Extruding without a hot block? wat m8?
Channel: Rotoforge
Date: 2022-11-10

In this short session of goofery we experiment with using rotation to decrease the required extrusion pressure of a 1.75mm PLA filament through a 1mm diamond nozzle.  It works surprisingly well...

This is primarily because the rotation imparts energy through friction and shear to the filament, this generates heat at the filament tip, and once the filament reaches its flow stress at the temperature it is at in the nozzle, it extrudes readily through the nozzle hole when pushed from behind. 
In short, if the total stress energy from rotation, and compression (pushing of the filament) in the filament is equal to the flow stress of the material (PLA), the material will undergo plastic deformation in the direction of the applied stress through the nozzle hole. This greatly reduces the required temperature and pressure for extrusion to room temperature, and the modest force that can be applied by hand. 

We intend to use this to try to directly extrude metal wire, other plastic filaments, and glass/silica wires well below their melting point on the home desktop using a few low cost parts in the rotoforge project. 

Stay tuned for more updates soon.

https://www.rotoforge.com/introduction/
https://discord.gg/RNmgxyVBe9
https://dailyrotoforge.blogspot.com/
https://github.com/Sindry-Manufacturing/rotoforge