The Lyman extruder looks very promising at producing approximately 8″ per minute. My math is horrendous on almost any level so I relied on googling the answer (http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,143878,143878,quote=1) I don’t know how accurate the math is, but it’s better than mine… so here is the breakdown:
Extruder = 8″ / min
1kg spool = 4488″ (114m)
total time to produce 1kg of filament = 561 minutes = 9.35 hours
This is much better than the 24 hours that I was looking at. I’d like to get a bit more power behind this, but we’re talking about an extruder that costs less than $250 in parts and that’s exciting!
I’ll be doing a little more research as the Lyman Extruder deals with pellets. That’s fantastic and would work for new filament…however, I’ve got access to a lot of ABS from vacuform pulls that needs to be reclimated – so I need to move to the next steps: 1) shredding the existing ABS pieces 2) modifying the Lyman Extruder (or another one) to push that ABS into the extrusion machine.
I’m not sure of the extent of the modifications that will be needed, yet…but we’ll make it work.
IN MY MIND BY WINK DOUBLEGUNS 