Christopher - Unmake Plastic
If you have talent but not money, then time is your resource: find a shredder at auction. Searching for SIT, it seems you might be in NJ; there are many auctions in the industrial North; you might be able to source a shredder for under $500- of course, that wouldn't include transportation and refurbishing expenses, a supporting shop space and any power outfitting, plastic washing capacity, storage, etc, etc. Then there is the extruder, your ambition to integrate and automate these systems, and to do all that on $700... by Spring.
From my perspective, your want exceeds all reason. I suggest first aiming your 5 person dedicated team, one and all, at the task of raising more funds. Think of money as just another tool on your list. You want to extrude plastic? You need an extruder. You want to shred plastic? You need a shredder. You want machines? You need money. Like an airplane, you can't just forgo parts that pose a challenge and say "we're going to build it without wings". (edited)
Hey Christopher, I appreciate the response, we have a dedicated machine shop where we can build the extruder system and shredder (minus cutting the sheet metal parts) for no cost, given we have the materials. We have been developing a design for this system for the past two months and we are ready to fabricate the mechanical subsystems. We have a current design for the extruder and have been working on it, but the shredder has been difficult given the cost restraint. As far as sponsors go, we are exploring many industry sponsors who want to reduce their carbon footprint, but we haven't received funds yet. We cannot dedicate the team to just raising money as there are design milestones that we need to hit in the meantime. Additionally, we have the DXF files to cut the shredder parts from sheet metal, but we don't have a laser cutter or water jet powerful enough, nor do we have the sheet metal. I thought this method would be the cheapest, so I was wondering if the community had any resources for finding scrap metal or a place that might support our efforts and machine the parts as a "sponsor" of the project. Alternatively, I was wondering if maybe someone had a shredder, or parts they made and have no more use for. Any help or advice in that category would be appreciated. As far as the project "not having wings" we are not trying to build a perfect machine by spring, but rather a proof of concept. I would like to have a functional extruder and shredder by then, and I believe that with a little more funding and some resourceful spending, we could achieve something for the spring and hopefully build off of it afterward. I was really just looking for some sort of advice from people who have been on a tight budget trying to build an extruder and shredder, and how they overcame it. (edited)