Is Pultrusion a big waste of time of a feasible way to make good filament? Oh, and check out our CNC Kitchen products at cnckitchen.store/ or at our resellers www.cnckitchen.com/reseller
Alter... hol dirn Brita Filter der reicht... Wenn ich aus dem Fenster schaue sehe ich den Kalkbruch, und unser Wasser ist jenseits etlicher Grenzwerte. Die Filterkartuschen machen da einen guten job.
In Germany I'd say it's a waste of time because of the 25 cent return bonus. In places where you don't get that bonus it's probably a nice option to have.
Seems to me like it is more of an easy route to get a little bit of useful material and get folks thinking about their plastic bottle waste rather than a real solution. Which means it is far from a waste of time. However I would say you really want the big shredder that can handle those bottle necks and the shredded bits to filament extrusion machine for a more practical filament generation from waste bottles.
Whether it is a waist of time or not, the best part about doing something like this is the excitement it creates to go out and clean up trash. Plastic bottles are everywhere.
Maybe in trash countries but not "everywhere". The only way i can find plastic bottles like this is to buy them or to collect them from people i know before they have put it to recycling deposit.
Thanks! Insane that you made one. We are keeping support and sponsor Joshua / ReCreator, but we finally decided not to make a kit for it, since it’s much easy to get parts from scraps, and save cost. Great video, thanks for spread recycling sprit! See you soon.
Nice video as always Stefan. Just few important notes for fellow makers: 1. Dry your bottles (or bottle strips) in dehydrator for 8hrs on 70C before pultrusion 2. Pump the pressure of the bottle before heat treating surface with schrader tire valve. 2. Check the thickness of the bottle and readjust bearing cutter by using Petamentor2" calculator or manually (thinner the bottle wider the strip) 3. Each bottle brand might need specific pultrusion and printing temperature (eg. some of my bottles even couldn't be purged below 280C)
@@YourArmsGone 1. In my case, it is better to pull a wet bottle - it is more flexible. A dry bottle breaks and you have to pull it out slowly. Therefore sometimes I soak the bottles in hot water before pulling. But before printing you need to dry it, this is very important. 2. Bottles do not need to be leveled at all. Just remove the label. In most cases they will cut without leveling. 3. And I don’t wipe off the glue, it doesn’t clog anything. At all. You don't need to wast your time.
@@alexvmwthis comment answered a lot of concerns I had about the bottle preparation for pulltrusion, so thank you! Nice to know I don’t have to do toooo much before I get to pulling. 👍
Note for those of us with SAE drill bits. A 1/16th bit will produce a 1.57mm hole on a drill press but chucked into a handheld drill gets much closer to 1.7mm. The test hole I drilled in a scrap piece of steel fits a cutoff of 1.75mm filament snugly.
@@gabedarrett1301 It's not magic at all. A drill press is set up to go perfectly straight up and down. Doesn't matter how good you are with a handheld, you cant match that. We're talking tenths of a millimeter loss of accuracy, that's tiny.
@@gabedarrett1301the wiggle of the handheld drill will auger the hole a bit wider than properly rigid drill press. It usually isn't enough to matter, but it _is_ a measurable amount.
@@gabedarrett1301 It's normal for drills to wander a bit and actually the hole is also never perfect circle, but more of and triangle shaped that usually results in slight oversized holes. There's multiple factors and is that simple Jacob's chuck isn't never perfectly centered, compared to fixing tapers This is basics that are taught if you're into metal works. Reaming is the way to when going for small tolerance holes that are more round.
I had the same thoughts on using PET Bottles here in Germany so I looked out for a different material that is used everywhere and always thrown away. Joghurt and curd cups are abundant and made from polypropylene (PP). PP is a pain to prepare and cut with the bearing cutter but there is a razor cutter somewhere on thingyverse or cults3d that works nicely. My recreator version is not ready to test yet but I made some PP filament in the past and found that PP has some really interesting material properties like environmental and chemical resistance and being dishwasher compatible. Might be interesting to have a look at! Thank you for sparking new interest for turning waste into useable stuff!
I would very much love to see some more testing of this material. But there may be too much variables to control to do it justice. I went down the rabbit hole and built myself a rig for pet recycling during COVID. I gathered all the info I could and used it to make my own experiments and I consider it to be a great overall material, similar to perg, but seems even better in some aspects. However, I ended up using entirely different set if parameters than yours, with still great results (though I have no hard data to prove it, other than my opinions and observations). To me, it is only a viable option if it can replace my need for commercial filament. This means it must be easy to make in enough quantity when I need it and produce comparable results. It also needs to be cheaper, which comes down to how much time it takes to make as in my country (Serbia), the bottles are everywhere. First, the quality - it's definitely comparable, perhaps only except color. You are a bit more limited there. You can try and color the strips and it somewhat works, but the colors aren't as saturated. Second, the time it takes to make - I used different parameters for pullstrusion and I can get a 2l coke bottle done in 25mins and it yields 15-20g of filament if prepared right. An order of magnitude faster than what you mentioned. I don't know if there are downsides, I didn't measure, but the quality is perceptibly the same as the longer methods. I used 235°C and a fast enough feedrate to land on 25mins for lets say 18g of filament. Even if this is slow for some, the process can be parallelized by having multiple machines running at the same time. But the device has to be cheaper than an old ender 3. Luckily, there are people who managed to bring the cost down to very cheap. Check out Petamentor for example, but there are more. Now we come to the biggest problem - quantity. 20g of filament is simply not enough for a lot of the prints and if it is, you are left with a few grams of unusable filament in the end either way. A solution is to join more filaments together. Joining then reliably is a problem. The biggest one for me, which in the past has made me give up on using recycled material. First - forget about joining strips, they simply can't survive the stress of pulling through the nozzle. Plus, like you mentioned, the process doesn't actually melt the strip, so it won't melt the strips together either. I tried joining strips in multiple ways and never had a successful pull through. I tried 100s of times - melting, mechanically interlocking, chemical solvent based bonding, and combining it all, it doesn't work in a diy environment. Otoh, joining finished filament is deceivingly simple. You take a piece of PTFE tube, melt two ends by flame or heater (I used a soldering iron) and while still molten, you slide on the tube. When it cools, the joint is done. However, the joint is very stiff and brittle and often breaks even if you just try to wind it on a spool. If it kinks before it gets in the extruder - forget it. Relieving the pressure on the joint helps somewhat, by making the bends before and after it to increase mobility. I tried faster and slower cooling, various things, but IMO, this is still the biggest issue and stops you from making a spool of say 200g of filament and just hitting print. I recently stumbled upon a guy that solves it by making a huge diameter spool, which is a genius idea (function3d on yt), he has many different good ideas too. This prevents the filament from bending too much and breaking the joint. Also, fresh off the machine, the filament tends to uncoil and spring back to a big diameter, making spooling it impossible. But not if you have a big enough spool. I will have to try that, as it looks like it's the missing puzzle piece for making the process of making filament viable. Next - printing. I found that printing at high temperatures enabled faster printing. I had little zero issues of crystalization. I print on 280°c and have great results. I think layer adhesion is great, but have no numbers. I think overall strength is good, but have no numbers. Other notes: it's prone to moisture absorbtion like petg. Drys easily. Appears to be somewhat self-regulating in terms of density consistency, I had good results on same settings with vastly different strip widths and thicknesses. Once the joint makes it into extruder, it doesn't cause problems. It frequently snaps while entering. Clogs weren't common. Cleaning wasn't too important, except for label adhesive. White spirits/turpentine works good, less toxic than acetone. I blow up bottles with a bicycle pump to 2 bars before treating with hot air gun, that way the bottle doesn't shrink. More than 2 bars risks explosion. I'd love to see annealing at least, but other tests too!
I’ve built a machine since your previous video about this topic, its a quite nice hobby, but the best thing in my opinion would be desgning a lowcost filament extruder in a sinilar fairly easy to build manner. Then we could use the whole bottle, use the caps of the bottles or even something like a milk jug or containers that pudding comes in. In my country (Hungary) we have a bearly functioning collection strategy with no deposit so I’d love to build an extruder, but the ones alaready in the wild are either really expensive or built from literal scrap
The problem is that filament is incredibly hard to create at home. We build all of our machines for speed and accuracy, so the filament is really thin and precise. What we really need to do is make a 3D printer that can print using bad filament. If the machine can handle worse filament then it's easier for us to make at home.
@@VagabondTE prbably just a optical sensor for the width in 2 directions would be enough and some software changing the extrusion multiplier accordingly woudl do the trick
@@bsod4144 That would absolutely work, excellent idea. But I have a better one.. We just let it print badly. There are hundreds of applications we're a little over or under extrusion doesn't matter. Especially if we're printing in thicker diameters with bigger filament. It really just needs to be jam resistant and easily clearable.
if you gonna build an extruder id suggest a cheap small meat grinder with custom faceplate driven by a stepper motor..wrap it in heating element and insulation
The hollow result makes me want to see if you can stuff other materials into the center before pulling making composites, would that be something you could try?
My thought was to use 100% polyester (PET) sewing or embroidery thread (maybe even yarn) to fill the "tube" during the pulling process. These threads are available in a many colors which might produce interesting coloration effects when 3D printed. Adding a spool of thread to the pulling process should be fairly easy. Presumably, using PET thread would avoid the problem of different types of plastics not sticking together well. As an aside: I have wondered if it might be possible to make PET filament from 100% Polyester (PET) yarn rather than PET bottles. Turning discarded knitted Polyester clothing into PET filament would be kinda cool. :)
Maybe cut another bottle of a different color really thin and feed it into the nozzle at the same time to give it a colored core (like a clear shell with a mtn dew green core).
I've been gathering so many different versions of these. But no easy to follow video like this. This is exactly what I was looking for as I've been starting one of these PEt recycle projects! Thanks!
I work in a diesel shop and we get pallets of water bottles in to drink. All of these are tossed in the garbage but the advantage is that they're all the same brand they're all clean and the shop even gave me a recycling bin so that I can use the filament out of it! I pretty much have the perfect setup and although I have doubts about how much time it would take I'm sitting on a potential Gold mine of filament
been making pet filament for 1 year now, and for the price of less than 2 euros per kg (electrical bill) , it has been great, better thermal resistance, better uv resistance, easy to print. made my own version of a pet pull, even made a tutorial how to build one. the downsides: short pieces of filament, not easy to splice together, not the best looking prints(transparent filament, standard blueish colors, more stringing )
I would be interested to see a full test round on crystallized PET. Amorphous PET will momentarily become extremely sticky while melting, and that basically stops up any industrial machine melting plastic. For that reason PET pellets are crystallized in special machines that keep them moving while heating them, like a washing machine but with infrared light instead of water. From experience crystallized PET is really similar to PBT but possibly more brittle, usually in manufacturing we try to avoid crystalization afrter remelting by cooling the parts quickly. Slower cooling after remelting results in crystalization - opacity and brittleness
If you consistently get 30g of filament per large bottle, you'd need 34 bottles for 1kg, which is only 8,50 in Pfand. Which is definitely not that bad for a spool PET. You of course also need bottles, but if it's something you use anyway, it might be worth it to cut up a few bottles.
I'm really happy you were able to get around to making one of these! I have a MK2 that I recently updated to include the geared system of the MK6 and it's a blast to make the filament. We don't have deposits for bottles in my state (sadly) but this does mean I have great incentive to make filament myself! the 2L bottles give me 20+ grams of PET and the prints are great. Like you, I've used it for several practical prints - mainly repairs. And DEFINITELY test annealed PET against PET! Something I've noticed is that the PET can even "anneal" itself on certain prints, particularly those with layers with smaller cross-sections. Those areas will come out opaque while the first few layers are clear.
Turning the Ender 3 parts into a different tool has a similar vibe to the alternate builds of a Lego kit which they used to show on the back of the box 😁
Just the process of assembling the entire project already looks like a lot of fun. I doubt if the effort is worth it to 3D print with PET for me, but the machine itself is really awesome! Straight forward + good explanation video! 🙂
Stefan, I thoroughly enjoyed this video, and was inspired to see you involve your daughters in this effort. While it will always be easier to have perfect spools of PETG shipped in for printing, being able to make filament this way seems like the fullest evolution of this technology. I will be making one of these. Thank you from VA, USA.
Love this sort of build! good job describing it and including the "bumps" along the way. Have you though about pelletizing? I think it would be harder with more specialized equipment (ie, not recycling an Ender 3) but could have a much higher efficiency since you could pelletize the tops and bottoms. And probably wouldn't risk your fingers with the knife! Would probably need 3 or 4 different machines. It probably could be used to make solid filament, though.
This would go the route of full melting, so would have the “Hydrolysis” issues PET brings. If you have a VERY good drying workflow, it should be fine, but otherwise even small amounts of moisture can ruin it. Granted I don’t have too much testing behind all this, and would LOVE to see a build series for a “Lyman Extruder”, or that other German Open Source Design!
" And probably wouldn't risk your fingers with the knife!" Ofcourse! A shredder is much safer than a static knife :-) You can build a pellet-extruder but it requires specialized techniques, it's not something you just do on a friday afternoon. let's just say that a commercial pellet extruder costs a minimumk of $700 for a crappy one and 1000 for a "good" one. A shredder will easily set you back $1200. All in all you need to be a 3d-printing monster to be able to justify that. And don't forget that all these machines use energy too so the price of a spool of store-bought filament may not be that much higher than your own filament, once you have produced $2000 worth of filament to earn back the machines, ofcourse.
@@ericlotze7724you run into an insane amount of issues around moisture control and crystalization of the PET when you go the route of melting it instead of just softening. That's why industrial machines are insanely complex to run and also expensive. They have to be hyper accurate and stable when in operation.
I think it’s a great idea. I’d really like to make my own pulltrusuon setup, but I don’t want to take apart a printer, or use so much filament/time printing printing the base. A budget version, which doesn’t need massive investment of expensive materials would be great.
I’m hearing from other people who have done the math. It’s not worth it though. Simply taking the bottles to a recycle center is more efficient, and buying filament. The amount of time, electricity and chemical release. You might be surprised if you did the math to find out it wasn’t worth it at all.
@@dangerous8333 Yes, but in my country they do not manufacture filaments and buying them through Amazon, eBay or some supplier, shipping costs a little more than the price of the reel, and it would be costing me double.
1.75mm drill bits are hard to get in the US, but you can use 1/16th or a 1.5mm and then use metal polishing compound on a string to sand the hole out to size. As a bonus this removes any burs that can damage your filament and makes pulling the filament much easier. Just be careful to widen the hole evenly and test the size often because it gets bigger faster than you'd think.
Take some cotton string that fits snuggly into the bore of the nozzle and rub a metal/jewellery polish into it. The polish is a very mild abrasive, so you poke the string through the extruder nozzle and run it back and forth (kind of like flossing) and it should slowly widen the hole, similar to how the more abrasive filaments wear out nozzles. Stop flossing when you get to the desired size (checking against a scrap of the appropriate sized filament).
@@gabedarrett1301 I used some polishing compound that came with my Dremel years ago. I found some cotton twine that barely fit through the hole and used some fishing line to pull it through. After that I just put some compound on the string and pulled it back and forth while turning the nozzle to widen it evenly. I used a piece of filament to check the diameter every few pulls. I actually ruined the first nozzle I tried by over widening it because I didn't expect the polish to work so fast.
Defiantly a motivator! I've wanted to have a nice set up for this ever since I got introduced to the concept, but I've been afraid to take the plunge for fearing it would be too complicated. Your video makes me feel it is easier and much more obtainable of a project than I was thinking it would be, Thank you!
Very cool video! I always thought that this process needed a feedback loop, but seeing how easy this is, i might have to try this myself! what happens if you increase/decrease the pull speed?
If you don't give it enough time to heat, it will compress in the nozzle but spring back over 1.75 mm after it exits. So excessive speed can mess you up. But lengthening the heat zone seems to solve that. I've been experimenting with a drilled out mig nozzle that steps down from 2.5 to 1.8 mm and seems to reliably give 1.75 mm output. Need to test a little more for reproducibility and increasing speed.
I found it doesn't need it. Through geometry of the system, it sort of self-corrects by stretching more for wider/thicker strips and less for thinner stuff. This makes even badly, uneven cut strips still working and giving good results when printing.
The squeaky joint noises when showing the pneumatic robot arm... your ad placement is probably the best of any RUclipsr. I hated dealing with the bottles and got a filtered water pitcher instead. So I really don't have PET bottles. But if I did, I'd probably make one of these because they're fantastic.
I wonder, since the filement is hollow, could you feed a fiber in for fiber reinforcement? You could feed it though on the middle of the bottle strip before it is folded over. You'd need to print continuously on the printer though since you wouldn't be able to stop extruding.
Perhaps you could use an extruder and second, slightly hotter nozzle after the first to add pressure to the system going through the second nozzle to eliminate the hole in the center? If you synchronized the extruder to the filament roll there shouldn't be a speed discrepancy, and you'd still have a pulling mechanism through the first nozzle. I'd try it myself but my printer is dead atm...
You can get nearly 100% density by starting with a cross section at least 15-20% (and up to 60-70%!) over the desired 2.4 mm² and staging the heating. I'm experimenting with a mig nozzle drilled to stage it from 2.5 mm down to 1.8 at the very tip, but it can work even with a stock nozzle.
What do you think, is it possible to pull textiles through the machine? There are 100% PES clothes which could work. Textiles are often just recycled "thermically"--> burned, even in countries where bottle recycling is quite good
Burning, if done with proper pollution control, and ESPECIALLY if Electricity and Heat are made from that isn’t that bad. Main thing is making sure noone skimps on those systems. Also if using less sorted “Refuse Derived Fuel” (RDF) Ash can get full of some “nasties” although with a mixture of sorting (think “oh don’t burn that battery” “take that metal out of that first” etc), and leaching of useful chemicals from the ash this can be resolved. Worse case scenario, certain Gasification processes create “slag” which is mostly inert and can be used as aggregate in concrete. Granted i like recycling just as much as the next person, but at the same time Gasification/Burning, or even Pyrolysis (using heat to essentially turn the stuff back into Crude Oil) aren’t bad *IF DONE WITH THE COMMON GOOD IN MIND*.
i've had their homepage open in one of my 1000 tabs for well over a year now. finally gonna build one, it really doesn't seem terribly complicated and well worth it. but i'll use a CR10 and wood for the most part, over a spool and days of printing doesn't seem necessary. i think i might also not wash out my cola bottles too well and perhaps end up with some nice caramel filament. thank you for the push, its a great project.
I bought a bambulab printer and figured it's probably a good idea to look into recycling filament... the timing on this video... considering I'm one of the people that bought a CE3Pro and didn't really care to hook it back up. Love this channel
I'm surprised that the pull process is so slow. Presumably, this is due to a thermal limit, so could the ribbon be pre-heated? (Using the spare bed heater channel)
The longer it stays between 80 and 250, the more it will crystallize and this makes it harder to get high flow printing. But if you compensate by quenching immediately after it comes out, it may work.
I tried it and had it down to 25 mins for 18g at 235°C and had zero issues with crystalization. I did install a blower fan to cool the filament after it exits the nozzle, but I don't know if it's necessary.
Absolutely flawless video. Well demonstrated and critically important information presented. Thank you for making the 3D printing community more scientific and accessible.
Thank you for making this video, I've been planning on building the mk5 kit for months but never finding the time but your video has given me the motivation to finally embark on that journey lol
Pre-pultrusion welding is hard but I have a few experiments to try. The best method once you have filament is melting it inside 1.6 mm ID silicone tubing with a soldering iron on max, then rapidly quenching it.
Excellent video, as always. You made me laugh, so I will repeat what you said... PET pulling IS a tremendous waste of time. It's a fun, technical proof-of-concept, but I can't imagine doing this to obtain filament. Between bottle prep, output product consistency, organizing/categorizing your output, short filament lengths... It's too much to deal with when I'm ultimately concerned about getting a good final print. I had a question... Is it possible to make a continuous filament from several bottles? With is technique, I think no, but if there was a way, that might help change my opinion about reusing PET.
You're not wrong, both about the quality of the video and the feasibility of the process. But you left out one of the most obvious hurdles wrt economics: before you've converted your first bottle, you're already 1.5 kg in the hole in filament. With the pitiful conversion rate, you're looking at nearly 5 kg of bottles just to break even on the material output. That's not even counting the opportunity cost of turning a whole 3D printer into a completely different device. That Ender3 just needed some TLC applied to the ribbon cable to get it up and working again, and now it will never print again. You could buy at least a half-dozen kilos of filament for what the printer itself was worth, so on top of the first 5 kg, you've got another 20 kg or so of bottles to produce to break even. If there was no operational overhead, _maybe_ you could eventually reach that break even point, but of course as you point out there's lots of ongoing operational overhead. So, yeah...amusing proof of concept, but even in a region without bottle deposits (most of North America would qualify there), it's hard to see any way that this pays off economically.
Great video and analysis at the end. Yes, not an energy efficient way to recycle but shows what may be done by the ingenious minds of us makers. Bravo!
I want to find ways to reuse all of the plastic waste from failed prints and supports but can't find anything that is less than $500. I really want to reuse all of the support waste but can't figure out a decent way to do it and I have no idea how to go about it. I'm not educated in engineering and can never understand what's being said in videos when I try to research it. I'm thinking of asking some friends from college but I'd have no way of paying them for their time since I'm really poor. If it's possible to recycle all of that wasted plastic for the same price as a cheap printer, then I think A LOT more people would use it and recycle wasted material.
I made mine using only PLA parts (+ an Ender 3 of course) and I have had no issue with strength or heat. For cleaning the bottles and removing the labels, all you need is warm water, washing up liquid and elbow grease, no need for any solvents.
Do it the other way around. 😂 Outer perimeters are where you need the high quality PET that won't creep or split at layer lines. Infill is basically just internal support material and would be fine with PETG.
It's worth mentioning that you should always use a release layer like gluestick when printing PET filament - it *will* rip chunks out of smooth PEI and glass sheets!
@@Matt3DMaker PETG will fuse to glass, I guess so would PET, but I haven't had any issue with my PEI bed, but I keep it cool when printing. If you heat it up too much when printing, it may fuse with PET/PETG
Love the video, a good one to print instead of this(which requires an unused ender 3) is one by Tylman design, it is a kit that you can buy all the hardware and print the casing out yourself. Really fun project and he ships the kits out super fast
Definitely a cool project, but the amount of manual labor for 30g of filaments seems pretty impractical. Albeit expensive, shredding and using a proper extruder is probably still the best option, as that not only cuts down on manual labor, but also increases yields, since the whole bottle can be shredded, and allows for much larger batches
@@mightyconker3903 I'll stick with my $10 rolls of PLA from IIIDMAX. They print perfectly and the several hours of my time I would be spending trying to get 1kg of PET filament is worth a lot more than $10.
IMHO, this transformation should be done by the recycler companies; as an individual, the cleaning, label and wrinkle removal is a lot of work with possibly polluted filament and low yield. As for solving the environmental pollution issue, I think it is better to restrain oneself in the usage of these kind of recipients. Avoiding waste is better than recycling it, isn't it ?
I just downloaded the files about a day before you posted this video, I'm excited to reuse some of my parts lying around. Since I moved, I've been drinking bottled water, so I'm looking forward to experimenting with recycling those as well as pop bottles. I don't think I'll be going around collecting garbage just yet, that comes once I used up all my own waste 😆 I always like the testing mindset and the surprise bonus strength of annealing is definitely something I'll keep in mind! Great work!
One of the reasons you’re getting terrible flow out of the PET filament is because you aren’t printing it hot enough. If you turn up the temperature to about 300°c, you’ll get noticeably better flow than PETG.
Yep. 300-320 is ideal for most setups. I'm using 350. But I still can't get the same flow as commercial HTPET filament. Must have something to do with crystallization or contaminants.
I bought an Ender 3 on sale a couple of years ago and haven't even taken it out of the box. I took a couple of 3D printing classes and the printers we had access to at the college were so far ahead of what the Ender can do. Now seeing how easily some of the newer home printers function, it almost seems like a waste of time to try to use it. BUT this might be a good use for it.
I'm part of the petamentor project a similar project way cheaper to make. I print only with pet bottles and it is fantastic! You have access to lota of colors, some are gorgeous and parts are very durable. I have solar panels at home and as I drink tap water (got filters on my home water system) I get bottles from frineds so I basically can 3d print gratis! There are obv downsides: - you print slower and at higher temps - you have to make and dry your filament But the pro is infinite and gratis filament
Have you ever done the math to see if it’s actually worth it or if it’s just diminishing returns? Regardless of the free bottles, you have to consider labor and cost like electricity and time versus just recycling the bottles, which may be actually more beneficial than recycling them into Filiment. Also, do your filters filter out chlorine and fluoride? Because they ARE filtering out all the beneficial minerals in the water as well, so essentially you’re drinking dead water. That’s why places that sell filtered water add vitamins and minerals to the water after. Research it. That’s why some people are willing to pay for spring water. ✌🏼
I feel like something is never a waste of time if it solves a problem or produces something of value, and there's no arguing these bottles are a problem begging for a solution. Sure, a discussion can be had around efficiency and it won't be for everyone, but I think that reusing an old tool in order to reuse a material was quite an elegant and interesting solution.
I've been watching this PET bottles to filament projects from at least 2 years. With all the respect to your hard work Stefan, in my opinion this has nothing to do with ecology. Yeah, great words about saving the planet, clean up the environment, recycling materials etc. Dirty bottles are unusable as long as you don't want to spend clean water we suppose to save (how many litres per single bottle?). Detergents, acetone to remove labels and then dirty paper towels (harmful to environment). Reshaping empty bottle using 600-1200W heatgun (around 50% of electricity in Germany is produced from fossil fuels). 2 hours of "printing" to get 31g of material out of 80g (low efficiency, low productivity, electricity). Pure PET is hard to print, require higher than PETG temperature and slower print time (again wasted electricity compared to other materials). Now the most important part for me. What should I do with this short pieces of filament? I've never seen a single "bottles to filament" project making even 100g of filament in one piece. If we keep using electricity, acetone, cleaning materials and our precious time to keep printing 3D benchys, were not helping our environment. We are working against it. I'm sorry for being honest.
I've worked for a while in the soap industry and I think a small factor of a soap extruder is less convoluted and far more effective. Though you'd need the PET to be pulverized, and that's where this design wins.
I would like to see more about heat treatments for PET including differences made by changing the cooling rate. For example, does the crystalline strength change if you heat and then immerse in a liquid, put it in a refrigerator, etc.
I really like the idea of this project and recycling, I'm just getting into 3D printing (waiting on my first one to come today as I'm writing this), the only unfortunate part of something like this for me is that I have actually cut back on using plastic bottles almost entirely but maybe if I get into 3D printing more I'll see about making one and get my neighbors to donate their bottles to it.
I have to try this. I'll use the PET bottles that one can find around - even though in Switzerland is quite rare, it still happens. Thanks for the tip - I do have Ender's nozzle and old mainboard - that's all I will really need. The rest I can "fake" (e.g. rod replaced by wooden stick, etc). I'll have fun with it :D
Where I am in the USA recycling is readily available, but we don't get money back for recycling plastic. Pet bottles are readily available in decent quantities by simply walking down my street and collecting from the bins left out for collection by the city, so I recently built a recreator myself. I would love to see a video going into more depth about the strength of pet, especially if you can find the best settings to print it so that it crystalizes and how that compares to annealing the parts.
This is a brilliant device. I admire how they were able to reuse so many parts from the Ender 3. Amazing design. It must have been a long design process, but I bet it was fun!
A great proof-of-concept, especially basing it on a widely-available standard base (Ender 3). I think that easy shredding of plastic is the next problem we need to be tackling.
Strip protrusion could be the ideal method for diy continuous fiber filament because 1st it should produce a decent fiber core concentricity without needing a specialized nozzle because it simple wraps the strip around the fiber, and 2nd it provides the necessary tension on the fiber.
Ideally I believe melting the plastic down into a thin block, then using a series of heated rollers to press it into a thin sheet which can be pultruded may yield better results. Under such a method, any plastic could be pultruded given it would be first formed into an appropriate block.
I think making your own filament is a great idea. I have not done it due to cost. I am in the states. There is HDPE, PP, PETE easily available. I know HDPE is difficult to print. However that would be a favorite because it is greatly available in many colors and is resistant to anything I can think of and very durable.
I would love to see the comparison of annealed filaments across multiple materials. Low temperature crystral structure reflow could be an interesting investigation for not just pet but also pla, asa, etc.
I really want to try a multifeeder for longer spools. The main concept I propose is feeding multiple bottles at the same time while keeping each strip as thin as possible to making the spool longer compared to what you'd get from a single bottle without any end to end extensions. This can end up also making different blends in color if one likes.
with a little more effort and perhaps more heating elements, there may be a way to recycle even the non-uniform parts of the bottle. possibly you could melt/soften it in an oven until it's quite gooey, and then stretch it out like taffy, or even cut it down with a saw or something to make it small enough. then possibly using a 'funneling' heater with a larger intake that can smush it down to the right thinness.
In my country, we haven't have a well developed and efficient way to recycle PET bottles. Honestly its a problem. I can see a huge potential in this machine as I myself has a small printfarm. I can see integrating this to our process slowly and overtime as it'll start to grow We can involve community based partnership. Amazing!!!
Is Pultrusion a big waste of time of a feasible way to make good filament?
Oh, and check out our CNC Kitchen products at cnckitchen.store/ or at our resellers www.cnckitchen.com/reseller
Alter... hol dirn Brita Filter der reicht...
Wenn ich aus dem Fenster schaue sehe ich den Kalkbruch, und unser Wasser ist jenseits etlicher Grenzwerte.
Die Filterkartuschen machen da einen guten job.
That little typo after "waste of time" is slightly confusing. "of" is written, instead of "or".
Means "or" in Dutch, though 🤣
In Germany I'd say it's a waste of time because of the 25 cent return bonus.
In places where you don't get that bonus it's probably a nice option to have.
On your thumbnail its FILMAENT, just a heads up, keep up the good work!
Seems to me like it is more of an easy route to get a little bit of useful material and get folks thinking about their plastic bottle waste rather than a real solution. Which means it is far from a waste of time. However I would say you really want the big shredder that can handle those bottle necks and the shredded bits to filament extrusion machine for a more practical filament generation from waste bottles.
Whether it is a waist of time or not, the best part about doing something like this is the excitement it creates to go out and clean up trash. Plastic bottles are everywhere.
Maybe in trash countries but not "everywhere".
The only way i can find plastic bottles like this is to buy them or to collect them from people i know before they have put it to recycling deposit.
@@Wayne72LEVRAI You mean poor countries that we dump all our shit in?
@@Wayne72LEVRAI Stop calling me a garbage country and keep your mouth shut.
@@CharaTRTÜRKIYE 🐺🐺🐺🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷
Waste* not waist
Thanks! Insane that you made one. We are keeping support and sponsor Joshua / ReCreator, but we finally decided not to make a kit for it, since it’s much easy to get parts from scraps, and save cost. Great video, thanks for spread recycling sprit! See you soon.
Thanks for your support, Jason. Blessed and humbled for your friendship!
Nice video as always Stefan. Just few important notes for fellow makers:
1. Dry your bottles (or bottle strips) in dehydrator for 8hrs on 70C before pultrusion
2. Pump the pressure of the bottle before heat treating surface with schrader tire valve.
2. Check the thickness of the bottle and readjust bearing cutter by using Petamentor2" calculator or manually (thinner the bottle wider the strip)
3. Each bottle brand might need specific pultrusion and printing temperature (eg. some of my bottles even couldn't be purged below 280C)
I've been drying the PET after pulling it, but before printing with good results. Is there a reason to dry it before pulling it?
@@YourArmsGone In my case undried PET before pulling makes frosty and bubbly filament.
@@brezovprut4431 Ok, good to know. I've never gotten frosty filament from pulling, but If I forget to dry it before printing I've had problems.
@@YourArmsGone 1. In my case, it is better to pull a wet bottle - it is more flexible. A dry bottle breaks and you have to pull it out slowly. Therefore sometimes I soak the bottles in hot water before pulling. But before printing you need to dry it, this is very important.
2. Bottles do not need to be leveled at all. Just remove the label. In most cases they will cut without leveling.
3. And I don’t wipe off the glue, it doesn’t clog anything. At all. You don't need to wast your time.
@@alexvmwthis comment answered a lot of concerns I had about the bottle preparation for pulltrusion, so thank you! Nice to know I don’t have to do toooo much before I get to pulling. 👍
Little tip if you struggle to remove the POM wheels from the bearings : leave them a few minutes on a 90°C bed, they will easily fall off
Great suggestion! Thanks!
im glad you are bringing this to a bigger platform, a lot more people are going to try jt now
*Audience.
✌🏼
Note for those of us with SAE drill bits. A 1/16th bit will produce a 1.57mm hole on a drill press but chucked into a handheld drill gets much closer to 1.7mm. The test hole I drilled in a scrap piece of steel fits a cutoff of 1.75mm filament snugly.
Why does the hole diameter magically increase when using a different tool?
@@gabedarrett1301 It's not magic at all. A drill press is set up to go perfectly straight up and down. Doesn't matter how good you are with a handheld, you cant match that. We're talking tenths of a millimeter loss of accuracy, that's tiny.
@@gabedarrett1301the wiggle of the handheld drill will auger the hole a bit wider than properly rigid drill press.
It usually isn't enough to matter, but it _is_ a measurable amount.
@@gabedarrett1301 It's normal for drills to wander a bit and actually the hole is also never perfect circle, but more of and triangle shaped that usually results in slight oversized holes. There's multiple factors and is that simple Jacob's chuck isn't never perfectly centered, compared to fixing tapers This is basics that are taught if you're into metal works. Reaming is the way to when going for small tolerance holes that are more round.
its because of magical runout@@gabedarrett1301
I love these recycling-themed videos you do. Praying a cheap and reliable pultrusion machine comes to market soon!
I had the same thoughts on using PET Bottles here in Germany so I looked out for a different material that is used everywhere and always thrown away. Joghurt and curd cups are abundant and made from polypropylene (PP). PP is a pain to prepare and cut with the bearing cutter but there is a razor cutter somewhere on thingyverse or cults3d that works nicely. My recreator version is not ready to test yet but I made some PP filament in the past and found that PP has some really interesting material properties like environmental and chemical resistance and being dishwasher compatible. Might be interesting to have a look at! Thank you for sparking new interest for turning waste into useable stuff!
I would very much love to see some more testing of this material. But there may be too much variables to control to do it justice. I went down the rabbit hole and built myself a rig for pet recycling during COVID. I gathered all the info I could and used it to make my own experiments and I consider it to be a great overall material, similar to perg, but seems even better in some aspects. However, I ended up using entirely different set if parameters than yours, with still great results (though I have no hard data to prove it, other than my opinions and observations). To me, it is only a viable option if it can replace my need for commercial filament. This means it must be easy to make in enough quantity when I need it and produce comparable results. It also needs to be cheaper, which comes down to how much time it takes to make as in my country (Serbia), the bottles are everywhere. First, the quality - it's definitely comparable, perhaps only except color. You are a bit more limited there. You can try and color the strips and it somewhat works, but the colors aren't as saturated. Second, the time it takes to make - I used different parameters for pullstrusion and I can get a 2l coke bottle done in 25mins and it yields 15-20g of filament if prepared right. An order of magnitude faster than what you mentioned. I don't know if there are downsides, I didn't measure, but the quality is perceptibly the same as the longer methods. I used 235°C and a fast enough feedrate to land on 25mins for lets say 18g of filament. Even if this is slow for some, the process can be parallelized by having multiple machines running at the same time. But the device has to be cheaper than an old ender 3. Luckily, there are people who managed to bring the cost down to very cheap. Check out Petamentor for example, but there are more. Now we come to the biggest problem - quantity. 20g of filament is simply not enough for a lot of the prints and if it is, you are left with a few grams of unusable filament in the end either way. A solution is to join more filaments together. Joining then reliably is a problem. The biggest one for me, which in the past has made me give up on using recycled material. First - forget about joining strips, they simply can't survive the stress of pulling through the nozzle. Plus, like you mentioned, the process doesn't actually melt the strip, so it won't melt the strips together either. I tried joining strips in multiple ways and never had a successful pull through. I tried 100s of times - melting, mechanically interlocking, chemical solvent based bonding, and combining it all, it doesn't work in a diy environment. Otoh, joining finished filament is deceivingly simple. You take a piece of PTFE tube, melt two ends by flame or heater (I used a soldering iron) and while still molten, you slide on the tube. When it cools, the joint is done. However, the joint is very stiff and brittle and often breaks even if you just try to wind it on a spool. If it kinks before it gets in the extruder - forget it. Relieving the pressure on the joint helps somewhat, by making the bends before and after it to increase mobility. I tried faster and slower cooling, various things, but IMO, this is still the biggest issue and stops you from making a spool of say 200g of filament and just hitting print. I recently stumbled upon a guy that solves it by making a huge diameter spool, which is a genius idea (function3d on yt), he has many different good ideas too. This prevents the filament from bending too much and breaking the joint. Also, fresh off the machine, the filament tends to uncoil and spring back to a big diameter, making spooling it impossible. But not if you have a big enough spool. I will have to try that, as it looks like it's the missing puzzle piece for making the process of making filament viable.
Next - printing. I found that printing at high temperatures enabled faster printing. I had little zero issues of crystalization. I print on 280°c and have great results. I think layer adhesion is great, but have no numbers. I think overall strength is good, but have no numbers.
Other notes: it's prone to moisture absorbtion like petg. Drys easily. Appears to be somewhat self-regulating in terms of density consistency, I had good results on same settings with vastly different strip widths and thicknesses. Once the joint makes it into extruder, it doesn't cause problems. It frequently snaps while entering. Clogs weren't common. Cleaning wasn't too important, except for label adhesive. White spirits/turpentine works good, less toxic than acetone. I blow up bottles with a bicycle pump to 2 bars before treating with hot air gun, that way the bottle doesn't shrink. More than 2 bars risks explosion.
I'd love to see annealing at least, but other tests too!
Your comment was very insightful, thank you!
so what about re running a welded filament back through a smaller heated hot end would that minimize or eliminate the breakage potential?
Perhaps the two pieces could be chemically repolymerized using an acid catalyst
Pozdrav drug, imas li mail il kakav kontakt da se cujemo, lp
Great that you are so far down the rabbit hole. Awesome post.
A curious child is a wonderful thing and I couldn't think of someone better to be the teacher. Your daughter is going to be one smart kiddo
I’ve built a machine since your previous video about this topic, its a quite nice hobby, but the best thing in my opinion would be desgning a lowcost filament extruder in a sinilar fairly easy to build manner. Then we could use the whole bottle, use the caps of the bottles or even something like a milk jug or containers that pudding comes in. In my country (Hungary) we have a bearly functioning collection strategy with no deposit so I’d love to build an extruder, but the ones alaready in the wild are either really expensive or built from literal scrap
The problem is that filament is incredibly hard to create at home. We build all of our machines for speed and accuracy, so the filament is really thin and precise.
What we really need to do is make a 3D printer that can print using bad filament. If the machine can handle worse filament then it's easier for us to make at home.
@@VagabondTE prbably just a optical sensor for the width in 2 directions would be enough and some software changing the extrusion multiplier accordingly woudl do the trick
@@bsod4144 there was a PCB sold by someone, but the CCD chip the pcb used is now unobtanium
@@bsod4144 That would absolutely work, excellent idea. But I have a better one.. We just let it print badly.
There are hundreds of applications we're a little over or under extrusion doesn't matter. Especially if we're printing in thicker diameters with bigger filament. It really just needs to be jam resistant and easily clearable.
if you gonna build an extruder id suggest a cheap small meat grinder with custom faceplate driven by a stepper motor..wrap it in heating element and insulation
Useful, this will make a worldly difference that needs to be promoted (as you are :), thank you!
I like your optimism, not a lot of people have that lately.
The hollow result makes me want to see if you can stuff other materials into the center before pulling making composites, would that be something you could try?
Thats similar to what onyx already does, just not diy. If you want continuous fibers you have to cut them every later though.
Some kind of carbon fiber maybe?
@@thibaultjoan8268 yes , or nylon too
My thought was to use 100% polyester (PET) sewing or embroidery thread (maybe even yarn) to fill the "tube" during the pulling process. These threads are available in a many colors which might produce interesting coloration effects when 3D printed. Adding a spool of thread to the pulling process should be fairly easy. Presumably, using PET thread would avoid the problem of different types of plastics not sticking together well.
As an aside: I have wondered if it might be possible to make PET filament from 100% Polyester (PET) yarn rather than PET bottles. Turning discarded knitted Polyester clothing into PET filament would be kinda cool. :)
Maybe cut another bottle of a different color really thin and feed it into the nozzle at the same time to give it a colored core (like a clear shell with a mtn dew green core).
I've been gathering so many different versions of these. But no easy to follow video like this. This is exactly what I was looking for as I've been starting one of these PEt recycle projects!
Thanks!
I work in a diesel shop and we get pallets of water bottles in to drink. All of these are tossed in the garbage but the advantage is that they're all the same brand they're all clean and the shop even gave me a recycling bin so that I can use the filament out of it! I pretty much have the perfect setup and although I have doubts about how much time it would take I'm sitting on a potential Gold mine of filament
been making pet filament for 1 year now, and for the price of less than 2 euros per kg (electrical bill) , it has been great, better thermal resistance, better uv resistance, easy to print. made my own version of a pet pull, even made a tutorial how to build one. the downsides: short pieces of filament, not easy to splice together, not the best looking prints(transparent filament, standard blueish colors, more stringing )
This is a very nice thing, I hope it will be a bigger trend. Free filament and cleaning up nature at the same time. A big win win.
I would be interested to see a full test round on crystallized PET. Amorphous PET will momentarily become extremely sticky while melting, and that basically stops up any industrial machine melting plastic. For that reason PET pellets are crystallized in special machines that keep them moving while heating them, like a washing machine but with infrared light instead of water. From experience crystallized PET is really similar to PBT but possibly more brittle, usually in manufacturing we try to avoid crystalization afrter remelting by cooling the parts quickly. Slower cooling after remelting results in crystalization - opacity and brittleness
Good tip.
But the Pfand tho 😭😭😭 jk it looks so cool
If only we lived in a primitive backwater country like murrica where pet bottles don't get recycled 😭
@@cummibear69 one can only dream 😮💨
Or switzerland, no Pfand 😂
Some recycled don't have, so no bad feelings
If you consistently get 30g of filament per large bottle, you'd need 34 bottles for 1kg, which is only 8,50 in Pfand. Which is definitely not that bad for a spool PET.
You of course also need bottles, but if it's something you use anyway, it might be worth it to cut up a few bottles.
Great video! Bonus: when you do the recycling yourself you know the material is TRULY recycled, not just stuffed in a landfill somewhere.
I'm really happy you were able to get around to making one of these! I have a MK2 that I recently updated to include the geared system of the MK6 and it's a blast to make the filament. We don't have deposits for bottles in my state (sadly) but this does mean I have great incentive to make filament myself! the 2L bottles give me 20+ grams of PET and the prints are great. Like you, I've used it for several practical prints - mainly repairs.
And DEFINITELY test annealed PET against PET!
Something I've noticed is that the PET can even "anneal" itself on certain prints, particularly those with layers with smaller cross-sections. Those areas will come out opaque while the first few layers are clear.
I have built this with the exception of grinding the bearings for the bottle cutter. Works well
Turning the Ender 3 parts into a different tool has a similar vibe to the alternate builds of a Lego kit which they used to show on the back of the box 😁
Anything that helps recycle OR gives inspiration to create something better is always a good idea. Danke!
Just the process of assembling the entire project already looks like a lot of fun. I doubt if the effort is worth it to 3D print with PET for me, but the machine itself is really awesome! Straight forward + good explanation video! 🙂
Stefan, I thoroughly enjoyed this video, and was inspired to see you involve your daughters in this effort. While it will always be easier to have perfect spools of PETG shipped in for printing, being able to make filament this way seems like the fullest evolution of this technology.
I will be making one of these. Thank you from VA, USA.
Love this sort of build! good job describing it and including the "bumps" along the way.
Have you though about pelletizing? I think it would be harder with more specialized equipment (ie, not recycling an Ender 3) but could have a much higher efficiency since you could pelletize the tops and bottoms. And probably wouldn't risk your fingers with the knife! Would probably need 3 or 4 different machines. It probably could be used to make solid filament, though.
I tried shredded PET in a Filastruder, had severe brittleness issues. Didn't bother to dry it however.
This would go the route of full melting, so would have the “Hydrolysis” issues PET brings. If you have a VERY good drying workflow, it should be fine, but otherwise even small amounts of moisture can ruin it.
Granted I don’t have too much testing behind all this, and would LOVE to see a build series for a “Lyman Extruder”, or that other German Open Source Design!
" And probably wouldn't risk your fingers with the knife!"
Ofcourse! A shredder is much safer than a static knife :-)
You can build a pellet-extruder but it requires specialized techniques, it's not something you just do on a friday afternoon.
let's just say that a commercial pellet extruder costs a minimumk of $700 for a crappy one and 1000 for a "good" one. A shredder will easily set you back $1200. All in all you need to be a 3d-printing monster to be able to justify that. And don't forget that all these machines use energy too so the price of a spool of store-bought filament may not be that much higher than your own filament, once you have produced $2000 worth of filament to earn back the machines, ofcourse.
@@vinny142 I do agree it's not for "home scale". I'd consider it more at the scale of a Makerspace or Small Business!
@@ericlotze7724you run into an insane amount of issues around moisture control and crystalization of the PET when you go the route of melting it instead of just softening. That's why industrial machines are insanely complex to run and also expensive. They have to be hyper accurate and stable when in operation.
I'm not sure I have time to do this. But, I love that it exists. Everything good starts like this and then, who knows?
I think it’s a great idea. I’d really like to make my own pulltrusuon setup, but I don’t want to take apart a printer, or use so much filament/time printing printing the base. A budget version, which doesn’t need massive investment of expensive materials would be great.
Search at a junk yard for a broken 3d printer for parts
😎 I have been using this method for about two years, but the PETPull-2 version. Since then I have not bought filament again.
I’m hearing from other people who have done the math. It’s not worth it though.
Simply taking the bottles to a recycle center is more efficient, and buying filament.
The amount of time, electricity and chemical release.
You might be surprised if you did the math to find out it wasn’t worth it at all.
@@dangerous8333 Yes, but in my country they do not manufacture filaments and buying them through Amazon, eBay or some supplier, shipping costs a little more than the price of the reel, and it would be costing me double.
1.75mm drill bits are hard to get in the US, but you can use 1/16th or a 1.5mm and then use metal polishing compound on a string to sand the hole out to size. As a bonus this removes any burs that can damage your filament and makes pulling the filament much easier. Just be careful to widen the hole evenly and test the size often because it gets bigger faster than you'd think.
Could you please elaborate on the "metal polishing compound on a string"? I'd love to see a video on this
Take some cotton string that fits snuggly into the bore of the nozzle and rub a metal/jewellery polish into it.
The polish is a very mild abrasive, so you poke the string through the extruder nozzle and run it back and forth (kind of like flossing) and it should slowly widen the hole, similar to how the more abrasive filaments wear out nozzles.
Stop flossing when you get to the desired size (checking against a scrap of the appropriate sized filament).
@@gabedarrett1301 I used some polishing compound that came with my Dremel years ago. I found some cotton twine that barely fit through the hole and used some fishing line to pull it through. After that I just put some compound on the string and pulled it back and forth while turning the nozzle to widen it evenly.
I used a piece of filament to check the diameter every few pulls. I actually ruined the first nozzle I tried by over widening it because I didn't expect the polish to work so fast.
Defiantly a motivator! I've wanted to have a nice set up for this ever since I got introduced to the concept, but I've been afraid to take the plunge for fearing it would be too complicated. Your video makes me feel it is easier and much more obtainable of a project than I was thinking it would be, Thank you!
Very cool video! I always thought that this process needed a feedback loop, but seeing how easy this is, i might have to try this myself! what happens if you increase/decrease the pull speed?
If you don't give it enough time to heat, it will compress in the nozzle but spring back over 1.75 mm after it exits. So excessive speed can mess you up. But lengthening the heat zone seems to solve that. I've been experimenting with a drilled out mig nozzle that steps down from 2.5 to 1.8 mm and seems to reliably give 1.75 mm output. Need to test a little more for reproducibility and increasing speed.
I found it doesn't need it. Through geometry of the system, it sort of self-corrects by stretching more for wider/thicker strips and less for thinner stuff. This makes even badly, uneven cut strips still working and giving good results when printing.
The squeaky joint noises when showing the pneumatic robot arm... your ad placement is probably the best of any RUclipsr. I hated dealing with the bottles and got a filtered water pitcher instead. So I really don't have PET bottles. But if I did, I'd probably make one of these because they're fantastic.
I wonder, since the filement is hollow, could you feed a fiber in for fiber reinforcement? You could feed it though on the middle of the bottle strip before it is folded over. You'd need to print continuously on the printer though since you wouldn't be able to stop extruding.
That's actually a very clever idea. A cutting blade at the end of the nozzle may work. Smart
What youre teaching your daughter about the environment is amazing 7:40
Perhaps you could use an extruder and second, slightly hotter nozzle after the first to add pressure to the system going through the second nozzle to eliminate the hole in the center? If you synchronized the extruder to the filament roll there shouldn't be a speed discrepancy, and you'd still have a pulling mechanism through the first nozzle. I'd try it myself but my printer is dead atm...
You can get nearly 100% density by starting with a cross section at least 15-20% (and up to 60-70%!) over the desired 2.4 mm² and staging the heating. I'm experimenting with a mig nozzle drilled to stage it from 2.5 mm down to 1.8 at the very tip, but it can work even with a stock nozzle.
Where I live has no recycling option and my family goes through dozens of plastic bottles every week, this could be a great way to use that!
What do you think, is it possible to pull textiles through the machine?
There are 100% PES clothes which could work. Textiles are often just recycled "thermically"--> burned, even in countries where bottle recycling is quite good
Burning, if done with proper pollution control, and ESPECIALLY if Electricity and Heat are made from that isn’t that bad.
Main thing is making sure noone skimps on those systems. Also if using less sorted “Refuse Derived Fuel” (RDF) Ash can get full of some “nasties” although with a mixture of sorting (think “oh don’t burn that battery” “take that metal out of that first” etc), and leaching of useful chemicals from the ash this can be resolved. Worse case scenario, certain Gasification processes create “slag” which is mostly inert and can be used as aggregate in concrete.
Granted i like recycling just as much as the next person, but at the same time Gasification/Burning, or even Pyrolysis (using heat to essentially turn the stuff back into Crude Oil) aren’t bad *IF DONE WITH THE COMMON GOOD IN MIND*.
i've had their homepage open in one of my 1000 tabs for well over a year now. finally gonna build one, it really doesn't seem terribly complicated and well worth it. but i'll use a CR10 and wood for the most part, over a spool and days of printing doesn't seem necessary. i think i might also not wash out my cola bottles too well and perhaps end up with some nice caramel filament.
thank you for the push, its a great project.
Does this filament release toxins or off gas while printing?
I highly doubt it cause then you wouldn't be 3d printing in your house with the filament
Very late reply but: Nope! PET has a very similar chemical structure to PETG (A household name filament). This filament is safe and easy to print.
I bought a bambulab printer and figured it's probably a good idea to look into recycling filament... the timing on this video... considering I'm one of the people that bought a CE3Pro and didn't really care to hook it back up. Love this channel
I'm surprised that the pull process is so slow. Presumably, this is due to a thermal limit, so could the ribbon be pre-heated? (Using the spare bed heater channel)
The longer it stays between 80 and 250, the more it will crystallize and this makes it harder to get high flow printing. But if you compensate by quenching immediately after it comes out, it may work.
I tried it and had it down to 25 mins for 18g at 235°C and had zero issues with crystalization. I did install a blower fan to cool the filament after it exits the nozzle, but I don't know if it's necessary.
Smoothing out the bottle was my fav part, such a genius idea. Worked amazing.
Absolutely flawless video. Well demonstrated and critically important information presented. Thank you for making the 3D printing community more scientific and accessible.
So much informative. As always. Thank you very much. Do you think this way one can convert 3mm filament to 1.75 mm? So not melting but just softening.
Thank you for making this video, I've been planning on building the mk5 kit for months but never finding the time but your video has given me the motivation to finally embark on that journey lol
Ive been really interested in this process. Have you found any reliable way to weld the filament pulls togather for a longer strand?
Others have don't it, it can easily be done with a soldering iron when the strips are flat
Done*
Pre-pultrusion welding is hard but I have a few experiments to try. The best method once you have filament is melting it inside 1.6 mm ID silicone tubing with a soldering iron on max, then rapidly quenching it.
bump. I was wondering this same thing
Hearing your voice always makes me happy. I hope you're well!
Excellent video, as always. You made me laugh, so I will repeat what you said... PET pulling IS a tremendous waste of time. It's a fun, technical proof-of-concept, but I can't imagine doing this to obtain filament. Between bottle prep, output product consistency, organizing/categorizing your output, short filament lengths... It's too much to deal with when I'm ultimately concerned about getting a good final print.
I had a question... Is it possible to make a continuous filament from several bottles? With is technique, I think no, but if there was a way, that might help change my opinion about reusing PET.
You're not wrong, both about the quality of the video and the feasibility of the process. But you left out one of the most obvious hurdles wrt economics: before you've converted your first bottle, you're already 1.5 kg in the hole in filament. With the pitiful conversion rate, you're looking at nearly 5 kg of bottles just to break even on the material output.
That's not even counting the opportunity cost of turning a whole 3D printer into a completely different device. That Ender3 just needed some TLC applied to the ribbon cable to get it up and working again, and now it will never print again. You could buy at least a half-dozen kilos of filament for what the printer itself was worth, so on top of the first 5 kg, you've got another 20 kg or so of bottles to produce to break even.
If there was no operational overhead, _maybe_ you could eventually reach that break even point, but of course as you point out there's lots of ongoing operational overhead.
So, yeah...amusing proof of concept, but even in a region without bottle deposits (most of North America would qualify there), it's hard to see any way that this pays off economically.
@@harvey66616 Good point.
Great video and analysis at the end. Yes, not an energy efficient way to recycle but shows what may be done by the ingenious minds of us makers. Bravo!
I want to find ways to reuse all of the plastic waste from failed prints and supports but can't find anything that is less than $500. I really want to reuse all of the support waste but can't figure out a decent way to do it and I have no idea how to go about it. I'm not educated in engineering and can never understand what's being said in videos when I try to research it. I'm thinking of asking some friends from college but I'd have no way of paying them for their time since I'm really poor. If it's possible to recycle all of that wasted plastic for the same price as a cheap printer, then I think A LOT more people would use it and recycle wasted material.
I’ve been thinking about the same thing I’m gonna try a few things to see what works best if I find anything worth the time I’ll let you know
Make a plastic bottle mold, make bottles out of the wasted material and use this machine. Prove me wrong, but be gentle.
If it really works, I found it awesome (in Czech Republic we dont have “pfand”). That what I think is way to recycle and help the environment. 👍🏻
Do you think the lower print speeds for bottle PET could be related to the increased part strength?
I was wondering if the glycol inherently weakens the material offset by the improved printing speed and reliability.
I'm currently making one of these and stumbled upon this video.
Awesome to see you're joining in on this too!
How much does the selfmade Filament cost per Kilo and how much would the same have been as Pfand?
I made mine using only PLA parts (+ an Ender 3 of course) and I have had no issue with strength or heat. For cleaning the bottles and removing the labels, all you need is warm water, washing up liquid and elbow grease, no need for any solvents.
Does this process produce VOCs? If so do we need to create a filtration process?
I installed a double extruder and printed the infill with PET from bottles, and the outer walls with the purchased PET-G thread. It turned out fine.
Do it the other way around. 😂
Outer perimeters are where you need the high quality PET that won't creep or split at layer lines. Infill is basically just internal support material and would be fine with PETG.
@@daliasprints9798 , On the outside, I'm typing PET-G for a decorative function. Most often I need black parts, and black bottles are rare)
@@daliasprints9798 it’s about using the free filament for the part that uses the most, and hiding it because it’s not as visually appealing.
@@dangerous8333 I guess I should post some pics of how beautiful recycled PET can be. 😁 Got a few videos tho. Look for the dragon one.
It's worth mentioning that you should always use a release layer like gluestick when printing PET filament - it *will* rip chunks out of smooth PEI and glass sheets!
PEI is fine if you don't heat it above 60C.. Been printing on one for a while with no issue
@@AbyssFX. It's fine with PETg - PET *will* rip chunks out - I've had it happen on many printers
@@Matt3DMaker PETG will fuse to glass, I guess so would PET, but I haven't had any issue with my PEI bed, but I keep it cool when printing. If you heat it up too much when printing, it may fuse with PET/PETG
Love the video, a good one to print instead of this(which requires an unused ender 3) is one by Tylman design, it is a kit that you can buy all the hardware and print the casing out yourself. Really fun project and he ships the kits out super fast
Where to find it?
Definitely a cool project, but the amount of manual labor for 30g of filaments seems pretty impractical. Albeit expensive, shredding and using a proper extruder is probably still the best option, as that not only cuts down on manual labor, but also increases yields, since the whole bottle can be shredded, and allows for much larger batches
But it’s very expensive
Nice, I've always wanted to print a waterbottle from a waterbottle! And when it breaks, I can just do it again! Infinite waterbottle!
The expression "Penny wise, pound foolish" comes to mind.
explain please
Pound foolish is spending money on rolls of filament
@@mightyconker3903 I'll stick with my $10 rolls of PLA from IIIDMAX. They print perfectly and the several hours of my time I would be spending trying to get 1kg of PET filament is worth a lot more than $10.
@@mightyconker3903 Energy and time are also valuable resources.
I'm excited, I finally have a new printer to replace my ender 3 on the way so I could turn the old thing into this~
IMHO, this transformation should be done by the recycler companies; as an individual, the cleaning, label and wrinkle removal is a lot of work with possibly polluted filament and low yield.
As for solving the environmental pollution issue, I think it is better to restrain oneself in the usage of these kind of recipients. Avoiding waste is better than recycling it, isn't it ?
I just downloaded the files about a day before you posted this video, I'm excited to reuse some of my parts lying around. Since I moved, I've been drinking bottled water, so I'm looking forward to experimenting with recycling those as well as pop bottles. I don't think I'll be going around collecting garbage just yet, that comes once I used up all my own waste 😆
I always like the testing mindset and the surprise bonus strength of annealing is definitely something I'll keep in mind! Great work!
One of the reasons you’re getting terrible flow out of the PET filament is because you aren’t printing it hot enough. If you turn up the temperature to about 300°c, you’ll get noticeably better flow than PETG.
Yep. 300-320 is ideal for most setups. I'm using 350. But I still can't get the same flow as commercial HTPET filament. Must have something to do with crystallization or contaminants.
I bought an Ender 3 on sale a couple of years ago and haven't even taken it out of the box. I took a couple of 3D printing classes and the printers we had access to at the college were so far ahead of what the Ender can do. Now seeing how easily some of the newer home printers function, it almost seems like a waste of time to try to use it. BUT this might be a good use for it.
I'm part of the petamentor project a similar project way cheaper to make. I print only with pet bottles and it is fantastic!
You have access to lota of colors, some are gorgeous and parts are very durable.
I have solar panels at home and as I drink tap water (got filters on my home water system) I get bottles from frineds so I basically can 3d print gratis!
There are obv downsides:
- you print slower and at higher temps
- you have to make and dry your filament
But the pro is infinite and gratis filament
Have you ever done the math to see if it’s actually worth it or if it’s just diminishing returns?
Regardless of the free bottles, you have to consider labor and cost like electricity and time versus just recycling the bottles, which may be actually more beneficial than recycling them into Filiment.
Also, do your filters filter out chlorine and fluoride? Because they ARE filtering out all the beneficial minerals in the water as well, so essentially you’re drinking dead water. That’s why places that sell filtered water add vitamins and minerals to the water after. Research it.
That’s why some people are willing to pay for spring water. ✌🏼
I'm impressed that Klaus from American Dad could figure all of this out.
Naphtha is the best thing I've found that dissolves most sticker adhesives.
I feel like something is never a waste of time if it solves a problem or produces something of value, and there's no arguing these bottles are a problem begging for a solution. Sure, a discussion can be had around efficiency and it won't be for everyone, but I think that reusing an old tool in order to reuse a material was quite an elegant and interesting solution.
I've been watching this PET bottles to filament projects from at least 2 years. With all the respect to your hard work Stefan, in my opinion this has nothing to do with ecology. Yeah, great words about saving the planet, clean up the environment, recycling materials etc. Dirty bottles are unusable as long as you don't want to spend clean water we suppose to save (how many litres per single bottle?). Detergents, acetone to remove labels and then dirty paper towels (harmful to environment). Reshaping empty bottle using 600-1200W heatgun (around 50% of electricity in Germany is produced from fossil fuels). 2 hours of "printing" to get 31g of material out of 80g (low efficiency, low productivity, electricity). Pure PET is hard to print, require higher than PETG temperature and slower print time (again wasted electricity compared to other materials). Now the most important part for me. What should I do with this short pieces of filament? I've never seen a single "bottles to filament" project making even 100g of filament in one piece. If we keep using electricity, acetone, cleaning materials and our precious time to keep printing 3D benchys, were not helping our environment. We are working against it. I'm sorry for being honest.
I've worked for a while in the soap industry and I think a small factor of a soap extruder is less convoluted and far more effective. Though you'd need the PET to be pulverized, and that's where this design wins.
I would like to see more about heat treatments for PET including differences made by changing the cooling rate. For example, does the crystalline strength change if you heat and then immerse in a liquid, put it in a refrigerator, etc.
I really like the idea of this project and recycling, I'm just getting into 3D printing (waiting on my first one to come today as I'm writing this), the only unfortunate part of something like this for me is that I have actually cut back on using plastic bottles almost entirely but maybe if I get into 3D printing more I'll see about making one and get my neighbors to donate their bottles to it.
I have to try this. I'll use the PET bottles that one can find around - even though in Switzerland is quite rare, it still happens. Thanks for the tip - I do have Ender's nozzle and old mainboard - that's all I will really need. The rest I can "fake" (e.g. rod replaced by wooden stick, etc). I'll have fun with it :D
Where I am in the USA recycling is readily available, but we don't get money back for recycling plastic. Pet bottles are readily available in decent quantities by simply walking down my street and collecting from the bins left out for collection by the city, so I recently built a recreator myself.
I would love to see a video going into more depth about the strength of pet, especially if you can find the best settings to print it so that it crystalizes and how that compares to annealing the parts.
Heck yeah, thanks Stephan! I've been thinking about trying to do something like this.
I just gave up on reparing my original ender 3 and got a new, more modern printer.
This video feels like it was made for me.
This is a brilliant device. I admire how they were able to reuse so many parts from the Ender 3. Amazing design. It must have been a long design process, but I bet it was fun!
A great proof-of-concept, especially basing it on a widely-available standard base (Ender 3). I think that easy shredding of plastic is the next problem we need to be tackling.
Strip protrusion could be the ideal method for diy continuous fiber filament because 1st it should produce a decent fiber core concentricity without needing a specialized nozzle because it simple wraps the strip around the fiber, and 2nd it provides the necessary tension on the fiber.
I commend your dedication as a father
Ideally I believe melting the plastic down into a thin block, then using a series of heated rollers to press it into a thin sheet which can be pultruded may yield better results.
Under such a method, any plastic could be pultruded given it would be first formed into an appropriate block.
I think making your own filament is a great idea. I have not done it due to cost. I am in the states. There is HDPE, PP, PETE easily available. I know HDPE is difficult to print. However that would be a favorite because it is greatly available in many colors and is resistant to anything I can think of and very durable.
I would like to see how to control multiple nozzles at the same time with one board, great video as always !
I would love to see the comparison of annealed filaments across multiple materials. Low temperature crystral structure reflow could be an interesting investigation for not just pet but also pla, asa, etc.
I really want to try a multifeeder for longer spools. The main concept I propose is feeding multiple bottles at the same time while keeping each strip as thin as possible to making the spool longer compared to what you'd get from a single bottle without any end to end extensions. This can end up also making different blends in color if one likes.
Similar to the braided styles of trimer or fishing line?
Or just how ropes were made thousand of years?
With multiple strings.
I like it. I may rework the cutter and fee design so that I can achieve a solid core filament.
So bekommt mein Sidewinder eine neue Aufgabe!
Eine sehr tolle Upcycling Umsetzung
with a little more effort and perhaps more heating elements, there may be a way to recycle even the non-uniform parts of the bottle. possibly you could melt/soften it in an oven until it's quite gooey, and then stretch it out like taffy, or even cut it down with a saw or something to make it small enough. then possibly using a 'funneling' heater with a larger intake that can smush it down to the right thinness.
ngl bro this idea inspires me to build this first whenever i can finally afford to buy a 3d printer
One of the best creative content creator on youtube
In my country, we haven't have a well developed and efficient way to recycle PET bottles. Honestly its a problem. I can see a huge potential in this machine as I myself has a small printfarm. I can see integrating this to our process slowly and overtime as it'll start to grow We can involve community based partnership. Amazing!!!
I appreciate this pitch, first video I've hit like for in at least a year, good job
I am interested to make this machine. I will watch this video again and again until this knowledge sinks in my mind.