companies claiming "Made in the United States" but designing and packaging in the US with globally sourced components can be legal. I was never able to locate the extruders for Fox Smart or 3D Soul Tech. Fox Smart no longer claims US made. I have been using Ziro from Amazon which is direct from the manufacturer in China. They are quite proud of their product and are not lying. I respect that.

I also wonder where the popular $30 and $40 dollar brands are actually extruded.

I am a machinist. There are no mechanical issues for me.

I was hoping to find other people here that have experience extruding.

I constantly ask myself the same questions and have been down the same paths you are presenting. Yes, even the Coex brand. Perhaps I am delusional in thinking what I write may help someone else.

But let me offer the best I have found yet:

Push Plastics:
https://www.pushplastic.com/collections … 3714208967
$380 for a 25KG spool, free shipping. Comes out to $15.20 per KG. This is the best I could hope for and $380 is doable. My printer can print 4 units at a total of 2.4KG. Not having to respool and splice is a huge benefit.

I was about to go with Push Plastics 25KG spool when I saw that I could get the ver 2 Filastruder for less.

I would like to mention Fusion Filaments:
https://fusionfilaments.com/
Turns out he is a member here. USA made I think. I had planned to use his filament early on in my planning stage but I lost the link and forgot his name. He lists the industrial polymer number he is using which is very important to know.

Funny thing is, before I started to understand the filament supply chain, he appeared to me to be an industrial manufacturer. He is extremely knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I did not save the link to his profile or posts.

The one possibility since this is a community, you all could form an extruding co-operative around the guys here that have extruders. Support them and they should support you with competitive pricing. Probably get them to ship in the Master Spool format. There are all sorts of possibilities but perhaps one click ordering with 3 day delivery is too hard to pass by.
Resin pellets are a very cheap commodity. What you are buying is lots of hand labor for 1KG spools, a non recyclable spool and lots for shipping.

JVCP
Thanks for posting.
I pulled up the paper by Pearce along with other articles.
I could not find the throughput in all the articles for the RR Recyclebot. But it only has a 40 Watt heater which is not much different than everything else out there. But if 40 Watts is enough to throughput 0.4KG/Hour then it should be easy to upgrade a Filastruder motor for higher output.

He does state that a larger die hole and more cooling are needed for higher throughput which is information I was searching for. So thanks for posting. This is a valuable takeaway for me.

That Recyclebot was developed at a university with time and money to burn. (Money from some students going into debt and grad students paying the school to do the work).
I see zero innovation in the design. And since they use the ridiculous figure of only 24 hours to build, I would assume all the other projections such as true cost are way off.

The true cornerstone of recycling is is the sorting, cleaning and shredding. After that you have a usable and marketable commodity.

This is an extruder and should not even have the term recycle attached. Steel mill recycle steel and they do not call themselves recycling mills.

The Filastruder ver 2 is elegant in its simplicity and what it does. Its gravity powered tractor pull system is simple and needs no control circuitry or calibration, at least in terms of human lifespan.

Sorry to seem like such a grump but I can no longer afford to take anything at face value anymore. This is my last chance to get a business off the ground. I ask a lot of annoying detailed questions. Details are extremely important and the first thing I have learned to do is strip off the hype and features list. Drill down to the essentials such as heater power.