Polyxtruder – Two in One: an Extruder and a Recycler

Those who use 3D printers regularly know that sometimes it happens that prints don’t come to their expectations. Then most of them end up in a rubbish bin. Now you can easily recycle them and use one more time. Qudus Hamid from Philadelphia has developed an extruder, which uses pellets of polymers and extrudes a running filament. In fact the tool performs two functions: first – it extrudes filament and second – it is suitable for recycling materials to use them later with 3D printers.

The idea of extruding the filament works well. The producer is looking for funds in order to develop the tool even more and make it a device for DIYers.

There is one more important feature that may seem unusual and interesting. Common 3D printers print in one colour, some of them can print in several colours. With polyXtruder you can now print in unique colors. The extruder mixes various coloured polymers and extrudes a new, sometimes unusual, colour array in one. With multi-coloured filament you can create multi-coloured pieces and items.

Multi-color filament can produce multi-colored parts (example)

The polyXtruder provides the following features:

• Several identical nozzle tips, which users can change as soon as they need;
• The ability to control temperature on extrusion barrel. With this function users can control viscidity of the materials. It means you control the way the material comes from the tip. There are PID controllers for more efficient heating. The top heating point is nearly 500 degrees Celsius
• Full control of extrusion speed. You can choose whether to make the filament flow faster or slower.
• Power motor that allows working with a wider range of polymers thanks to Nema 23 High torque motor.

Almost everything about the extruder seems nice, except for the price. Unfortunately a lot of the components cost too much, which makes the entire system be costly. The major idea about marketing the extruder is to reduce its price.