ReFil

ReFil is a fully custom, mostly 3D Printed 3D Printer Filament Extruder. It allows you to melt down plastic pellets and form 3D printer filament. This saves a lot of money, and also lets the user experiment with combinations of material and colours, even recycling failed parts!

How it works:

1. Raw pellets are fed through a hopper into the extrusion tube.
2. The pellets are melted down through an auger bit and pushed through a custom CNC milled nozzle
3. The filament passes through two fans to cool it
4. It passes through a diameter sensor which controls the puller speed to keep consistent diameter
5. A gantry aligns the filament on the roll
6. Finally, the spooler rotates and spools the filament

Notes:

Much of this project was completed outside of HackClub, but I completed much of the final assembly in HackClub. This component was ENTIRELY custom designed (with a few reference models like the electronics) and custom manufactured involving:

• CNC routing on my custom CNC router (PCBs and metal parts)
• Lasercutting (I used a laser cutter I have access to to lasercut all the panels)
• 3D printing (Corner parts, all other parts made on my Voron 2.4)

CAD:

Due to the huge size of the CAD model, I cannot realistically upoad it. However, I will provide a link to view the CAD online. https://myhub.autodesk360.com/ue2cd6b4d/g/shares/SH30dd5QT870c25f12fc5767036ad2bc12d9 (may take a little while to load)

Features and Specs

• 3D printed and lasercut custom frame
• RAMPS 1.6 and Arduino Mega based controller
• Stepper motor drive for spooler, gantry, and puller
• Custom LCD display mount using an i2c LCD, with a custom button controller
• Custom motor protection board
• 350w 24v meanwell powersupply
• Custom machined 3d nozzle
• Custom machined heater blocks (4x 40w for 160w max)
• Custom PID heat control with thermal runaway, max/mintemp detection

Other notes:

This design is still not entirely done. Like almost all projects, it will never be perfect, and improvement is always an option. Some of the ways this can be improved:

• The reliability of the extrusion is not ideal and needs more testing
• The extrusion code needs tuning and a little further development
• I would have preferred matte black acrylic which would have looked better, but was unable to source it for a reasonable cost
• I would have liked to have added lighting, and may do so in the future

Software:

This project uses much software that I custom developed. This can be viewed in this GitHub Repository.