[Norbert Heinz] has been hectic for the 2021 Hackaday prize entry, working on the style of a direct granule extruder for 3D printing with squander materials, or materials that are not offered in the type of a filament. Sugar is quite typical in many households, so because that’s already offered in granular form, [Norbert] provided 3D printing with granulated sugar a try. (Video, embedded below.)
[Editor’s note: He earned fifth location for this one! Well, not the sugar in particular, however the general excellent work on granular extruders.]
Success was somewhat variable, as the gloopy material is notoriously fickle to work with, however the configuration did create some structures that stayed in one piece, at least for a while. at first [Norbert] tried it genuine slow, efficiently printing with the liquified wonderful stuff, by dragging a molten blob of it around on the end of the extruder nozzle. Whilst this did work, the resulting print resolution did leave something to be desired. The next thing tried was enhanced print speed. This created clearer prints, as the sugar did not have time to caramelise, or type a visible blob, however as soon as the bed started to cool, it triggered it to fracture badly.
Going sluggish seemed to be the method forward, as much more time to great may have decreased the stresses in the structure because of the enhanced cooling time. however anyway, the method we see it, is it’s fun trying, as well as if it fails, you can just eat it, so long as you disregard all that food security stuff anyway.
[Norbert] files the granule extruder journey on the job Hackaday.io page, so it ought to be simple sufficient to duplicate this is you were so inclined.
We’ve covered a few sugary hacks before; requirement a renewable bed adhesive? out of glue stick? try sugar as a bed adhesive! printing in gloopy, sloppy materials is nothing new at all, we covered it almost ten years ago.
Thanks to [Nils] for the tip!