The Filamaker shredder produced by German inventor and programmer Marcus Thymark or as we know him @Hans_12 is specifically produced to tear up your old prints. This of course is super useful if you plan on recycling your old prints with for instance a Filabot extruder.
Last week it arrived at our HQ so I decided to start testing it out. First though I figured a couple of simple modifications would make the shredding process a lot easier. I bought a small table and cut a hole in the middle of it. Then I screwed the Filamaker on top of the hole and printed a holder so that a box can be placed at the bottom of the table to collect the shredded pieces.
So next up, some actual shredding. The shredder grinds the plastic between its blades and in this way cuts it into smaller pieces.
Some first shredding rounds show that the Filamaker can definitely reduce the size of some of the fiercest Marvins. However one thing we will still need to find out is whether the pieces are shredded small enough to be able to use them in the Filabot. But those are worries for a later post 
The last thing I tried was shredding the same shape with different infill ratio’s. This shows:
100% infill ratio = Nearly impossible
80% infill ratio = Very difficult
50% infill ratio = Manageable to shred and provides nice chunks of shredded plastic
20% infill ratio = Easy to shred but gives pieces that are more like flakes than like pellets so this might cause issues when extruding.
So it seems that the Filamaker has no trouble shredding anything between 0 and 50% infill ratio. For my research I will first print objects that are then shredded and since I want to shred as much material as possible I will be printing with 50% infill ratio.
My question at the moment is what shape is best to print if you want to make the most consistent shredded pieces for use in a Filabot extruder. If anyone can help me with this I’d love to hear from you!
That’s all for now but more experimenting will undoubtedly happen soon!
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LOL!! That’s a really great article @bramhallo I’d definitely buy a shredder if it can shred anything I can print but it makes me giggle a little that you’re looking for a particular shape to shred. Isn’t the whole point that it should be able to shred any shape? 
Anyway! Presumably you want a shape that prints quickly, or else you’ll be waiting around for your victims to be printed and “hogging” the office printers. What I’d do: Cut 1.75mm filament into lengths of around 70mm, or whatever length can be comfortably shredded. Longer lengths will obviously take more force. “Ah!” you say. “But it won’t have been through an extruder and therefore it wouldn’t have degraded at all.” Well, once you’ve put it through the Filabot once, it would! 
Then you can just cycle the material round and round and see whether it does degrade at all - Presumably it would become easier to shred.
Also suggest you power the Filamaker with an electric drill and monitor the current going through the motor. That way you’ll have a way to measure how easy it is to turn.
BTW, you didn’t say why it was “difficult” and “nearly impossible” to shred the 80% and 100% samples. Was the Filamaker about to break or the table? Or does it simply need a stronger operator?
Cheers!
AndyL
Pot8oSH3D
By the way, I have two spools of T-Glase you can experiment with.
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Hi @Krumbacher,
Thanks for your comment! Yes indeed you are completely correct that it is the point to be able to shred any material. And in fact our first experiments suggest that indeed it is very possible with the Filamaker to shred any shape. However for the sake of research I have decided to shred one specific shape to see how that performs because of course with many different shapes together it is hard to tell what shape influences the outcome in what way.
Good idea you have for speeding up the process by cutting filament and just extruding that in the Filabot. I think it is a great idea and I’ll definitely include it in my work. However my experience is that the Filabot extrudes at a lot lower temperature (+/- 140C for PLA) than the extruding temperature when printing (+/-200C) so we’ll have to see whether the Filabot still produces acceptable chunks of PLA at higher temperatures.
For both the 80% and 100% samples my confidence and experience with the table and Filabot wasn’t developed enough to test it to its max. Also indeed the operator had been missing a couple gym sessions 
But in general what I mean is not that it is absolutely impossible but that compared with other infill percentages it is very unfavourable. With a lot of effort it is possible to shred them as well though.
Let me know if you have any other input!
Cheers!
Nice setup you’ve got there, Bram! I’m really curious about the printing part. Good luck
Hello again Bram. Forgot to mention this thread when we met last week. Just one point: you’ve omitted a link to the Filamaker. It looks like it’d cost about as much as a printer but I’d be interested to see what kind of outlay it would involve.
cheers,
AndyL
Thanks! I will do an elaborate post on the printing results in a couple of weeks!
Hi Andy,
Too bad but I look forward to discussing it next time we meet ;). This is the website where you can order the filamaker. Does that answer your question?
Cheers,
Bram
