First Trial of Extruding Filament

Today we worked on the potentiometer so that the speed can be controlled before testing. We are also tying to think of possible solutions about how to fix the thermal coupler. One idea was to put the thermal coupler in a bucket of cold water to maybe test it or calibrate it.

We stripped both ends of two wires and then soldered them onto the PoT. Connected them with a clamp to the motor and power supply.

Before connection, we used a multimeter to test resistance (Ω) olms. We decided to set it to have less resistance when turned clockwise.

Drilled a larger hole in back of the machine to put potentiometer through from the inside so that the knob would be able to control the speed of the auger from the outside.

We had to zip tie the "bird's nest" (jumble of labeled wires in circuit box) so that the PoT would not rub against the wires and cause a fire.

The PID did not work last week because two of the wires (wires from the heating element) were switched and in the wrong spot.

We mounted the machine vertically onto the wall. The set temperetarure was supposed to be 210°C and it took an extremely long time to set the temperature to that number because it went slowly up by one increment when pressing the button. It also took a very long time to heat up to 210°C but finally the filament extruded and it was chunky at first and the weight of it falling seemed to stretch it out.

Problem: How to stop extrusion?

• We can just cut off strand

• the strand fell off by itself once the heat (output) was turned off

• When the output or heat is turned off, will the rest just clog up and get burnt inside extruder tip? The reason being because there were still a lot more pellets left when we left for lunch

For next meeting, we need a fan for the cooling and we need to build a spool winder because Chad was slowly winding the extruded filament by hand which is a waste of time and not efficient. We also need to come up with incinerating ideas on how to make a nice incinerator along with making hinges for the circuit box so we can open it to have access to wires.

Building the spool winder is top priority.