By Pre-ordering my Pellet Extruder you will save 100 USD/EUR, get extra benefits, premium video support with me, and you will significantly contribute to achieving the long term goal of Greenboy3D: Â
Every filament and piece of plastic you’ve seen started as plastic pellets. While a spool of filament (1kg) costs $20 – $60, the same amount in pellets is just $3 – $8.
You can save up to 90% on printing costs by upgrading your 3D printer with my universal Pellet-Extruder-Printhead, allowing you to print directly with pellets.
More about Pellets
With a Greenboy Pellet-Extruder-Printhead, you can recycle any plastic waste—like empty filament spools, water bottles, yogurt cups, and failed prints—into new objects.
Simply shred the plastic into pieces smaller than 0.2 inches (5 mm) and 3D print with them again. This method offers a sustainable future, turning plastic waste into new, purposeful items instead of discarding it.
More about Recyling
It’s true! You can 3D print chocolate with my Pellet-Extruder-Printhead. Though not originally intended, any meltable material smaller than 0.2 inches (5 mm) works fine.
For food safety, most parts in contact with food are stainless steel. If strict food safety is a priority, you can spray the rest of the extruder with food-grade silicone spray or use other methods…
More about non-plastic materialsLearn more about my Pellet Extruder, whether you can use it on YOUR 3D Printer aswell and some other topics.
Thanks to the concept of using 3D printable adapters, you can use this extruder on almost any 3D Printer
Through innovative thinking I managed to replace a lot of metals parts with 3D printable plastic parts and this significantly reduced the weight
Through innovative thinking and some new approaches I managed to reduce the production costs, which allows to have a lower priceÂ
Thanks to some special features, it is quite easy to use this pellet extruder, because many problems conventional 3D Pellet Extruders have like unloading pellets have been solved
Depending on the material you use, its size, shape and viscosity, you can expect to achieve a maximum flowrate between 125 – 200 grams per hour with a 1mm nozzle. Using a bigger or smaller nozzle does influence the maximum flowrate capabilities…
Parameter Â
 Specification
*Upgradeable to 420°CÂ
**Max Temperature is also determined by the heat resistance of the plastic you choose for the 3D printed Extruder parts. For example: Extruder parts out of PLA can withstand Extruder Temperatures up to 300°C but not beyond
Instead of buying pre-colored filament and being limited to that color and spool, you can buy a bag of plastic pellets and some color pigments, sprays or paint.
Now you can universally print with any color you desire at a fraction of the filament cost simply by mixing a specific amount of pellets with a chosen color, which will result in, for example, 1/2 pounds of blue-colored PLA for one of your specific projects.
Depending on the concentration of colors in your pellets, you can achieve everything in the range of transparent prints with a little color and up to full-solid color prints. Another cool thing is mixing or stacking different batches of colored pellets on top of each other. This will give amazing gradient colors to your 3D prints, as you can see in the image nearby.
Apply a Color on Pellets
Mix everything by shaking
Let everything dry out
“Additives” is a word for substances that improve or change the properties of plastics. By using the same methods for coloring your pellets, you can add, for example, “glow in the dark” substances to your pellets to get cool-looking prints that glow at night. But that is just one out of many possibilities you can try out…
Back in the year 2022 I was very frustrated with the cost of 3D Printing and especially the waste it produces. At that time, I knew that 3D printing directly with Plastic Pellets & Shredded waste is possible.
But there were no low cost options, and it also seemed like as if the 3D printing industry doesn’t have much interest in developing this technology, despite its great potential.
This frustrated me even more, so I decided to develop my own Pellet Extruder without having any knowledge about engineering at that time…
For more than 2 years I struggled, worked extremely hard and spent most of my income on the development while living under poor conditions…
No matter how hard times were, I never gave up and this why Greenboy3D exists today…
Yes, retraction works with my Pellet Extruder similarly as it does with Filament Extruders, by reversing the Extruder Motor direction.
There will be “ready to use” slicer profiles and guides that will teach how to find the right slicer settings for you individual usecase.
Theoretically my Greenboy Extruder can be used on ANY 3D Printer, that has a printhead with a heating element, temperature sensor and 2 cooling fans, because the ones from your stock printhead can easily be swapped with the ones from my Pellet Extruder.
The other important criteria is how easy it is to connect the Pellet Extruder to the mounting plate of your 3D Printer Gantry. Here you have 2 options:
1) I made many 3D printable adapters for a variety of 3D printers. If you find your 3D Printer in the “Available-Adapters-List” below, then you can just download the right adapter file for your 3D printer and with that you can 3D print an adapter which allows you to flawlessly connect the pellet extruder to your 3D Printer.
2) In the case of your 3D Printer not being in the list, you need to create an adapter yourself, which is relatively easy to do. Soon there will be a detailed video tutorial, that will guide through the steps of making a custom pellet extruder adapter for your 3D Printer.
Available-Adapters-List:
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I created the Greenboy Pellet Extruder so that it can be used as a printhead, but it of course can also be used as a “Filament Extrusion Machine”. That is up to you.
Yeah absolutely,
There will be many guides and tutorials that will show you how you can do that and what you need to know about recycling plastics…
I will make detailed video guides and tutorials regarding this in the near future, and share all my “pellet” knowledge with you…Â
Between 0.5 to 5mm
Depending on the material you use, its size, shape and viscosity, you can expect to achieve a maximum flowrate between 150 – 250 grams per hour with a 1mm nozzle. Using a bigger or smaller nozzle does influence the maximum flowrate capabilities…
Yes absolutely! The only limit is your creativity
In theory, yes, although there are a couple of things you need to consider if you plan to eat your 3D Prints.
The metal parts that would come in contact with the food are food safe metals like stainless steel and aluminum. But I can not control out of which plastic you 3D print the necessary plastic parts for the Pellet Extruder, and whether your local regulations would call those 3D prints “Food Safe”.
There are ways to make your 3D prints more food safe like spraying “Food-Grade Silicon Spray” on them or, even better, dipping them in uncured Food-Grade silicon and letting the silicon dry out. This would give your 3D printed parts a smooth food safe surface.
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Yes. Since everybody has a different 3D Printer and therefore needs a completely different 3D Printed Adapter Housing, there is no point to 3D print the parts from my side. This would just unnecessarily increase the overall price.Â
As with everything that is new, there is a small “Learing-Curve” that you need to go through, but once you know the nuances of a Pellet Extruder, it will be as easy & intuitive to use as a Filament Extruder.
The good thing is that there will be a wide range of guides and tutorials, which will make your experience flawless.
Yes, it also works with masterbatch coloring pellets, but I would add a little bit more masterbatch, than you typically would the get 100% consistent color because the overall length of the meltzone is relatively short which is great for recycling plastic since a smaller meltzone reduces degradation of the plastic.
In its “Stock Version” 330c.
But the Extruder can be further upgraded if people want to print at temperatures up to 420 °C.
How can it be upgraded?
Answer: Well, the heating block will have in total 2 holes for heating cartridges, which allows you to add a second heating cartridge to the extruder to double the heating power from 70 to 140 watts. But in such case, it would be necessary to also install a temperature sensor that can measure temperature beyond 350c.
A Thermistor that I use for testing and which works great for temperatures up to 450c is the “PT1000 Thermistor”
And it is also necessary to 3D print the plastic parts for the extruder out of a plastic that can withstand the rising heat from the heating block. (I additionally recommend wrapping aluminum foil around the heating block, since it increase the max. temperature further more and reduces hot rising air touching the plastic parts of the extruder.
But I will make a detailed tutorial on this “High-Temperature” upgrade in the future.
Barrel and Screw are made out of Stainless Steel 304/304L, and therefore they can handle the heat. Normally, aluminum heating blocks are not recommended at such high temperatures, for some specific reasons. However, in the case of my Pellet Extruder the heating block has no forces that it needs to resist against except for its own weight, since it just sits vertically on a Stainless Steel 304/304L thread.
Which means even at temperature where aluminum becomes softer and losses its strength it still can be used if there are no forces applied on the heating block. It just sits there and only needs to conduct the heat evenly to the Extruder barrel.
I am still thinking of whether it would make sense to make heating block out of Copper, but this would also bring additional problems and would increase the end cost of the Extruder KIT…
In the end, it comes down to “which tradeoff is the best for the majority of you”
There are some very minor changes in the slicer settings like a higher value for the retraction distance, but I will provide “ready to use” Slicer profiles for different nozzle sizes and materials
+ There will a tutorial where I explain the minor changes, so that you can customize the settings to your needs if you like to
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