Products & Technology12 January 2022

Pelletiser Launch: Dual-Purpose Capability for Research Labs

The Noztek Pelletiser launches as a dedicated ancillary for the full product range — enabling both compounding-grade pellet production and a closed-loop recycling workflow from a single device.

Introducing the Pelletiser

Desktop extrusion has always had a gap: the ability to produce consistently sized pellets from extrudate, enabling the compounding workflows that industrial material developers take for granted. The Noztek Pelletiser fills this gap — a strand pelletiser designed from the ground up for compatibility with the Noztek extruder range and the processing demands of research applications.

The Compounding Application

For composite and blended polymer formulations, a two-pass extrusion process — compound and pelletise, then re-extrude to filament — consistently produces better dispersion quality than single-pass processing. The first pass achieves the primary mixing task; the second pass, with the improved homogeneity of the pelletised feedstock, produces filament with measurably better property uniformity.

The Recycling Application

The same device that enables compounding workflows also enables closed-loop material recycling at laboratory scale. Failed prints, support material, and off-spec filament can be granulated, dried, and fed to the extruder. The resulting extrudate is pelletised, providing a clean, free-flowing feedstock that can be reprocessed into new filament.

Multiple reprocessing passes degrade most polymers to some extent — molecular weight reduction, colour change, and loss of additive effectiveness are all possible. For most research applications, the material quality achievable with one or two recycling passes is entirely acceptable. Keeping separate production cycles for virgin and recycled material maintains traceability.

Specification and Availability

The Noztek Pelletiser accepts strands from 1.5mm to 4mm diameter and produces pellets from 2mm to 8mm length, configurable via the cutting rate and feed speed adjustment. The cutting mechanism uses replaceable blades. All contact surfaces are stainless steel. The unit connects to all current Noztek extruder platforms.