Stan

I believe you. For general purpose, large area compression you need lots of force. The thought was for the relatively small, pyramid shaped mold that a 2 ton jack  might work. 3 broken jacks say otherwise.

Those look really great. I really like your “engineered with what’s cost effective locally” approach to building your machines.
Would a motor (drill?) driven scissor jack work as a replacement for the log splitter?

Thanks for the update.

I am not personally involved in these efforts so I don’t have any direct information but here are a couple of links to get you started.
https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/topic/3d-printer-for-pet-particles-no-filament-ever/

https://vanplestik.nl/en/about_us/

Sorry but if you search the forum, there have been several attempts at working with PET. The only successes I remember are the finely shredded PET used in direct 3D printers. The general observation appears to be that PET is both moisture and temperature profile sensitive and may be too difficult for simple DIY recycling.

@ha-ng I would set those 110V heaters aside. At 220V you would be pushing 4X the power through them. If they have not fried yet, they will. Before you wire everything up, I would check things individually. The PID controller should work just fine with just the thermocouple attached. The displayed PV temperature should look right and respond to…[Read more]

There should be drawings and a bill of materials in the download kit. The important thing is what is available in your area. The inside one (piston) is usually a solid rod, though if you find a way to close off the end and the walls are thick enough so it does not bend, you could make a tube work. The outside tube and the band heaters you can find…[Read more]

The heater bands and controller/SSR/TC part of the system is probably a must buy, though you may have some heater equivalents. They are relatively cheap.

If you have a way to provide a low speed/high torque drive with your current equipment that is safe to operate, you may be able to save that part. If you search the forum, there are a lot of…[Read more]

Your band heaters are rated for 110V I don’t think they will survive 230V. I also would not run them for very long in the desk top configuration, there is no temperature feedback.

With the SV higher than the PV the output light (top left, second LED down?) on the PID should be on.

I would disconnect the heaters and measure the resistance. You…[Read more]

Not sure if a desktop injection machine is for you? How about this machine to get you started every morning?
https://imgur.com/a/sAW0YSX

Let’s say you got your hands on an industrial robot. You could raise your environmental karma by sorting plastic https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/topic/sorting-plastic-with-robotics-v4/ or you can do this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P4xiNx-hc4 (you can skip to 2:10)

https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/topic/ocean-plastic-research/

Thanks for posting this. @davehakkens should probably post a banner announcement and lock the forum.

Thanks for starting a new venue. The community benefits from an active forum.

If you need more pressure using the current levered design, @andyn made a clever change in his version where he could change the piston diameter without changing the tube. Of course, you trade injection volume for pressure but for small molds with narrow passages it may be an option.

It should just be the area of the piston face pushing on the plastic. In your case
I get 5.3e-4 sq meters and about 39.6 bar. I think to get to 45 bar, the PP guys eat more chocolate.

Sounds like a great project. Is there a link to a more detailed description?

I’m curious what is the predominant plastic type that will be processed and what will they be making?

Thanks for posting.

Well, if you are building a machine to the specifications on that page, it states that it has a leverage of 3. So if you are 70 Kg (about 700 N) and hang of the end of the bar, you will apply 2100 N of force on the piston. If you divide that by the area of the piston in sq. meters, you will get the pressure in Pascals.
If you take more accurate…[Read more]

They should be near the heaters they control but the sensor tips should be on the thing you are trying to control the temperature of, in this case the tube and maybe the nozzle. Take a look at my description in the Dec 14 post in this thread https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/topic/injection-molding-what-am-i-doing-wrong/#post-151288 . If y…[Read more]

It is hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like the thermocouples are attached to the heater bands. The tube may be cooler. Do you have a way to measure the tube temperature independently to check?

There are several threads on this issue like this https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/topic/v4-fume-extraction-4/  . Looks like the V4 efforts finally started to address safety in some of the designs and documentation https://preciousplastic.com/solutions/machines/overview.html .
If you have 3 machines going at once, I would make three fume ho…[Read more]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8042651/Depressing-images-squirrel-using-plastic-bags-build-nest.html
I guess, technically it isn’t single use plastic anymore. Now if we could set up a nuts-for-bags exchange program, the forest would get cleaned.