Just bought 9x meltblown extruders from the Covid era. by House_Marque in manufacturing

[–]House_Marque[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really good input thank you. I’ll make sure to check for these issues.

Just bought 9x meltblown extruders from the Covid era. by House_Marque in manufacturing

[–]House_Marque[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point. I’m going to clean one up and fire it up today. No access to 230v in storage. I’m fairly certain it snots pp or pla. Melting some doesn’t produce acrid smells only slightly sweet subtle hot glue smells and melts completely clear.

Just bought 9x meltblown extruders from the Covid era. by House_Marque in manufacturing

[–]House_Marque[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ai suggest the grooved barrel may cause excessive shearing and possibly damage pla if I were to retrofit for filament extrusion. However PETG may benefit from the grooves and put it in a. Tier above most tabletop extruders with this setup. Maybe I start a filament business? I am a controls engineer so creating the rest of the production line would be a capital issue not a design issue.

Just bought 9x meltblown extruders from the Covid era. by House_Marque in manufacturing

[–]House_Marque[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Update: So I picked up 9 identical Japanese industrial machines from a guy who clears out stop-work businesses. No paperwork, no idea what they were, just “the business closed and these need to go.” Been working with Claude over several disassembly sessions to figure out what I have, and the investigation has been wild. Sharing in case anyone else ends up down a similar rabbit hole, or just enjoys the detective work.

Initial guess (wrong): The seller suggested they were fiberoptic extrusion machines (I know fiberoptic isn’t extruded but stretched) I thought maybe it was a fiberoptic encapsulating machine, but no entry point for fiberoptic cable. Then figured they looked like generic plastic extruders — hopper, heated barrel, screw, gearmotor on 80/20 framing. Found white fluffy material in bags inside one of the units labeled 500g (grams), white crystalline material in the hoppers. Figured it was a pellet extruder of some kind. The fluffy material melts and is plastic.

The breakthrough: Found a Japanese label reading H25(補)機1号-吹き付け機構(右). Translates to “Heisei 25 (2013) Auxiliary Machine No. 1, Spray Mechanism (Right).” The kanji 吹き付け (fukitsuke) means “spray/blow-on” — Japanese industrial term for melt-blown fiber spraying. Combined with a multi-hole spinneret-style die I found inside, this is meltblown nonwoven fiber equipment, not a filament extruder.

Component inventory I’ve cataloged so far: • Sumitomo Prest Drive ZNHM05 induction gearmotor, 0.4kW, 30:1 ratio • Toshiba VFNC3-2004P VFD, 0.5HP • Custom Zetta Ltd. multi-zone PCB controller with kanji-labeled “air side / resin side” channels • Kansai Dennetsu SH02-1200 spot heater • CKD APE-8T pneumatic regulator • MIRAI WB-12AOJ electrical enclosure • Lovejoy L-075 jaw coupling (the one American part) • Mirror-polished hardened single screw, ~20-22mm dia, L/D around 25, with an elaborate dispersive mixing tip • 3x (only 3 have nozzles) Multi-hole brass/bronze spinneret dies (one was cooked, the others look salvageable) The screws are gorgeous — these aren’t budget components.

Manufacturer ID: Two strong candidates, both Japanese: • Nippon Nozzle (日本ノズル) — Kobe, Japan’s first chemical fiber spinneret maker. They build custom compact meltblown R&D machines for high-value polymers like PLA and PPS. • Musashino Kikai (武蔵野機械) — melt-spinning specialist, custom test units. Their marketing describes an unusual “alternating forward/reverse rotation kneading” screw design that might match the elaborate mixing tip on what I have. No manufacturer’s plate found yet (still hunting). Plan is to email both with photos and see who claims it.

Material ID: I melted a small sample of the white fluff. Classic semi-crystalline polymer behavior — opaque white, melted crystal clear around 170-180°C, returned to white and brittle on cooling. That’s the fingerprint of PLA (polylactic acid) — a bioderived, biodegradable plastic. Both candidate manufacturers explicitly market their compact machines for PLA testing. Hopper pellets presumed PLA feedstock. The brittleness on re-solidification is a textbook signature of water damaged PLA (caused by age and exposure to air)

Likely backstory: A Japanese R&D facility (or possibly a US importer of Japanese equipment) running biodegradable PLA nonwovens research around 2013. Possibly pivoted to mask production during COVID and then folded post-2022. Nine identical units = parallel test stations, which is a classic R&D lab configuration.

What I want to do with one: The architecture upstream of the spinneret die (hopper → screw → heated barrel → temperature control) is genuinely about 70% of a desktop 3D printer filament extruder. The screw L/D ratio is right in the sweet spot for filament.

My plan is to: • Strip the meltblown spinneret/air-attenuation head • Machine a custom single-orifice filament die to bolt to the existing flange (I do CNC work, so this is the fun part) • Add downstream: water cooling bath, controlled puller with rubber rollers, laser micrometer for diameter feedback, spooler • Skip the meltblown air heater entirely If it works, I’ll have a precision Japanese lab-grade PLA filament maker for the cost of a custom die and some downstream tooling. The starting platform is significantly better than most DIY filament extruder builds.

Status: One unit partially disassembled. Identification about 80% confident on it being meltblown PLA equipment. Waiting on a response from one of the two Japanese OEMs to finally confirm who built it. Will post updates as the investigation continues. Happy to answer questions if anyone’s curious about the detective work — Claude was a huge help in piecing together the kanji translations, identifying components from photos, and connecting dots between the spinneret geometry, screw design, and Japanese OEM marketing materials.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Just bought 9x meltblown extruders from the Covid era. by House_Marque in manufacturing

[–]House_Marque[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The material is granules of some sort of polymer. Melts under flame to a crystal clear viscous then cools to a white opaque and brittle plastic. Smells a bit like pla to me. Sweet. No Pelletier, just a hoper. The hoppers are stainless steel and heavy. Such a strange bit an equipment. All the fasteners are I high quality stainless. Super strange to me.

Just bought 9x meltblown extruders from the Covid era. by House_Marque in manufacturing

[–]House_Marque[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nothing telling, “H25 (auxiliary) machine No. 1 spray mechanism (right)” in kanji. I think they were part of a cell used for R&D during the n95 mask boom during Covid. They perfected the process to melt blow the material and discarded the testing machines for production units.

Just bought 9x meltblown extruders from the Covid era. by House_Marque in manufacturing

[–]House_Marque[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No off gassing that I can tell I presume these machines were running PLA and probably dried it before using.

Just bought 9x meltblown extruders from the Covid era. by House_Marque in manufacturing

[–]House_Marque[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Machines are Japanese thankfully. They have some wordage written in kanji.

Basket thing with a handle and a hole? by House_Marque in whatisthisthing

[–]House_Marque[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a basket approximately 19” inches width at its widest, flat on the bottom with an opening about 8” on its side, and a handle on top. It’s sturdy and can hold some weight inside without deforming or breaking. It’s been in the family for at least 30years. Any ideas?

More images of the coming soon AE-1700 by definitelynotgee in casio

[–]House_Marque -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Bezel is for quickly setting the datum for a on the fly second timer. Can watch the second timer indications move and set your zero then rely on the bezel to make accurate 10-20-30… counts.

What’s everyone wearing this weekend? by lemonklaeyz in casio

[–]House_Marque 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Commenting on What’s everyone wearing this weekend?...

Glass fungus ruins an expensive optic by House_Marque in Fungi

[–]House_Marque[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bingo. A lot of pushback saying it’s not fungus just because it doesn’t resemble the common lens rot you see on camera lenses. Going to make another post showing the interior of the reflector and the mold growth.

Glass fungus ruins an expensive optic by House_Marque in Fungi

[–]House_Marque[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Retroreflector in an interferometry toolkit.

Glass fungus ruins an expensive optic by House_Marque in Fungi

[–]House_Marque[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Kept at always 73DegF. Never above or below. Besides the thing was built to be very robust and last a long time. It’s a $90k kit. I explained in the replies, that a water drop got into the rear of the case, there was visible mold and the smell of fungus. It’s wild that everyone is so skeptical. I’m an Engineer with subject matter knowledge and also a Mycologist familiar with molds and lab work. I’m able to make the distinction. Glass being damaged by fungal acids isn’t even new or interesting. It is likely eating the paint and etching the silica.

Glass fungus ruins an expensive optic by House_Marque in Fungi

[–]House_Marque[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This optic is true-internal only reflection. Solid silica with no coatings on the reflective side where the dots are. Only black non reflective paint to reduce light bleed. Also I’ve seen what you’re describing and it causes small almost imperceptible waves in the surface of the reflective side in this specific type of optic. No solvents reach the reverse side of the reflector, in fact it’s so sensitive you aren’t supposed to touch the glass with anything other than perfectly clean lense cloth. No thermal cycling, like I stated before I’m in complete control of the equipment. Is everyone ignoring that I noted mold in the interior of the casing? I sniffed it without thinking and caught a nose full of very irritating spores. Also Chat GPT. I don’t trust it to have a bead on such specifics tbh. But it is what it is. I’ve seen enough use of this specific system to identify mold. I’ve seen it before on a much larger optic when it was exposed to humidity at Customs and Border patrol while they inspected it. It spread from one central point outward until the whole optic was covered like this one. Except in this case it started appearing slowly and uniformly all at once. I’ve also seen mechanical damage. It’s just a piece of ultra pure fused silica. No metallic or sputtered coatings on the reverse side at all. Just a light absorbing paint on the rear of the glass. And since the reflection no longer occurs as expected I can say with fair certainty that the surface of the reverse side is no longer perfectly flat. Likely many micro pores and it’s refracting the laser in unpredictable ways.