Open source filament pelletizer | Naomi Wu needs our help

today I'm going to share with you my new open- source filament pelletizer that you can use to recycle filament the excellent threaded insert press I used to make it and how buying it can help a makeer that we're all in debt [Music] [Music] to I feel very mixed about this video on one hand I'm so excited to share a new open source design I've been working on I just wish it was in better circumstances let me explain this is a YouTube channel of naami woo also known as the sexy cyborg she's based in China has been on YouTube for around 7 years and in that time has amassed over 1.6 million subscribers Naomi is a talented and experienced maker covering topics like 3D printing laser cutting CNC milling electronics and Robotics and she also has a range of consumer electronics reviews Naomi has also shown a light on her local culture giving westerners an insight as to what it's like to live in China as well as showing The Human Side of Chinese manufacturing which is unfortunately quite often overlooked but Naomi is much more than just a popular YouTuber she is a maker who uses her influence for good and is a champion of Open Source and integrity Naomi used to be an ambassador Fork reality reviewing many of their printers on her Channel but rather than just provide them with publicity she managed to convince them to make the end of three open source in accordance with the licenses of the printers that creality took heavy inspiration from and credit to creality after Nomi planted that seed for continuing to publish much of their source code for hardware and software on GitHub and when Naomi convinced creality to bring the cr30 belt printer to life as I covered in my video at the time she once again convinced creality to do the right thing not only giving credit to those who had previously developed similar ideas but also bringing them on on board to collaborate and in that same video when I offered constructive criticism of some aspects I didn't like she didn't complain she didn't make excuses she just used her influence to improve the product for the customer on a personal note you might remember this video of mine from a few years ago long story short despite me jumping through many hoops and recommendations the product just did not work as advertised when I released my video the owner of the company tried to threaten me then bribe me and then publicly tell everyone he was going to sue me at the time this was incredibly stressful for me and my family but it was naami woo to the rescue again who learned of the situation stepped in and applied pressure until the truth came out this not only ensured that the video stayed public but it also made sure that all of the facts came out including a full timeline of the events I'd like to emphasize that Naomi had nothing to gain by helping me or by helping others by pushing open source in China she simply did it because it was the right thing to do but now she needs help a few months ago I came across this video by Rebecca Watson on Naomi Woo's current situation in this video Rebecca points out that once again naami woo has been putting others first by drawing the Public's attention to a critical security vulnerability that allowed Network EES droppers to decipher exactly what you're typing in to your computer or phone's keyboard her reward for looking out for other people was a heavy-handed visit by the authorities the result of this threat is that Naomi cannot really post on social media anymore more this is a significant threat to her livelihood but to protect herself and her loved ones she doesn't really have any choice and honestly this is just a horrific situation in that communication she does mention concentrating on her store which is called cyber Knight Market and can be found at Cyber knit market.com on the store she has a range of electronics such as his UVC lights which is designed as a germicide to cleanse the air around you she also has some really cool products like this folding axe but the one we're going to be testing today is this heat set insert press I was hoping to pay for this myself but Naomi being Naomi sent it for free anyway I will still be honest and transparent adhering to my review policy all I ask is that if you can afford it and perhaps you're in the market for such a tool you consider buying one from Naomi to help her out let's test it out with this project I'm sure there's plenty of people in the same boat as me who have lots of short lengths of filament spare whether they be the end of spools or little sample rolls like this here some of these are quite old and have become very brittle and yes it's true I could put them in my dehydrator it's probably not worth it considering how little I'll be able to print with them afterwards sometimes I end up with a roll of filament that's Tangled beyond recognition and I've spent far too long trying to fix this as you can see without any success personally I've also invested in a filament extruder I've had it for a year but only made one roll this roll was very consistent in diameter but the diameter was too small because I hadn't calibrated the machine yet therefore I'm I'm looking to turn all of this filament as well as this undersized roll back into small little segments so I can run it back through the extruder but even if you don't have your own filament extruder I showed in a recent video that for a couple hundred bucks you can set up a clothing heat press to convert small bits of plastic into beautiful recycled flat sheets therefore in my opinion a filament pelletizer is quite a handy tool to have and I started my search by looking at existing designs online I wanted something quick and simple so originally went for this version by Buster beagle 3D what I really like about this one is that it's a single piece and you only need two skateboard bearings in terms of Hardware one slots in on the end the other from the side and then we take an 8 mm drill bit and pass it through the middle we now put the drill bit into the drill and when we turn it the sharp edge of the drill bits flute becomes the cutter to pelletize the filament great on paper so how does it work in person well as you're about to see it didn't go so hot the first time so I imported the the STL into on shape and added on a base and collection shroud complete with a TPU section to attach a bottle to this was a good fit but the two pieces just rest against each other which is why they were designed to be clamped down onto the edge of a workbench prior to operation when I tried it out there was an improvement and I was able to get some chips as I pushed the filament through however unless the filament was old and brittle the drill bit wasn't quite sharp enough to cut the edge of the filament kind of grinding bits off instead of making a clean cut so I started looking at some other designs I really lik the ones that had self-feeding but I didn't like the idea of running separate electronics for a stepper motor this one perhaps looked more functional with a different type of cutter but again separate Electronics was not something I was interested in and I also wanted a much cleaner collection system and I think covering over the dangerous bit was probably a good idea too so I was going to have to design my own pelletizer and my aims were clear the sharp bits had to be enclosed I wanted to collect the pellets neatly be self-feeding however only use one power source no extra electronics take any diameter filament and be assembled using threaded inserts and after a fair bit of timing CAD I'm pretty sure I've achieved all of that just a quick overview for now but I use a 19 mm router bit as the cutting blade and then a series of Gears off this shaft to turn a HED gear to feed in the filament without any Electronics so as well as the printed parts that all print without support material there's still a range of other Hardware that you'll need to build this a detailed list can be found on printables but here are the main ones we have a 19 mm router bit with a/ Quin shank if you can get one with the bearing included then do so we won't need the little grub screw collar that comes with it but we will need the R4 AZ bearing in fact we'll need a second one we'll need a series of smaller 5 mm internal ball bearings too but the other key ingredient is a hobbed gear like you'd find in an old 3D printer extruder either of these designs is suitable to use the other thing you'll need are three redded inserts and these are cheapies from eBay and I wouldn't recommend them Naomi has links to much better ones on the shop page for her heat press let's come back to that heat press and quickly unbox it and put it together the manual is concise but contained everything I needed to successfully identify the components and assemble in terms of the pieces there's two major subassemblies therefore I'd class this as partially assembled already to join these two HS together the six bolts that come in from the top we then have a series of small handles that get B bolted on before the heater element is inserted from underneath and the Locking nut tightened we stick some adhesive back rubber feet on the bottom and connect up the single cable between the control box and the top of the heating element pretty easy and all up takes somewhere around 5 to 10 minutes so how do you use this thing well Naomi has her own dedicated video on her channel that goes through how to set it up and what temperatures and settings required for best results and I found this spot on firstly we insert a tip to suit the size of insert that we're using in our case M3 then we turn on the controller and set the temperature to 300 Naomi explains that this is a great temperature for multiple filaments and I have to say it was perfect for me it takes less than 30 seconds for that temperature to be reached and then it stays there Rock Solid you can add or remove rubber bands to the stack to control the amount of pressure that pushes downwards to melt the insert in and this is one of the best parts of the design we have a dial on top that works like a 3D printer Z AIS and allows us to wind heater mechanism up or down to match the height of the object so we're going to start with the center plate which is 10 mm thick and takes an m3x 10 mm insert we wind the tip of the heater down until the wider section is more or less in line with the top surface we then use the handle to lift the heater tip upwards place the threaded insert and then allow the elastic bands to push down evenly if it looks slow that's cuz it's meant to be you're looking for 10 to 15 seconds as The Sweet Spot this one was perhaps a little bit too too slow so you could add another rubber band to the stack to increase the downwards pushing force once the insert is melted the whole way in we simply lift up and inspect the successful result previously I used to do this with a soering iron and I would push it either crooked or down too fast but we can see here that it's completely controlled and even handsfree all I need to do is hold the printed part as the insert is pushed in because of that smooth uniform Insertion I would say this thing is actually quite satisfying to use and unlike my Bing iron which had a tapered tip and sometimes got stuck in the insert partially pulling it out the tip on this heater releases vertically without catching always leaving a great result and because you can wind and set the finishing height before you start putting in the insert you can dedicate both of your hands to holding tricky objects completely level the trickiest on this design being two inserts going in for grub screws on the smallest gear I set the depth and then could dedicate both hands to holding the gear perpendicular honestly this heat press machine made this job really easy the machine also came with all required tools some sample threaded inserts and a range of spares including a whole new heater cartridge in fact my only complaint is that one segment of the display seemed to be dead on arrival beyond that everything worked exactly as advertised based on my testing if you're using threaded inserts with any kind of volume this machine will make it more reliable and repeatable we're up to assembly but this video is getting a little bit too long so to keep it concise but still provide the relevant step-by-step detail I've made a separate assembly video which I've Linked In the description and on printables for this video Let's fast forward to the completed version initial performance of the pelletizer was a little bit problematic but that does highlight one of the benefits of Designing with threaded inserts and that's that when you iterate the design to improve it it's very easy to swap in the new parts because disassembly and then reassembly is so straightforward the first problem I experienced is that the filament wasn't staying centered as it arrived at the rou a bit so I redesigned space a c adding these large sections to guide the filament towards the center and due to the design it was very easy to slot this replacement part in the other problem is that there was too much space between the printed guide and the actual cutter sometimes this made the pellets far too long but for filament that wasn't that brittle this floor prevented the cutter from slicing the whole way through instead segmenting the filament as you see here to fix this I extended the lip out on the bottom spacer so that it was much closer to the tip of the blade therefore the filament shouldn't be able to bend around this corner and should be cut more reliably and these two changes really did the trick filament that didn't go properly through the first time was pelletized cleanly the second time round by far my favorite part of the design is the gear gripper that self- feeds the filament you should run the drill at maximum speed and that will feed in the filament at a steady rate and because all of the dangerous parts are hidden this system is quite easy to manage and perhaps most importantly the filament pellets are small and uniform in size meaning they won't clog up any of my recycling machines I hope you enjoy using my new pelletizer and I look forward to sharing my results in making my own filament using this as well as waist prints in a future video as for this heat press tool it's easy enough to use it I think in future I'll be designing with threaded inserts more often if you use threaded inserts when you're designing consider purchasing it to upgrade your workflow and if you do you will be helping out naami woo who really deserves it thank you so much for watching and until next time happy 3D printing good day it's Michael again if you like the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click subscribe and make sure you click on the Bell to receive every notification if you really want to 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Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 220,144

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d print, 3d printed, naomi wu, sexy cyborg, sexycyborg, recycle, recycling, recycler, filament, pellet, pelletizer, reuse, disappeared, instructions, open source, how to, tutorial, design, project, heat press, threaded insert, nukit, Heat Set Insert Press, review, test, unboxing, guide, cad, assembly, settings, temperature, operation, cyber night market, uvc, axe, cybernightmarket

Id: 3p7bl7eFaEo

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023