3d printing plastic PET bottle (experiment)
I tried to print a plastic bottle on a 3D printer.
PET filament is quite suitable for 3D printing.
Nice and free plastic for printing.
I saw enough how the Kulibins print PET bottles and decided to try it myself. This is just an experiment, there will not be any finished product here.
At first I made a simple bottle cutter with an adjustment of the width of cutting the tape. Dissolve the bottle on the tape about 5 mm wide.
The next step was to make something like an extruder, I did everything literally on my knee. He took the clutch, two M6 screws, an iron corner and a wooden bar. Drilled through screws, in one screw a hole of 1.5 mm, in another 3 mm.
He wound heat-resistant scotch tape over the coupling and made several turns of thin nichrome. Through trial and error, I selected the optimal voltage at which the clutch and screws heat up and soften the bottle ribbon without melting it. I drag the ribbon through this device, the ribbon is twisted and it turns out something like a tube, and I will print with this tube.
For clarity, first printed out a test model of ABS plastic one wall thick. Further in the case went the tube from the bottle. Not all of the model printed well, some gaps started, it turned out that the extruder could not push the tube, it was necessary to help with the hand. I printed another one already in two walls and a filling of 10%.
Here are the print results.
Printed with the same parameters with which I usually print ABS plastic. In general, I liked the print.
I did not like the process of making such plastic from PET, specifically did not like the result. The tube turns out with sharp agnails, they will spoil the tube of the bowden. Also, the tube is uneven and depends on the wall thickness of the bottle. I will not use this option anymore, I'd rather make a PET crusher and an extruder to get a smooth filament, all this is in the plans, only a matter of time.