17 Sep Testing Felfil Plastic Shredder: with PLA printed samples

In order to prove the capabilities of our plastic shredder we decided to make a basic very honest test with PLA 3D printed parts.

This is the first test of many we want to share with our recycling community in the future. We preferred to use PLA in this first run since it is still the most popular material in 3D printing, so we hope you will appreciate to seeing Felfil plastic shredder in action.

We use a very simple approach for this test, printing rectangular samples with the following settings:
Material: PLA (Prusament)

Layer: 0,2mm

Infill: 100%

Printer: Prusa i3 MK3 (flat printed for the stronger result)

Dimensions: 3 x 10 x 80 mm, 5 x 10 x 80mm, 8 x 10 x 80mm, 10 x 10 x 80mm, 12 x 12 x 80mm

Basically, the test method was the same for all the samples, put them in the shredder and count how long it takes to shred them until the cutting chamber is empty.

As you can easily imagine smaller pieces take less time to be shredded while bigger ones are slower to shred properly, but our test was designed mainly to find the thick limit for shredding.

Since rarely you will print so regular shapes with 100% infill the aim of the test is to give you an idea about the wall thickness our mini plastic shredder can manage. Furthermore, the design we decide to use for the sample was one of the less comfortable to shred for our machine and this is due to the blade design we implement on it. Every single blade works like a tooth more than a proper blade, this design is perfect for complex shapes since it allows the shredder to takes all the parts and break them in smaller pieces and also gives good results in destroying layers.

On the other side when the blade hits a flat surface the rotary motion is locked by the sample slowing down the shredding job. Don’t worry this will not damage the blades since thanks to our Intellishredding technology Felfil plastic shredder knows when is time to give power or reverse its blades to prevent them from damages.

In the video below you can take a look to the full test with a result summary. In this case the limit was 12mm in thickness, the result piece looks like more chewed than shredded.