That bit about testing the strength of the recycled plastic was extra interesting. To get more recycled products we should reward companies that compete with sustainability. Measurement, standards and incentives need to be established to foster that.
Thanks for covering this, Tom. I love how Josh got this up and running - I built a Recreator using the Xvico from his original plans and it's so cool being able to convert bottles into filament at home.
i've kept my head out of the 3d printing arena, but this now makes me want one, being able to upcycle stuff that is regarded as waste! absolute genius!
These types of video has convinced me that 3d printing is the recycling future we need. We need not just bottles but molten plastic into filament is what needs to be made super dirt cheap
I built a ReCreator3D and made a few bottles into filament before needing to use a PSU from it. But I'll soon have it pulling PET1 bottles again. It's a great project and Josh is very helpful to those looking to build one..... Which you should ;-).
@@TheRainHarvester I'm not, haven't used mine enough to make it needed. But on the Facebook group people are trying different things and I believe Josh is working with a commercial product that may work well?
was wondering how to join the filaments into one continuous length. Secret sauce is the runout sensor and a person there to change the filament real fast. Cool! Would be useful on islands where importing anything is expensive but plastic bottles show up on the beach for free every day. I wonder how many solar panels it would take to run the pultruder and 3-d printer.
I'm running a Recreator3D MK5Kit right now and it's drawing about 25 watts. So a single modest solar panel in direct sunlight would do it. As for the printing, it depends on many factors of the specific printer. If you can figure out a way to print PET without a heated bed, that will save a lot of power.
"sadly" in Germany it is not really viable to do this due to our "Pfandsystem" (depositsystem) . The bottle value is too high (0.25€ per bottle) and there are not many products in deposit free PET bottles anymore. But at least the bottles here are recycled in a more general way. But for other countries this seems to be a really cool idea!
Hello from Finland! Here 92% of PET bottles are recycled. Clear bottles can cycle basically indefinitely as new bottles, but coloured bottles have to be made into something else. Big 1.5 litre bottles have value of 0.4€ and small bottles are 0.15€.
And most PET bottles only have a small smooth section that you can extract from rendering the rest of the bottle useless for recycling so they go into the general trash.
Unfortunately, most of the plastic waste in which bottles end up in Germany is not actually recycled. Instead, because of its high and well-defined calorific value, the plastic waste is often needed to better control the incineration of other waste. Nevertheless, this certainly depends from disposal company to disposal company.
@@tmartin9482 Normal plastic waste (gelber Sack/gelbe Tonne) is burned (e.g. in cement ovens or waste incineration plants), but thats not true for collected PET-bottles. In germany most of all returned PET-bottles are reused as PET, since it is a relatively clean "waste" and only a very minor part is burned (which is still much better than throwing it in a landfill or in the sea; data: „Aufkommen und Verwertung von PET-Getränkeflaschen in Deutschland 2019“ der Gesellschaft für Verpackungsmarktforschung (GVM)).
Wouldn't it be great to get these in to the hands of people in developing countries, where it might be hard (and very expensive for local wage levels) to get new filament? I've seen some reports of people in remote villages in developing countries using 3D printing to benefit their communities. Being able to access free feedstock could be a game changer.
It sure would as long as they have PET-1 bottles lying around. My experience in South America was that most soda came in a thicker plastic bottle that was reusable from the factory and there was a deposit required for the bottle itself. This taught me that what is commonplace in North America may be uncommon in other parts of the world.
As much as I love reusing plastic, PET is the one plastic that is highly recyclable in my area. So taking it out of the recycle stream isn't helpful. We really need a way to reuse PP (5 mark) and ideally all plastics. Maybe we just need a universal pellet extruder than can use shredded plastic.
What would be better is a hopper where you can put ground (or to be ground) PETG in and it grinds and melts to a useable filament. This way you can use the whole plastic whatever container and not have to spool it like the bottle. The amount of PETG that goes in the garbage is insane (fruit containers, produce containers, plastic bottles, product bubble heat wraps, etc). Recycle all of this stuff!!
I am interested in this method, but from what I have read/heard the major limiting factors are 1. No Gycol molecule, totally different filament to PETG, with very different properties, PET for bottles etc is designed to cool very fast, this is why the molds often have water cooling 2. The moisture, same as printing PETG, PET is hydroscopic, and would need drying prior to, or during extruding
I always wondered whether can we put multiple bottles feeding with thinner ribbons cut, making the subsequent roll same in quality but combined in length.
The problem might be getting the three ribbons to roll on themselves. Another way to do it might be to process three bottles as normal, then either twist or braid them together. As long as you can get it started through the heat break, there should be no issue with trying to get them to roll since it's just a straight pull.
Here is an idea; there is a dealer that sell warranty returned Enders as a print farm starter (2, 3, 5, printers) for lower prices, I would be tempted to buy a pair of them and turn one into a pull-struder rig to make PET filament.
I mean, by the very nature of granular materials, you cant pull-xtrude em unless you mean actually melting it and then pulling it, in which case theres plenty of em in the wild
@@rmanami yeah I understand that this kind of system wouldn’t work, but the more cheap DIY filament machines the better, and machines that can work with pellet or shredded material will open up more materials that can be made into filament and bring in a lot more trash that can be recycled
Its usually not a very fun process with things you build yourself. Works ok for abs within a "good" tolerance but for PLA you most likely need a longer table with cooling and spooling and all controlled well. Within a month you find yourself in a self build filament production plant. :D
Working on that next! Trying to change how the industry operates and that is going to take some big steps and a loud mouth. Luckily I bellow miles away!
I love the idea. In regards to his problem with joining his recycled filaments, why not manually jpin them and then pass them through the pullstruder again? Surely that would sort out any size inconsistencies and ensure a better bond.
That would take a longgg time. Best is find a way to join it properly with a removable clip, second best might be a way to auto feed sections of filament in.
How does the shape of the bottle affect the quality parameters of the resulting filament? Nowadays I rarely see those mostly cylindrical bottles in Central Europe that I see in all the Recreator videos. Most are tallied or have intentional dents, bulges or grooves.
You either have to put some water in the bottles then heat them up so they expand or you pump air into the bottles as if you were doing a tube or car tire then heat it up. What this does is expands the bottle and pulls out all the ripples and thins out the bottle a little but and smooth. Then you cut them into strips and extrude into flilament.
The only thing I hate about the design...how does it compensate for varying wall-thickness of the bottle? Y'all may have addressed this somewhere else, but here is my take on the issue. PET bottles are the opposite of Dinosaurs: while extinct lizards are thin at both ends and much thicker in the middle, bottle side-walls tend to be thinnest in the middle and much ticker at the ends. A strip the same width is easy/peasy; a strip of constant VOLUME (see what I did there?) is a little tougher. Or not... A pinch-roller that 'senses' the thickness of the side-wall being cut would be tied to a mechanism that alters the width of the strip in response. Result is a strip of material with a constant cross-sectional area, which leads to uniform filament diameter.
If you don't have any old ender machine laying around then petamentor is best option. It's way more cheaper (under 50$) and simple to build (no need any programming)
one bottle peeler is good, but i reckon having some kind of method to start feeding in a second peeler strand before the end of the previous peeled strand has completely been sucked into the pull-struder. so, in short, two peelers instead of one. maybe taper the end of the first strand and taper the beginning of the next strand? fun problem!
nice but heres the problem you can only do one bottle so a small ammount of filament per roll very small theres no way to merge another bottle to make a whole 2kg roll.. so for small stuff sure.. what you need is a continuiouse like they use professionally to make filament with screws and pellots and a way to make the pellets grinding them up and melting them into pellets that would be ideal
For anyone interested in this but don't want to waste an ender, you only need wooden board, stepper motor, heatblock with heater and thermistor, mbo, screen and PSU. For rest there is Petpull2 on thingverse
no, unfortunately you have to cut the top and bottom of the bottle off. I would guess if you manage to use a shredder and use some mold to make a uniform hollow cylinder by some "hacky" injection molding process, you could then feed that cylinder thru the same machine again to make the same pullstruded filament from the shredded pieces.
I need something like this for recycling print scraps rather than soda bottles. So much PLA and PETG scrap I'd love to turn back into filament with as little fiddling as possible.
Love the channel. I'd love to see a video of using onshape to design things that are bigger than my printer. Showing a good way make parts that can be joined to make a bigger part.
I'm new to 3d printing but how much would u sell that filament maker system for becouse that's a great ideas saving plastic waste and saving on pla👍👍😊😊
@@rogsolutions I mainly encountered PET crystallization in vacuum forming and after weeks of trying to tune the process I gave up and switched to PETG. Doesn't crystallize and thanks to that it behaves much better around the temperatures where it softens for 3D printing/vacuum forming. I imagine that's why almost all the commercially available filaments are PETG instead of pure PET.
@@bzqp2 yep, I believe that is the case, and that is what holds Precious Plastics back from large scale recycling of PET too, time to make everything from HDPE I think! /s
Well technically much less cost than "traditional" processing! Because for the "Traditional" processing, you need normal pla pellets, a water cooling system, also you have to cut down the bottles with a diffrent machine, and so on! But this here is basicly a smaller version , without extra steps so it safes some money!
How do you control it do you use the printer circuit board If so how do you program it to just turn on without having a print for the circuit board to print
It’s a beautiful project. The PET became my free filament and the Recreator is improved to a really reliable machine. I printed earrings less than a mm thick with bottle PET. And my dungeon tiles are adding on the pile of shame. An MMU makes the job easier, a palette allows to join filaments effortlessly. I went for my Voron build before time just to mount an ERCF and print free and environmentally friendly parts for my hobbies.
In Germany the seller charges a deposit on most PET Bottles, most glass bottles and aluminium cans, usually 25 cent. So this looks really cool but is expensive to operate for us
I believe he meant that the pull-trusion setup operates below the actual melting point of the PET material. After all, if the material was truly molten you couldn't maintain any tension on it, it'd just stretch until it broke, whereas at a lower temp it's still possible to pull it through while slowly and in a controlled manner stretching it out at the same time.
This must be an error that slipped out, PET bottles start to melt at around 150°C already. At 255°C the PET is almost at the point where it starts to decompose into other chemicals. I would say printing temperatures are pretty much the same as for any pure PET filament, so somewhere in the 230-250°C range.
awesome project, although i don't think you should do this in countries where u have a bottle return systems (pfand) cause whenever you are done with the product u have made from reclaimed bottles, will end up as trash again.
@@CharlesLogstonInTexas If you take an amount of plastic out of an cycle to make filament a new bottle has to be made. This is essentially buying filament directly with extra steps. This is a huge thing in countries without a recycling system. Most of the bottles in the world were coca cola bottles made of thin PET probably. afaik.
@@raise-project unfortunately even countries with high recycling rates don't actually recycle huge portions of their bottles into other bottles or plastic products. Many burn them for heat, this is counted as recycling. It destroyed my confidence in the German and dutch system when I toured facilities and found that they were proud of the fact that they burned plastics for heat. I even commented on how there were PET bottles in the piles, and was told that it was mostly contaminated mixed plastic and it would be too resource intensive to recover 100% of the usable plastic. So while making filament out of a bottle may remove said bottle from the industrial recycling chain, it also guarantees that the bottle will actually be made into something instead of being burned to generate heat.
@@antoniomromo True I think I heard about that too once. I usually don' t have must plastic waste but if I switch to discounter for a week the plastic bin is almost full in an instant. So its best to avoid plastic containments. I dont want to talk this down in any way. I just think the recycling process of anything else than bottles is pretty tedious and its way easier to just avoid plastic in the first place. I made 6kg of pla pellets from failed prints of a shop nearby and they still sit here in a box waiting for the extruder. Same principal, I just print less and more often repair oder modify stuff instead of printing again.
I feel the physiological dangers presented by recycled plastics are such that incinerating plastic is a better solution. Making clothes, consumer goods, and food containers from recycled plastic is a nice idea, but the fact remains that each heat cycle makes it easier for these plastics to break down or get absorbed by the body.
Definitely rings with me, I find the fact we always ignore the amount of waste in plastic we make in the hobby, annoying. I love the technical aspects of the hobby, but just printing away models, nope, I tend to stick with my own designs for home use and such, so I can keep things that would be thrown away, function for longer.
The waste must be incredible and if 3D printing makes it to the paper printer level of use we may see a new disaster come about if steps aren't taken now to help the system become more self sufficient. I use 3D printing to design and test models I plan to CNC and have a habit of overlooking 10 things before I get a model right sometimes. Imagining that plus useless trinkets across the globe makes me wonder how long before taxes crop up on rolls of filament that are not from recycled material.
The better "R words" for plastic are Reduce and Reuse; not Recycle. ALL the plastic that all the world employs in 3D printing (including the part wasted in failed prints) is just a little drop in the very, very large ocean of plastic that the humanity produces. All the PET that a project like this could recycle, is just a centesimal part of that little drop. All that talk about plastic "recycling" is not about environment or "a better world"; that talk addresses the guilt, because if you think that plastic is really "recyclable" you will continue consuming it.
@@OgbondSandvol Numbers are nothing as of now there is no doubting that. The rate I use 2.2lbs in design errors, printing defects, printer failures, supports and poor filament choice ends in 1 out of 10 being useful as simply a prototype I will throw away meaning 100% ends up as trash. Add in the trinkets and dozen other reasons to consume plastic and we may have a new consumption source coming online that one day could reach average households world wide giving plastic bottles a run for it's money in terms of consumption. It's the dozen other uses we haven't figured out for printing that will really open the possibility for waste to become an even bigger problem as well. I often wonder if plastic contamination/containers could be a contributing factor for the spike in cancer rates too meaning 3D PRINTING could kill in the brazillions!
@@ChrisHarmon1 3D printing is responsible for just a tiny fraction of the world's plastic use, I think that will be for a long time. Maybe you are impressed for your personal filament use, but I assure that the 3D print folks are a scarce minority. Meanwhile, each second there are countless tons of injected plastic beeing discarded. What are "brazillions"? Are they dying of cancer more than other people? 😄
Since empty pet bottles normally have a return value of €0,25 that would be €10 per kg in material cost. Frankly that would not make it worth it for me. If I could use failed prints.I'm thinking along the lines of creating a strip out of shredded waste with heated rollers to mold a thin 8mm strip and pull extrude that into filament.
Nice idea. But for us in North Europe not really interesting. Due to the deposit system the base material (bottles) has a value of more than 9$ per Kilogramm if we would use the complete bottle. For us they are no waste any more.
That bit about testing the strength of the recycled plastic was extra interesting. To get more recycled products we should reward companies that compete with sustainability. Measurement, standards and incentives need to be established to foster that.
I'm just amazed by how smooth you could transition from the most recycle friendly material to a resin ad ...
LOVE this project, Josh is such a good human too. Love that dude.
2:22
@@MA-oz2rn Peekaboo
He never replies back to me, I think he is a ghost 😂😂😂
Dude, this guy is epic! Such a cool way to address both plastic waste and e-waste!
Probably one of the coolest printer related mods in 2022.
Виталий Богачёв "my homemade machine for making a rod from plastic bottles for a 3D printer" 2018 year
I can't think of a better idea, great people behind it to!
Thanks for covering this, Tom. I love how Josh got this up and running - I built a Recreator using the Xvico from his original plans and it's so cool being able to convert bottles into filament at home.
i've kept my head out of the 3d printing arena, but this now makes me want one, being able to upcycle stuff that is regarded as waste! absolute genius!
Thanks Tom for sharing what was on ERRF with us :)
These types of video has convinced me that 3d printing is the recycling future we need. We need not just bottles but molten plastic into filament is what needs to be made super dirt cheap
Please do a follow-up later with them. And it would be awesome if you did one about the resin cast and hand-operated injection molding process.
check thecraftsman steadycraftin that guy has all the mould videos
It was cool talking to him on saturday, he knows alot about what hes doing. Im thinking about making one!
This is kick ass, one of the best spin offs of the bottle to filiment, prosses I invented in 2018, I'v ever seen. Clean design and well thought out.
Couldn't help but notice the 3DPN high five over his shoulder at 1:43 LOL
I built a ReCreator3D and made a few bottles into filament before needing to use a PSU from it. But I'll soon have it pulling PET1 bottles again. It's a great project and Josh is very helpful to those looking to build one..... Which you should ;-).
Thanks man! Appreciate you! Humbled.
How are you splicing ?
@@TheRainHarvester I'm not, haven't used mine enough to make it needed. But on the Facebook group people are trying different things and I believe Josh is working with a commercial product that may work well?
was wondering how to join the filaments into one continuous length. Secret sauce is the runout sensor and a person there to change the filament real fast. Cool! Would be useful on islands where importing anything is expensive but plastic bottles show up on the beach for free every day. I wonder how many solar panels it would take to run the pultruder and 3-d printer.
I'm running a Recreator3D MK5Kit right now and it's drawing about 25 watts. So a single modest solar panel in direct sunlight would do it. As for the printing, it depends on many factors of the specific printer. If you can figure out a way to print PET without a heated bed, that will save a lot of power.
Not sure, but very interested in finding a way to add value to plastic on the islands, where in the world are you? I am south Pacific based
I just finished building up an returned ender 3. I got it for $55 and was able to get just about all the upgrades cheaper than the original printer.
Thank you Tom I was hoping someone posted about this!
Look for PETamentor mk2, the easiest and cheapest to make, well documented and no need to use microcontroller or programming
eh, this project looks better
"sadly" in Germany it is not really viable to do this due to our "Pfandsystem" (depositsystem) . The bottle value is too high (0.25€ per bottle) and there are not many products in deposit free PET bottles anymore. But at least the bottles here are recycled in a more general way.
But for other countries this seems to be a really cool idea!
Hello from Finland! Here 92% of PET bottles are recycled. Clear bottles can cycle basically indefinitely as new bottles, but coloured bottles have to be made into something else. Big 1.5 litre bottles have value of 0.4€ and small bottles are 0.15€.
And most PET bottles only have a small smooth section that you can extract from rendering the rest of the bottle useless for recycling so they go into the general trash.
Unfortunately, most of the plastic waste in which bottles end up in Germany is not actually recycled. Instead, because of its high and well-defined calorific value, the plastic waste is often needed to better control the incineration of other waste.
Nevertheless, this certainly depends from disposal company to disposal company.
@@tmartin9482 Normal plastic waste (gelber Sack/gelbe Tonne) is burned (e.g. in cement ovens or waste incineration plants), but thats not true for collected PET-bottles. In germany most of all returned PET-bottles are reused as PET, since it is a relatively clean "waste" and only a very minor part is burned (which is still much better than throwing it in a landfill or in the sea; data: „Aufkommen und Verwertung von PET-Getränkeflaschen in Deutschland 2019“ der Gesellschaft für Verpackungsmarktforschung (GVM)).
@@kleinerELM TY for clarification and the reference!
Wouldn't it be great to get these in to the hands of people in developing countries, where it might be hard (and very expensive for local wage levels) to get new filament? I've seen some reports of people in remote villages in developing countries using 3D printing to benefit their communities. Being able to access free feedstock could be a game changer.
It sure would as long as they have PET-1 bottles lying around. My experience in South America was that most soda came in a thicker plastic bottle that was reusable from the factory and there was a deposit required for the bottle itself. This taught me that what is commonplace in North America may be uncommon in other parts of the world.
As much as I love reusing plastic, PET is the one plastic that is highly recyclable in my area. So taking it out of the recycle stream isn't helpful. We really need a way to reuse PP (5 mark) and ideally all plastics. Maybe we just need a universal pellet extruder than can use shredded plastic.
What would be better is a hopper where you can put ground (or to be ground) PETG in and it grinds and melts to a useable filament. This way you can use the whole plastic whatever container and not have to spool it like the bottle. The amount of PETG that goes in the garbage is insane (fruit containers, produce containers, plastic bottles, product bubble heat wraps, etc). Recycle all of this stuff!!
*PET/PETG whichever it is.
I am interested in this method, but from what I have read/heard the major limiting factors are
1. No Gycol molecule, totally different filament to PETG, with very different properties, PET for bottles etc is designed to cool very fast, this is why the molds often have water cooling
2. The moisture, same as printing PETG, PET is hydroscopic, and would need drying prior to, or during extruding
I always wondered whether can we put multiple bottles feeding with thinner ribbons cut, making the subsequent roll same in quality but combined in length.
The problem might be getting the three ribbons to roll on themselves. Another way to do it might be to process three bottles as normal, then either twist or braid them together. As long as you can get it started through the heat break, there should be no issue with trying to get them to roll since it's just a straight pull.
This is USA we all would need. This is brilliant, in all aspects.
Here is an idea; there is a dealer that sell warranty returned Enders as a print farm starter (2, 3, 5, printers) for lower prices, I would be tempted to buy a pair of them and turn one into a pull-struder rig to make PET filament.
I really like that the machine looks to be mostly made of the bottle plastic.
I would really like to see something like this that can make filament from shredded material or pellets
I mean, by the very nature of granular materials, you cant pull-xtrude em
unless you mean actually melting it and then pulling it, in which case theres plenty of em in the wild
@@rmanami yeah I understand that this kind of system wouldn’t work, but the more cheap DIY filament machines the better, and machines that can work with pellet or shredded material will open up more materials that can be made into filament and bring in a lot more trash that can be recycled
th-cam.com/video/TQrTkIQA-0E/w-d-xo.html
Its usually not a very fun process with things you build yourself. Works ok for abs within a "good" tolerance but for PLA you most likely need a longer table with cooling and spooling and all controlled well. Within a month you find yourself in a self build filament production plant. :D
Working on that next! Trying to change how the industry operates and that is going to take some big steps and a loud mouth. Luckily I bellow miles away!
I love the idea. In regards to his problem with joining his recycled filaments, why not manually jpin them and then pass them through the pullstruder again? Surely that would sort out any size inconsistencies and ensure a better bond.
That would take a longgg time. Best is find a way to join it properly with a removable clip, second best might be a way to auto feed sections of filament in.
@@jaro6985 what Is a removable clip? I can't picture a clip fitting into an extruder. And when do you remove it?
@@TheRainHarvester a clip around the two loose filament ends, heat them to weld them together, then remove the clip.
I lol-ed thinking about grabbing a returned Ender for this. Super cool.
How does the shape of the bottle affect the quality parameters of the resulting filament? Nowadays I rarely see those mostly cylindrical bottles in Central Europe that I see in all the Recreator videos. Most are tallied or have intentional dents, bulges or grooves.
You either have to put some water in the bottles then heat them up so they expand or you pump air into the bottles as if you were doing a tube or car tire then heat it up. What this does is expands the bottle and pulls out all the ripples and thins out the bottle a little but and smooth. Then you cut them into strips and extrude into flilament.
CANT WAIT FOR THE MOLD MAKING 🤩🤩
Might it be easier to slice the bottle first, then join the strips, then pultrude the continuous length of strip?
Super cool project. Glad to see options and progress towards recycling. Mahalo for sharing! : )
This is honestly an innovation this guys a top g
The only thing I hate about the design...how does it compensate for varying wall-thickness of the bottle?
Y'all may have addressed this somewhere else, but here is my take on the issue.
PET bottles are the opposite of Dinosaurs: while extinct lizards are thin at both ends and much thicker in the middle, bottle side-walls tend to be thinnest in the middle and much ticker at the ends.
A strip the same width is easy/peasy; a strip of constant VOLUME (see what I did there?) is a little tougher.
Or not...
A pinch-roller that 'senses' the thickness of the side-wall being cut would be tied to a mechanism that alters the width of the strip in response.
Result is a strip of material with a constant cross-sectional area, which leads to uniform filament diameter.
I usually don't notice thumbnails, but the one you made for this video is beautiful.
when making the pet filament that comes out of the hot nozzle will be a tube?
one problem may be in design. with more yield filament may be thinner due to diameter increase
I was gifted an Ender 3 Pro by a customer and I've decided that building a gadget like this will be my first major project.
If you don't have any old ender machine laying around then petamentor is best option. It's way more cheaper (under 50$) and simple to build (no need any programming)
Maybe the only true bottle recycling on the planet. Because all the city collection is BS, thanks Siraya for your wonderful work.
What do you think about ultrasonic welding, to join the mini-spools you get from each bottle together?
This is very tempting to make...
one bottle peeler is good, but i reckon having some kind of method to start feeding in a second peeler strand before the end of the previous peeled strand has completely been sucked into the pull-struder. so, in short, two peelers instead of one. maybe taper the end of the first strand and taper the beginning of the next strand? fun problem!
Polyformer is a similar project to this! I built one and it's great!
Right...they branched from Recreator3D :P I think it's pretty, but Recreator3D has a different mission. Happy Recreating!
Cool project. What a legend
I need one to create free filament, where can I buy this(not 3d printer)?
I'm interested in the ceramic-filled resin but I haven't seen this on their website. Got a link to that?
This is what you´re looking for, especially the "Ultra White"
go.toms3d.org/SirayaUltra
@@MadeWithLayers Danke!
nice but heres the problem you can only do one bottle so a small ammount of filament per roll very small theres no way to merge another bottle to make a whole 2kg roll.. so for small stuff sure.. what you need is a continuiouse like they use professionally to make filament with screws and pellots and a way to make the pellets grinding them up and melting them into pellets that would be ideal
For anyone interested in this but don't want to waste an ender, you only need wooden board, stepper motor, heatblock with heater and thermistor, mbo, screen and PSU. For rest there is Petpull2 on thingverse
What about the threaded neck of the bottle, can it be extruded in this way?
no, unfortunately you have to cut the top and bottom of the bottle off. I would guess if you manage to use a shredder and use some mold to make a uniform hollow cylinder by some "hacky" injection molding process, you could then feed that cylinder thru the same machine again to make the same pullstruded filament from the shredded pieces.
So many people are making them it's great to see I and Mr3d have helped so many ♥
No info on the injection molds from little peices?
I love how in "first world countries" this is a garbage find, while for us, an ender 3 is printer farm material.
How is plastic from bottles Vs pla, or petg regarding strengt and difficulties? Like, does pet shrink like for example abs likes to do?
For the moment Siraya Tech is my favorite resin (i've test build and simple)
My question is: where can I find the 1.75mm nozzle? Or should I drill one of my spare nozzles?
Drill it, that's how we all did it
Genuinely interesting advert ! Cheers Tom
I need something like this for recycling print scraps rather than soda bottles. So much PLA and PETG scrap I'd love to turn back into filament with as little fiddling as possible.
Love the channel. I'd love to see a video of using onshape to design things that are bigger than my printer. Showing a good way make parts that can be joined to make a bigger part.
You can splice filament by mosaic pallate 3
k guess i have a new project now so thanks for that lol. Does the semi molten portion not need any cooling fan?
I have an old ender 3 main board, screen, hotend, thermistors and heaters. I really want to make one of these but don’t know where to start…
I'm new to 3d printing but how much would u sell that filament maker system for becouse that's a great ideas saving plastic waste and saving on pla👍👍😊😊
I have no idea how he avoids crystallization in pure PET. From my experience it's simply impossible :P
Interested to know your thoughts on any techniques to prevent that
@@rogsolutions I mainly encountered PET crystallization in vacuum forming and after weeks of trying to tune the process I gave up and switched to PETG. Doesn't crystallize and thanks to that it behaves much better around the temperatures where it softens for 3D printing/vacuum forming. I imagine that's why almost all the commercially available filaments are PETG instead of pure PET.
@@bzqp2 yep, I believe that is the case, and that is what holds Precious Plastics back from large scale recycling of PET too, time to make everything from HDPE I think! /s
and how much energy is used to convert this to a filament vs processing it...
Well technically much less cost than "traditional" processing!
Because for the "Traditional" processing, you need normal pla pellets, a water cooling system, also you have to cut down the bottles with a diffrent machine, and so on!
But this here is basicly a smaller version , without extra steps so it safes some money!
How do you control it do you use the printer circuit board If so how do you program it to just turn on without having a print for the circuit board to print
I wounder if I can convert an old tevo tarantula pro into one
It’s a beautiful project. The PET became my free filament and the Recreator is improved to a really reliable machine. I printed earrings less than a mm thick with bottle PET. And my dungeon tiles are adding on the pile of shame.
An MMU makes the job easier, a palette allows to join filaments effortlessly.
I went for my Voron build before time just to mount an ERCF and print free and environmentally friendly parts for my hobbies.
In Germany the seller charges a deposit on most PET Bottles, most glass bottles and aluminium cans, usually 25 cent. So this looks really cool but is expensive to operate for us
I have been kicking around the idea of using a 3d printer hot end and extruder to injection mold. I think for small parts it might be possible
Amazing work!!!
More of this please!
Hi bro.
How wide is the pet bottle yarn?
I have no I treat in doing this but I watched this whole video and am leaving this comment because I love this channel
Great idea, and implementation ✌
He mentionned the plastic starts to melt around 255 does this mean, the printer has to print above that temperature?
I believe he meant that the pull-trusion setup operates below the actual melting point of the PET material. After all, if the material was truly molten you couldn't maintain any tension on it, it'd just stretch until it broke, whereas at a lower temp it's still possible to pull it through while slowly and in a controlled manner stretching it out at the same time.
This must be an error that slipped out, PET bottles start to melt at around 150°C already. At 255°C the PET is almost at the point where it starts to decompose into other chemicals. I would say printing temperatures are pretty much the same as for any pure PET filament, so somewhere in the 230-250°C range.
Is there more info on the injection mold machine?
Seems to be a Buster Beagle MKI
th-cam.com/video/HoSVPHVESiE/w-d-xo.html
What is the diameter of that hot end nozzle? For 1.75mm filament is it 1mm?
How does that not leave air bubbles when you print the final project? You're going to end up with weakened final product if you print with air bubbles
awesome project
Thank you for covering this, personally I hope we get more machines like this to help recycle old things into new and interesting ones. =)
So cool! I would love to buy one unit ready to recycle PET bottles
awesome project, although i don't think you should do this in countries where u have a bottle return systems (pfand)
cause whenever you are done with the product u have made from reclaimed bottles, will end up as trash again.
Exactly my thought but it seems there are enough countrys that dont recycle?
@@CharlesLogstonInTexas If you take an amount of plastic out of an cycle to make filament a new bottle has to be made. This is essentially buying filament directly with extra steps.
This is a huge thing in countries without a recycling system. Most of the bottles in the world were coca cola bottles made of thin PET probably. afaik.
@@raise-project unfortunately even countries with high recycling rates don't actually recycle huge portions of their bottles into other bottles or plastic products. Many burn them for heat, this is counted as recycling. It destroyed my confidence in the German and dutch system when I toured facilities and found that they were proud of the fact that they burned plastics for heat. I even commented on how there were PET bottles in the piles, and was told that it was mostly contaminated mixed plastic and it would be too resource intensive to recover 100% of the usable plastic. So while making filament out of a bottle may remove said bottle from the industrial recycling chain, it also guarantees that the bottle will actually be made into something instead of being burned to generate heat.
@@antoniomromo True I think I heard about that too once.
I usually don' t have must plastic waste but if I switch to discounter for a week the plastic bin is almost full in an instant.
So its best to avoid plastic containments.
I dont want to talk this down in any way. I just think the recycling process of anything else than bottles is pretty tedious and its way easier to just avoid plastic in the first place.
I made 6kg of pla pellets from failed prints of a shop nearby and they still sit here in a box waiting for the extruder.
Same principal, I just print less and more often repair oder modify stuff instead of printing again.
This is so frgn awesome!
I feel the physiological dangers presented by recycled plastics are such that incinerating plastic is a better solution. Making clothes, consumer goods, and food containers from recycled plastic is a nice idea, but the fact remains that each heat cycle makes it easier for these plastics to break down or get absorbed by the body.
Can you give us the link so we can print them and build it)
Connect the 8mm bottle strip to next bottle rather than the molten filament to molten filament to continue making long filaments
2:18 thats 3DPrintingNerd in the background isnt it? :D
Bro are these available for sale
how can connect to you?
great great work on a much needed machine, also spot the 3dPrintingNerd Joel's photo (video) bomb LOL
Outstanding!
Finally a use for the Ender 3! xD
Definitely rings with me, I find the fact we always ignore the amount of waste in plastic we make in the hobby, annoying. I love the technical aspects of the hobby, but just printing away models, nope, I tend to stick with my own designs for home use and such, so I can keep things that would be thrown away, function for longer.
The waste must be incredible and if 3D printing makes it to the paper printer level of use we may see a new disaster come about if steps aren't taken now to help the system become more self sufficient. I use 3D printing to design and test models I plan to CNC and have a habit of overlooking 10 things before I get a model right sometimes. Imagining that plus useless trinkets across the globe makes me wonder how long before taxes crop up on rolls of filament that are not from recycled material.
The better "R words" for plastic are Reduce and Reuse; not Recycle.
ALL the plastic that all the world employs in 3D printing (including the part wasted in failed prints) is just a little drop in the very, very large ocean of plastic that the humanity produces.
All the PET that a project like this could recycle, is just a centesimal part of that little drop.
All that talk about plastic "recycling" is not about environment or "a better world"; that talk addresses the guilt, because if you think that plastic is really "recyclable" you will continue consuming it.
@@OgbondSandvol For sure, the only ones that can make a dent are the companies themselves.
@@OgbondSandvol Numbers are nothing as of now there is no doubting that. The rate I use 2.2lbs in design errors, printing defects, printer failures, supports and poor filament choice ends in 1 out of 10 being useful as simply a prototype I will throw away meaning 100% ends up as trash. Add in the trinkets and dozen other reasons to consume plastic and we may have a new consumption source coming online that one day could reach average households world wide giving plastic bottles a run for it's money in terms of consumption. It's the dozen other uses we haven't figured out for printing that will really open the possibility for waste to become an even bigger problem as well. I often wonder if plastic contamination/containers could be a contributing factor for the spike in cancer rates too meaning 3D PRINTING could kill in the brazillions!
@@ChrisHarmon1 3D printing is responsible for just a tiny fraction of the world's plastic use, I think that will be for a long time. Maybe you are impressed for your personal filament use, but I assure that the 3D print folks are a scarce minority. Meanwhile, each second there are countless tons of injected plastic beeing discarded.
What are "brazillions"? Are they dying of cancer more than other people? 😄
Since empty pet bottles normally have a return value of €0,25 that would be €10 per kg in material cost. Frankly that would not make it worth it for me. If I could use failed prints.I'm thinking along the lines of creating a strip out of shredded waste with heated rollers to mold a thin 8mm strip and pull extrude that into filament.
This is true only for a very few countries, most of us don't have a return price on bottles
how can i get cheap returned printers?
Nice idea. But for us in North Europe not really interesting. Due to the deposit system the base material (bottles) has a value of more than 9$ per Kilogramm if we would use the complete bottle. For us they are no waste any more.
Can someone tell me if there is such a technology for upcycling pla waste (or any 3d material) into new material?
Now you just need the idle arm to move back and forth to properly spool