Recycling Materials In Various Environments Including Reduced Gravity Environments

摘要

Recycling devices for producing additive manufacturing filament from received materials including objects to be recycled, discarded objects, obsolete objects, and the like. A recycling device may include a material processing system an extrusion mechanism and a spooling assembly. The material processing system receives material, reduces the size of the received material via a material size reducer and actively pushes the material through at least a portion of the device. The extrusion mechanism produces filament from the material and the spooling assembly loads the filament onto a spool for later use. The spooling assembly may include detachable elements configured to interface with and supply filament to an additive manufacturing device. Depending on configuration, recycling devices may create filament from plastic, metal, in-situ material, or a combination thereof.

主权项

1. A recycler device configured to produce additive manufacturing filament from received material, the received material comprising at least one previously manufactured object, comprising:
a material processing system configured to receive the material, the material processing system comprising:
a material size reducer; anda material control system configured to force the received material through the material processing system; an extrusion mechanism configured to receive the processed material from the material processing system and create the additive manufacturing filament from the processed material, the additive manufacturing filament being continuous and having an approximately uniform diameter; and a spooling assembly configured to receive the additive manufacturing filament from the extrusion mechanism and load the additive manufacturing filament onto a spool.