Kickstarter, etc

Renegade: a recycled material pen on Kickstarter

The Renegade 3D pen isn’t the best, or the cheapest, or the lightest 3D pen on the market. But it is the one that will impact the environment the least. On Kickstarter, they have already reached 236% of their goal with 16 days to go, and for good reason. The pen turns your unwanted plastic into filament you can use, saving you money while saving the environment.

How does it work?

The pen comes with the ChupaCut, which shreds the bottle for use in the pen. The Renegade then uses a robust and powerful extruder that includes a screw-feeder mechanism and heating system. These combine to transport, destruct, and melt the plastic tape produced by the ChupaCut plastic bottle shredder (which kind of has a face, making it even more endearing to me).

Renegade uses a powerful drive motor and gearbox, eliminating well-known issues in plastic material feeding that most 3D pens currently face. The temperature is adjustable from 50°C to 320°C using a single controller and the speed is also controlled by a single button.

The ChupaCut. Image: Kickstarter
The ChupaCut. Image: Kickstarter

The ChupaCut

The ChupaCut cuts 5 to 7 mm strips from PET plastic bottles, plastic bags, or plastic files with a thickness of 0.14 to 0.35mm as well as standard PLA, ABS, nylon, TPE, HIPS, wood and other types of filament with a diameter of 1.75 mm.

Unlike previously patented competitors, ChupaCut has curved slots that significantly reduce friction force and provide a very efficient rotation of the bottle, keeping it at an acute angle with the blade as it’s being cut. This also keeps the blade sharp for longer, and results in an easier, faster, and more stable cutting process.

Filament holder for Renegade pen
Filament holder. Image: Kickstarter

Renegade 3D stencil converter software

An online 3D converter transforms your 2D image into a detailed 3D stencil, which you can then use with Renegade to easily create 3D masterpieces. It will be free for all Renegade 3D Pen backers.

For 3D printer users

The Renegade PRO edition features a built-in LCD screen for display of the precise temperature regimes, materials used, and printing speed. It also contains an integrated Control Port, which will provide you with remote control capabilities for the pen, including the plastic extruding process.

You will be able to connect the Renegade PRO Pen to act as a head for your 3D printer, CNC machine, or other devices, to effectively make use of the Renegade’s capabilities.

ChupaCut and filament holder
ChupaCut and filament holder. Image: Kickstarter

This isn’t the first time 3D printing has been used as an initiative to clean up our environment. Some students in Sicily recently created a vending machine that turned your old bottles into phone cases. It is estimated that over a trillion plastic bags and bottles are used worldwide every year, and we can only recover approximately 5%. Using a single Renegade pen will help protect the environment by preventing around 200 acres of plastic bag and bottle waste. When you choose not to use standard filaments you also save about 120 litres of crude oil every year, thus minimising the negative impact we all have on nature.

plastic waste
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Image: Kickstarter

So if you are like me, and you have loads of empty water bottles laying about, put them to good use; help this Kickstarter reach its stretch goal and go create some beautiful art.

Featured image: Renegade 3D pen. Image: Kickstarter