Thermoplastics are great, since you can melt them down as well as reform them into whatever you like. This is ably demonstrated by [The Q] by recycling old soda bottles into usable 3D printer filament.
Cute, huh? Why aren’t Coca-Cola making these? small fake grocery products already shown extremely prominent in Australia.
Soda bottles are typically constructed out of PET plastic, or polyethylene terephthalate, which is one of the most prominent thermoplastics in contemporary society. A soda bottle can be cut into a constant long, thin strip with the utilize of a easy hand-operated device that slices the bottle with a blade. This strip of plastic can then be fed with a heated nozzle in purchase to create filament for 3D printing. [The Q] demonstrates both parts of this process, including utilizing a motorized reel to take up filament as the bottle material is fed with the extruder.
The filament is then demonstrated by printing small versions of soda bottles. [The Q] fills these with soda as well as provides them the suitable lids as well as labels for completion’s sake. It’s a neat method to demonstrate that the filament really works for 3D printing. It bears noting that such prints are practically definitely not food safe, however it’s truly a proof of idea rather than an attempt to make a usable beverage container.
Like similar develops we’ve seen in the past, the filament is of restricted length because of the amount of plastic in a single bottle. We’d like to see a technique for feeding several bottles worth of plastic into the extruder to make a longer length spool, as joining lengths of filament itself can be fraught with issues. video after the break.