FREE Filament for 3D Printers made from Recycled PET Plastic Bottles!

Making FREE filament from recycled PET Plastic Bottles! In this video, I'll demonstrate the method I use to smooth out and remove the texturing and 'ripples' found on many plastic bottles. Removing this texturing will allow us to cut these bottles into long ribbons and have a ribbon that is smooth, flat, and has a consistent width.

[@daliasprints9798]

Gatorade bottles, even the more heavily textured 20oz ones, smooth fine, but you probably need more pressure and/or better application of the heat. I use 1-2 full strokes from a full size bike pump and turn over an electric stovetop burner on high until the texture is gone. More important than keeping the cut straight is getting the thickness consistent.

[@KevinGroninga3D]

I generally don’t like those Gatorade bottles. They’re thicker than the large water bottles I use, which means I have to keep adjusting my bearing cutter. But yeah, a little more pressure and a little longer under the heat gun would have made it even smoother. As far as the electric stove, that seems to be a little extreme and a waste of a lot of electricity unless you’re doing a few (or more) bottles at a time. I didn’t show this in the video, but I usually put the Shrader valve in the chuck of a battery powered drill and use that to slowly turn the bottle while I’m heating it with the heat gun. It’s a little more even application of the heat. I’m always concerned about accidentally melting a hole in the bottle. If that happens, the resulting BANG can be super loud and potentially dangerous. You know, Safety Third, right?

[@skydude426]

Great videos! A person could also use a lightly clamped on hose clamp to keep the pressure cap threads engaged on the bottle.

[@daliasprints9798]

@@KevinGroninga3D Yes. I'm planning on developing a heating element to put inside the bottle, attached to the cap, which would expand these and worse bottles a lot more efficiently and uniformly.

[@KevinGroninga3D]

@@skydude426 Yep! A worm clamp (hose clamp) would do the job too. Good tip!

[@KevinGroninga3D]

@@daliasprints9798 that’s why I don’t waste a lot of time with smaller bottles with a lot of texturing. This isn’t a very efficient process to begin with, so I focus on bottles with ‘bang for the Buck’. I like the 1 gallon water bottles we get from that friend of ours. Sure, there’s a little texture, but easy to remove, and I can get about 14.5 meters of good usable filament from one. That also means a lot less welding to get a significant amount for printing.