Aubrey L. Woern, an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering student have created a 3D Printable Polymer Pelletizer Chopper for cost-effective additive manufacturing. This new invention chops filament into pellets to be used within a fused granular fabrication. The pelletizer chopper system can also re-extrude the material into a new filament spool for fused filament fabrication 3D printing. An open-source 3D printable pelletizer chopper was created at a cost of $185.03. This includes the base and middle section of the pelletizer chopper, the filament driver, and the spool arms. The recyclable filament is fed through a Ninjaflex gripper wheel into the main assembly, where it is chopped by the Forstner bit driven by the drill motor. With an open-source design, the researchers believe that the 3D Printable PolymerPelletizer chopper can overcome the common issue of expensive 3D printing filament.

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