Design and Manufacturing a Prototype Machine for Production of 3D Printing Filaments Using Recycled Plastics

Abstract

Plastic waste has negative economic and environmental impacts. By using a suitable recycling process, it could be repurposed and reused in different applications. One of most interesting application is to produce the 3D printing filaments. This project aims to designing and manufacturing a prototype machine that used for the possibility of producing 3D printing filaments from the recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate Polymers (PET/PETE) which is widely used in water bottles. The recycled plastics will be supplied in forms of pellets which is to be fed to the machine through a hoper. The process consists of two main stages, the first stage is melting of the pellets by heating at specified temperature and then the molt will be extruded through a die which has the shape of the required filament size. The second stage is the cooling and wrapping the output filament, in which the cooling will be executed by passing the continuous filaments in a cooling liquid such as water and then exposed to two side fans to complete the cooling process and the then rapped on rolls. The output filaments will be used in a 3D printer to print tensile test specimens and some printed samples. The tensile test samples will be used to measure the properties, mainly the ductility, of the output filaments to be compared with the used filaments in the market. The production of 3D print filaments may save lot of money and insure the concepts of green manufacturing system by producing a useful product with low cost and safe for environment.