Here's a few of those posts I was referring to:

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/7470/pla-4043d/
http://www.soliforum.com/topic/8530/pla-100-regrind/
http://www.soliforum.com/topic/8529/pla-4043d/

All Filastruder users, all +/-0.05mm.

I saw on another post that you're not using a Filastruder, it might be worth explaining your setup a bit.

Dehydrating the material is very important. Also there are a few different PLA success stories in the DIY Filament Materials subforum.

My extruder looks pretty much the same as a filastruder, with the only difference that I'm using a 110v band heater, a windshield wiper motor and a motor controller to regulate the extrusion speed. I based my extruder on Ian McMill's design on Instructables. I do pre-dry the pellets before trying to extrude filament, and I let the filament make a "loop" between the extruder and the filawinder. I saw a post from @agilliam showing some beautiful PLA filament extrusion results but didn't post any details regarding temp of anything he did to achieve that consistency. I guess I'll just keep playing with it until I fine tune my settings.

Dehydrating the material is very important. Also there are a few different PLA success stories in the DIY Filament Materials subforum.

elmoret wrote:

It is possible, but more difficult. You'd want to:

- Make sure the PLA is totally dry, with a food dehydrator or similar
- Potentially add cooling in the form of more fans
- Ensure the filament cannot touch anything (like a wall) on the way to the floor. This will likely involve building something to offset the unit from the wall instead of mounting it directly to the wall.

Awesome! I have a old CPU fan that I can use that runs around 100 CFM so that should work. I'm also in my basement so I can mount the filastruder from the ceiling and I can probably find an old food dehydrator somewhere in the basement. Any recommendations on how high to put the filastruder? My setup is for a 3 millimeter diameter. Thank you so much for the help!

P.S I would like to have a filawinder but I currently don't have $170 to spend. I just want to get something working until then.

Did you have any luck extruding PLA? I do have a filawinder, but the filament tolerances for PLA are still way off to be considered usable filament. I tried piece of the filament I made on my Prusa I3 and seemed to work fine for a while, until it got stuck in the printer's nozzle.

It is possible, but more difficult. You'd want to:

- Make sure the PLA is totally dry, with a food dehydrator or similar
- Potentially add cooling in the form of more fans
- Ensure the filament cannot touch anything (like a wall) on the way to the floor. This will likely involve building something to offset the unit from the wall instead of mounting it directly to the wall.

Awesome! I have a old CPU fan that I can use that runs around 100 CFM so that should work. I'm also in my basement so I can mount the filastruder from the ceiling and I can probably find an old food dehydrator somewhere in the basement. Any recommendations on how high to put the filastruder? My setup is for a 3 millimeter diameter. Thank you so much for the help!

P.S I would like to have a filawinder but I currently don't have $170 to spend. I just want to get something working until then.

- Make sure the PLA is totally dry, with a food dehydrator or similar
- Potentially add cooling in the form of more fans
- Ensure the filament cannot touch anything (like a wall) on the way to the floor. This will likely involve building something to offset the unit from the wall instead of mounting it directly to the wall.