Lyman filament extruder
The Lyman filament extruder is a device for making 3-D printer filament suitable for use in 3-D printers like the RepRap. It is named after its developer Hugh Lyman and was the winner of the Desktop Factory Competition.[1]
The goal in the competition was to build an open source filament extruder for less than $250 in components that can take ABS or PLA resin pellets, mix them with colorant, and extrude enough 1.75 mm diameter ± 0.05 mm filament that can be wrapped on a 1 kg spool. The machine must use the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license.
The use of DIY filament extruders like the Lyman can significantly reduce the cost of printing with 3-D printers.[2] The Lyman filament extruder was designed to handle pellets, but can also be used to make filament from other sources of plastic such as post-consumer waste like other RecycleBots. Producing plastic filament from recycled plastic has a significant positive environmental impact.[3]
References
[edit]- ^ Harry McCracken (March 4, 2013). "How an 83-Year-Old Inventor Beat the High Cost of 3D Printing". Time.
- ^ Christian Baechler, Matthew DeVuono, and Joshua M. Pearce, “Distributed Recycling of Waste Polymer into RepRap Feedstock” Rapid Prototyping Journal, 19(2), pp. 118-125 (2013). open access
- ^ M. Kreiger, G. C. Anzalone, M. L. Mulder, A. Glover and J. M Pearce (2013). Distributed Recycling of Post-Consumer Plastic Waste in Rural Areas. MRS Online Proceedings Library, 1492, mrsf12-1492-g04-06 doi:10.1557/opl.2013.258. open accesslife-cycle analysis