Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

Hey guys! I'm toying with the idea of building a filastruder, and wanted to hear feedback from others in the group. Is anybody making their own filament at home? I'm sure that it won't be the same quality as store bought / commercially made filament, but is it still pretty usable?

Should I buy a kit, or is it worth figuring out on my own?

Have you considered the grinding that would be necessary? Or did you plan on buying pellets of virgin material?

My intention is to just buy pellets and make 'virgin' filaments. If I could get a 50lb bag of natural material, and then find an assortment of colorants to make what I need on demand, I think that would be pretty cool.

I like the recycling idea, but I wouldn't do that to get started, and wouldn't expect to recover awesome materials from it.

For others who are researching this as well, here are a few of the machines that are out there... I'm strongly leaning towards just designing and building my own. Has anybody done this?

Filastruder https://www.filastruder.com/products/filastruder-kit
ProtoCycler http://www.redetec.com/products/protocycler/
Filabot https://www.filabot.com/collections/filabot-core
ExtrusionBot https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16 ... -abs-pla-i
Strooder https://omnidynamics.co.uk/products/str ... ment-maker
Noztek http://www.noztek.com/product/the-nozte ... -printers/

I have two v1 of the filastruder, one for pla one for abs because changing between was a pain in the ass. put pellets in and with the correct setup printable material comes out. the consistence of diameter and color saturation is all upon the user. i do recommend the filawinder also because of the mess if you dont use a winder. if you like having exact colors, probably better to just buy the spool you want. the natural pla/abs looks good on its own and at $4 lbs its hard to beat.

What are good sources of abs/pla pellets? How large an order is required to get decent pricing?

Eric wrote:What are good sources of abs/pla pellets? How large an order is required to get decent pricing?

The filastruder forum has a stickey discussion on this. Having not gotten into it for myself yet, that's the best info that I'm aware of.
http://www.soliforum.com/topic/4195/polymer-suppliers/