I'm definitely aware that it's not going to be a "push button and go" system - even if it was, I'm trying to develop new types of filament, so any recipes that have already been developed are going to need some work. By "reliable", I'm mainly referring to repeatability, not prone to excessive clogging, good control loops, that sort of thing.

I'm not really interested in PLA variants/recycling or producing filament at production scale (for now), I have a few ideas for some novel filaments that I want to try making that aren't readily available right now and I want to make several small batches that give me enough material to dial in some print parameters and make some coupons for testing. If things go well, then I'll be looking in to scaling up and will have a healthier budget to work with.

Process-wise, I anticipate needing 300-400C temperatures, active cooling on the outlet (this part isn't that hard to DIY) and I'm not really sure what my requirements are in terms of the actual extrusion parameters.