A maker turned discarded drink bottles into printer filament

It took 17 plastic bottles to make one kilogram of 3D printer filament. The YouTube channel PETCraft counted them in an October 10 video, and its on-screen tally for the kilogram reads thirteen 5 liter bottles, two 8 liter, one 10 liter and a single 1.5 liter bottle.

The bottles started out as trash. The video calls them trash bottles, and it opens with PETCraft collecting them: nine identical 5 liter bottles, five more 5 liter bottles of different types, two 8 liter, one 10 liter and four 1.5 liter bottles. The raw material is free for anyone willing to pick it up.

Every machine in the process is homemade. In the video, PETCraft puts a little water in each bottle, pressurizes it with a pump and heats it “over a gas stove” to smooth it, then cuts it into uniform strips on a custom cutter. A custom automated puller drags each strip through a heated nozzle and turns it into 1.75mm filament, the video’s description says.

Whether it’s worth it is still open. Nobody has printed with this spool yet: PETCraft says the next video will test it on a budget DIY 3D printer built with an Arduino Uno.

Play the video on YouTube

If you have a printer and a pile of bottles, watch part two before you build a cutter. The kilogram is real. How well it prints is the part nobody knows yet, and that’s what decides whether your recycling bin is a supply closet.

Seventeen trash bottles is a lot of work for one spool of filament, and I’d still rather see them on a printer than in a ditch.