25 Oct Halloween 3D filament: how to make pumpkin filament!

It’s almost Halloween time, and here at Felfil we are getting ready to celebrate this event in a very original way!

As you know our extrusion system is able to create new filament for 3d printing also starting from the mix of PLA with organic waste (as you may know we tested oranges and coffee), and this allows us to experiment a lot and to minimize waste.

For this experiment we wanted to create an innovative material for 3d printing and so we tried to extrude a filament with waste of pumpkin peel!

The idea was to create a particular 3D printing filament in order to print decorations for your Halloween party. In this way you can make Halloween themed decorations that really contain pumpkin peel, increasing the concentration of organic elements in your filament!

The process is quite easy, first you have to dry the pumpkin peel and make it a powder, then you mix it with PLA and fill the extruder with the mixture… and that’s it, after a few moments the filament will begin to come out! For a better result you can do the process twice, the filament will be even more precise.

Here it is the complete recipe:

• Buy a pumpkin (eat it) and keep the peel
• Dry the peel for 24h at 70°C
• Grind and filter the powder, the thinner the better
• Mix it with PLA at 10%
• Fill the hopper and extrude (220°C, 7 RPM)

In order to obtain a better and homogeneous filament you can shred the filament obtain and make the extrusion again adding a little bit of orange colorant (1% is enough).

Now you are ready to print your spooky Halloween gadget with pumping filament!

For any questions about the process do not hesitate to contact us, and let us know if you have some suggestion for our next extrusion challenge!