This desktop machine can turn scrap plastic into working pens at home 9%
By Munis Raza0%
7/24/2026, 12:58:59 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 11 faulty reasoning types, including Availability Heuristic, Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, and Optimism Bias, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 14.7% saturation with 85 hits. Analysis detected 353 faulty-reasoning hits from 580 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 26% and a BS Rank of 9% (19,940 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.10% of the article peer group.
An Austrian company called Plasticpreneur has built a desktop plastic extruder small enough to sit on a workbench at home.
The machine, called the DEGO, turns chopped household plastic waste into molded objects using a hand crank, a heated barrel, and a set of interchangeable molds.
The YouTube channel Brothers Make demonstrated the concept by feeding a pile of broken baskets, empty food tubs, and packaging scraps into the machine one afternoon and producing a set of working pens.
Plasticpreneur has spent years building larger recycling equipment for workshops and schools.
The DEGO is its first workbench-scale version.
It weighs 44 lbs (20 kg), measures roughly 8 x 22 x 15 inches (21 x 55 x 39 cm), and runs on standard household power.
The base model costs approximately 3,500 euros, or around $3,990 at current exchange rates.
Additional molds for items like pens or carabiners are sold separately.
How a hand crank turns plastic flakes into finished objects
The process is straightforward.
The user feeds chopped plastic flakes into an opening at the top of the machine and turns the hand crank.
The crank rotates a screw inside a heated barrel, pulling the flakes forward, melting them through a combination of friction and electric heat, and pushing the softened plastic out through a nozzle at the front.
To make an object, the user attaches a mold to the nozzle and keeps cranking until the cavity fills.
Once full, the mold opens, and the finished piece comes out.
Brothers Make was able to produce individual pen barrels in a few minutes each, turning out several in a single session.
A built-in fume extraction mechanism draws any vapors generated during melting through a filter before they enter the room.
The machine requires no compressed air and no hydraulics, and cleanup is simple: pass any remaining plastic through the barrel until it runs clear.
High-density polyethylene from household waste works best
Brothers Make focused on high-density polyethylene, the plastic used in laundry baskets, chocolate tubs, fishing rope, marker cases, and cracker packaging.
HDPE is one of the most common plastics in the home and one of the easier varieties to melt and re-form at temperatures the DEGO can reach.
Because the screw mixes the incoming material as it feeds through the barrel, achieving a single solid color is uncommon.
Instead, the finished pieces show streaks, marbling, and gradual color transitions that shift from one object to the next depending on what plastics were loaded together.
Brothers Make used a pale yellow-green basket, red tubs, teal rope, black pen barrels, and orange cracker packaging to produce a visually varied batch of pens without any deliberate color planning.
Preparation and what the machine requires of its user
The DEGO itself can process plain plastic flakes with no additional machinery.
However, users need to remove any stickers and cut larger pieces down to a manageable size using scissors, shears, or a guillotine cutter before feeding them in.
The material also needs to be clean and dry.
A dedicated shredder speeds up the preparation step significantly and is sold separately.
Compared to a full industrial extruder, the DEGO is compact, inexpensive, and accessible.
It occupies minimal bench space, has a low learning curve, and can be up and running within minutes of setup.
Plasticpreneur’s goal is to bring the core mechanics of plastic recycling into spaces that have no realistic access to industrial-scale equipment.
Analysis
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