Make Your Own Filament At Home? My Review of the FelFil Evo Filament Extruder

failed prints purge blocks support material it's all a waste product and one of the detractions from 3d printing is that you're only printing knickknacks or you're wasting so much plastic and there's there's no way around that you can throw this in a recycle bin or you can attempt to make art from it but what if there was a way where you could turn this back into filament that you could then print we're gonna take a look at the fel Phil Phil um an extruder and we're gonna see if we can take any of this scrap 3d printing material and turn it into filament which we could then print stuff with I'm Joel this is 3d printing nerd [Music] so here we have a box with some stuff on top of it this was sent to me by Pelle Phil which makes this Spillman extruder this is the fully assembled unit this is not a kit which is great because it means less time for me to put stuff together and more time for me to try and use stuff they included some acrylonitrile a crow a crow lawn knit trill a crab you buda deities stated a junior its abs these are abs pellets and over here I can get this one this is poly lactic acid or PLA then on top of each of these containers is some pigment much like remember you know when I went to proto pasta and I made filament and we put pigments in with their HT PLA it made it colorful in various ways and so these pigments are for doing that but let's set these aside and let's focus on this and what's in the box as you open up this box it's not very exciting so inside the box is the the filament extruder but right on top is the handbook and it kind of gives you an idea of what to expect when you open it up it does say to go online and look at the updated manual which I have done inside here is some PLA inside here is a power brick ooh what they've done when sending the kit is they made it transparent so you get to see everything that's inside and we've got a camera because while this is cool and all I can't see the display so if I angle it just like this then what this camera sees is the filament as it hopefully spits out and then what this camera sees right here is the fill fill extrusion unit so this is good all right the instructions say to plug it in for and it specifically says to plug AC power in and then attach power to the device and then you flip the switch in the back turn it on totally game for this all right so this plug goes into that plug here so this is very similar to the original power supply that came with the Robo r2 it's noisy because it has a fan in it it's good to know let's plug this in tighten the screw and then we power it on the display is on it does say temperature 150 see there's a knob on the front which you can turn to adjust the temperature and I'm gonna click it to do 150 so I can up that a bit I believe for PLA it needs to be a little hotter we don't want it to melt but we want it to be able to extrude we'll do 160 okay it's heating let's take a look at the handbook see what it says dududu I did take a browse through the manual which I have on my computer and for PLA it says 180 degrees which actually does kind of make sense doesn't it and then it wants the RPMs of the auger of the whatever to be six I guess six so I'm gonna hold down here now I can change the temperature to 180 there we go and we're still waiting let's talk a little bit about what's gonna happen next this is a bag of PLA it looks like shards or something and according to the manual what you want to do is run this entire bag through the fel fill extruder first because it's brand new and there could be metal particulates from assembly or from the process and putting it together so this apparently is a waste product or I guess maybe it's a cleaning product there we go it's a PLA cleaning product but the filament that's made with this batch of PLA is not supposed to be used I'll put it aside but it'll be interesting to see it extrude and that'll verify that we have some settings correct lay down this is what you would do right if you were me you'd be checking your phone right here we go I'll do a selfie there we go okay I'm gonna tweet this out send let's open up this bag of PLA so what they included in those bins was similar to the pellets that's we used at proto pasta because save your the HT HT PLA pellets this is more like like shards of PLA here I'll put it close to this camera it's kind of like shards shards of PLA Oh is this does this have a cover yes okay we couldn't get started without taking off that cover aha it's up to it's up to heat now it's to set rpm for PLA it said 6:00 I'm gonna choose six and then click in so now it says to pour in the PLA Wow the hopper does hold quite a bit I smell it smells warm which is good because it says it's up to heat nothing's coming out the front end Oh oh my god I see the problem hold on just a sec let me move this camera all right I took a look inside and hopefully through this camera you can see that there's a problem the blue wire going to the motor came out of where it should be so let me get this apart and that's let's fix it now I've got to be careful because it did heat up which means that it's warm down at this end so here's where the fan attaches right here this looks to have slipped out of this block right here this is that is still attached but this should go up in there that needs a really tiny Phillips or flat screwdriver which I have somewhere in my magical drawer of drawers success there's warm oh that's warm but it is also insulated so I'm currently not burning myself which is great I'm really happy about that good okay I think we're good right now let me put it back together let's see what happens eventually okay it only dropped down to 147 which is great which is why it was still hot thankfully my finger is okay so it's going to get back up to 180 I'm gonna set the RPMs which will be six and then we'll be good just a sec here we go set rpms whoo I hear it I think you can hear it as well it's like it's grabbing some filament you can do it you could do it okay the readouts it keeps track of the amps and it looks or I think it's a a perhaps and it's at 0.35 between point three five two point three seven so the instruction manual this say you're only supposed to run this for a couple hours at a time you're not actually a filament production plant with this but I mean a couple hours you should still be able to get something out of it we're trying this is a slow process this reminds me of that that part from Austin Powers international man of mystery where the Zamboni was about to run over a dude [Applause] this is a Zamboni incident here oh wow ain't givin up I'm not giving up our p.m. 6 amps 0.75 ok it says at 1.8 it will automatically shut off to preserve itself and do not break itself which is good I can I can hear stuff it sounds like stuff is moving at least hey by the time this video comes out Avengers infinity war should be out I should have seen it I'm hoping it's awesome there should be an awesome movie Sean my editor he's gonna love it as well when he sees it no doubt nope nope nope this is a long time so let's dump this out let's take a look and see if there's a clog or a jam or something there's no jam alright let's turn it on it is slowly taking the the PLA material and the instruction manual didn't give an estimate as to how long it would take my guess is we're not clogged [Music] we've got a little bit of Fellman tiny tiny little bit super-duper tiny okay I made a mess maybe you can see some of the filament that's coming out here I'll use the yellow handbook as a backdrop there now you can see got some filament coming out let's say let's let it produce a little bit of filament let me go get something I found my old calipers it's missing a battery but I should be able to at least get some reading it is less than two millimeters as far as an exact measurement I don't know this is calibrated for one point seven five millimeter material all right obviously I'm not gonna sit here and record hours worth of me just doing this so my initial impression right now is that it seems to be built fairly well I was easily able to put that wire back in I think that this is a slow process and I don't know if it's supposed to be this slow so I will reach out to Phil Phil right now though I think what we should do is call this video done wait wait stop stop everything stop stop stop I didn't want to end it there I had to get some lunch I was hungry and I have all of this I've learned that the extrusion speed on this according to the website I believe is 1 or 1.5 meters per minute which is not that fast if filament comes out and it's under sized you need to do something specific if it's which is which is to decrease the temperature two to three degrees at a time and if it's oversized and you need to increase the temperature but the problem is with this PLA bits I decreased the temperature all the way down to 167 degrees and the motor had too much of a load and it put itself into protection mode which you can probably see right there I don't know why everything on my real calipers but everything that was coming out of the machine was essentially one here's oh here's one seven I did get some one seven stuff early on one six one two I could not I was unable to get any sort of consistent PLA extrusion through the machine so according to the manual what you do is you set it to 200 let it sit at rpm zero for 20 minutes and that molten eyes is everything and then you can spit it back out but this is the bag of PLA that came with the machine they they sent these pellets these abs pellets they sent these it's a lot of PLA pellets right there they sent those over and I want to give those a try so I'll see if I can get some sort of consistent extrusion through this machine it does extrude plastic it's horrifically slow if it was just this plastic I couldn't get anything that I can send through my printer consistently so let's start at Ground Zero I'm gonna reset and then we're going to use those PLA pellets to just try to make some filament that's the idea let's do it to clean this out I assume I just turned it over and I dump out everything I want oh you know what some of these shards are huge maybe that's what was getting in the way so we've emptied those out the machine is off let's just let's just make sure it gets up to temperature here so that everything in there doesn't solidify I'm gonna go 180 degrees C it only dropped to 143 okay good good good good Paulie lactic acid let's try some of this so these are PLA pellets and if you can see that right there I mean it looks like the HT PLA pellets that we used a proto pasta it's not it's not HT PLA I'm gonna make a mess again aren't I so this is just natural PLA not pigmented at all I mean those are you huge right cuz these little ones here tiny tiny little ones those are the PLA pellets so I think I think this is just gonna go away be gone one of the issues with this machine is the filament as it's coming out of the nozzle here it sticks to the nozzle itself so I'm trying to pull the filament away from the nozzle all right I ain't quarter had a point where I could give some sort of adjusted final thoughts I like the idea I like the concept but the promise of making your own filament is not with this device it's just not a meter per minute at the fastest that's the fastest that can produce filament right now I'm at rpm 5 and this is how fast it's going the other issue is it's not consistent with results I'm upping the temperature lowering the temperature slowing it down speeding it up and I'm not able to verify that those changes equate consistent changes in the filament diameter for example I set it to 171 as I was going down and rpm 5 and as it cooled down as it made a stretch of filament here I was able to measure 1.4 1.6 1.9 12.1 4 and back to 1.49 all within the same strand and we're not talking over a dozens of meters here we're talking over a foot and a half that honestly is the the deal breaker right there if I am unable to tinker with this and through tinkering achieve consistent results then there's no way that I can shove any sort of plastic through this machine to get filament for my 3d printer to use let alone a giant tub of pellets let alone a bunch of failed prints day - oh my goodness it's amazing what a good night's sleep some coffee a shave and a shower will do to a person plus new shirts this is one of my favorite shirts cuz et the video game was one of the best games of all time obviously but let's talk about the Phil Phil extruder when I left you last time I believe I was very doom and gloom and was not convinced that this was a viable option so earlier today after I did everything that's good for me in the morning I tried again I got an email from Phil Phil because I sent him a note and they said that they have good luck at RPM speed 7 at 180c with PL a no problem give it a go it should work just fine and I started thinking that black peel a dusty chippy looking stuff that they gave me in the bag that I put in there first for some reason I think maybe that was the issue at first so here's what I'm thinking all of the parts of that PLA that was black and kind of looked like rock chips or wood chips he was a regular in size so maybe he couldn't heat it consistently and that's what was causing extruder problems so I emptied as much of it out because I could and I filled it with you know the little tiny PLA pellets and I just set it to go and first I got a lot of the black out and then it started to turn clear this is an hour's worth of work once it went clear with the PLA through adjustments it started out at 1.1 millimeters in diameter and I was able to get it to consistently 1.4 to 1.5 and the instructions say if it's too small you need to reduce heat by a couple degrees and then try again I did that all the way down until it wouldn't go anymore so at the heat to low it couldn't maintain any sort of rpms to drive the plastic through the extruder and it would set off the alarm the motor would hit 1.8 amp draw and it would shut itself down in its emergency protocol again this is me just trying I said I'm gonna give it a solid hour and these extrusions are fantastic if you need 1.12 1.47 diameter filament which I don't I take 1.75 I take 2 point 8 5 or 3.0 that's fine I'm just sad because I couldn't get anything out of this machine that I could use and I think giving it another hour I think it's valid and I think giving an opinion after that hour is also very valid because I think what FAL phil has done here has created a great tinkering product maybe with more time a lot more time I could actually get extrusions out of this machine that I could use in my 3d printers but I don't have more time to tinker with this and I think that's the issue right there anyone expecting an out-of-the-box experience where you just hit a button and out pops miles of filament or kilometers of filament if you're across the pond then then that's not it this is not what you're looking for I think this is a start I think this is where we need to start I think something like this is neat but at the same time I may be another four or five hours I could have dialed it in but the worry is once it's dialed in I don't know if I could maintain any sort of consistency it seemed like every time the heater went on the motor would decrease in speed slightly and it's that sort of variance in a system that is going to produce variances in your filament normally you're printing with filament and you look on it and it says it has a plus/minus variance of 0.02 2.07 millimeters hopefully you're at the median of about point zero five which is what a lot of filaments out there do but you need to get at least to a 1.75 and then have that variance rather than one point four seven oh I'm so sad so in the end and after some sleep and some coffee and a shower and a shave my opinion isn't so doom and gloom on this but I do think that this is not a product for me and not a product for a lot of people I believe if you had your own maker space or you loved material sciences I think that's where this platform comes from I believe this at least in my opinion is more of an experimentation platform than something that you can use on a daily basis you spit out a bunch of filament for use because it has its duty cycle and it shuts off anytime that motor goes above a certain amp draw at the most I used it for 20 minutes in that hour and then it just kept hitting it every five minutes or so when I was experimenting but it ran 20 minutes on its own before it hit its emergency shutoff well there you go I'm gonna put a link down in the description to fulfil contact them reach out ask them questions if you think this is something for you then more power to you the link shouldn't lead you to a place where you can buy it but my personal opinion is that this machine is not for me and it's not for a lot of people and I really at this point probably would still not recommend it it's not doom and gloom but I wouldn't recommend this product alright there you go that's it I'm gonna pack this up maybe I'll reach out to fulfill and maybe there's someone else in mind locally that I could give it to who could tinker on it or play with it or try to make it do what they need it to do but for me for now my extrusions are gonna come from filament suppliers and proto pasta because you know they're local and they're good people well if you've made it this far thanks for watching subscribe if you're not ring that bell and click any link in the description to benefit the channel I would really appreciate it beyond all that don't forget to hug each other more I love you guys as always high-five

Channel: 3D Printing Nerd

Views: 978,527

Rating: 4.5146699 out of 5

Keywords: felfil evo review, felfil review, felfil evo, make your own filament, make your own pla, pla recycle, filament maker, plastic filament extruder, make your own abs, filament extruder, recycle, evo review, extruder, filament, 3d printing filament, 3d printing, review, 3d printer, abs recycle, joel telling, 3d printing nerd, joeltelling, diy

Id: TxIxcABYvZI

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Sun May 06 2018