Development of lab-scale extruder to produce feedstock filament for 3D printing using recycled thermoplastics

Abstract

Fused deposition modeling or fused filament fabrication is one of the most common and economical technology among various additive manufacturing techniques due to its low-cost production, less maintenance and ease of using a variety of thermoplastics to produce custom parts with good quality and strength. In fused deposition modeling, the material used is in the form of filament wire of standard diameters varied from 1.75 mm to 2.85 mm. Polylactic acid and Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene are commonly used filaments for 3D printing applications. In the present study, the design and development of a lab-scale filament extruder has been proposed to produce the printing filament using raw thermoplastic pellets and recycle the discarded material obtained during the 3D printing process. The extruder components have been designed, machined, and assembled to perform the functionality of the proposed setup. This study provides an insight into producing the low-cost feedstock filament and lab-scale extruder for the FDM process.