3D Filament From PET Bottle + Controller PCB

for a while i've been watching some pt bottles filament makers projects on youtube and there are a lot of them and i have to say it is a very interesting project and i wanted to make one as well so following the same steps and ideas i've made the design made a schematic for a pcb 3d printed some parts and slowly made my own bottle to filament machine right now it's not perfect but at least does it work well stick till the end of the video to find out i've made the pcb to go with this project and order it with pcb way and basically together with an arduino it should control the hitting block temperature the feeding speed maybe also a fan it could also have a display and a control encoder and so on so guys let's see how to make a bottle to film and maker and then try to print something with that filament so guys let's get started [Music] my friends welcome back the part list for such a project has 3d printed parts some screws and nuts bearings also a pcb electronics such as the arduino the drivers the mosfets and so on but we also need a wood board a 3d printer hidden block a stepper motor and much more if you search on youtube you can find all sorts of battle to filament makers and i'll put some other links below this video the idea is to cut the bottle into long strips and we'll see how to make that later in the video and then we pass that strip through the heated block with a nozzle output close to 1.75 millimeter and that will give it the cylindrical shape to pull the filament we use a motor some gears and a spool this is the 3d design that i have so far so let's begin and see if we need to change something first i've made the filament puller for that we have these 3d printed parts two big gears and a cylinder in between and all these parts were printed with pla filament 0.2 millimeter layer height two parameters 20 percent infill and a 0.4 millimeter nozzle and to increase the torque i've made another small gear and this gear will be rotating with another small gear connected to the stepper motor i've also made two support sides to keep the gears in place and this motor will be controlled with the stepper driver that goes on the pcb right here and by the way if you want to try the same project you could download my pcb for free and then order it at pcbway as well so for that download the gerber files and go to pcbway.com and here we click the code now button and select the pcb size the amount of pcbs and the solar mass color then you click the save to cart and on the next page you click the upload button and here upload the gerber files that you have downloaded from my website wait a few moments for the pcb way engineer to confirm that the files are okay and then you make the payment and receive the pcbs in just a few days the finish quality is great as always i never had problems with my prototyping pcbs and for only five dollars i can test my projects over and over again till i have the final version that i like anyway once you have the pcb you can try the same project so let's continue i'll make this project on the go and then if needed i'll make a second version and improve the parts that might go wrong with this one we need some sort of wood board to screw all the parts on it i will use this one and first i mark where i want the filament puller to go then i make the holes for the gears you will need two bearings on each side and these are 608 zz bearings you also need an m8 threaded rod some nuts and washers now i use some entry screws and fix the entire support in place like this actually i first place it backwards so i had to make other holes and fix it in place the correct way and also leave some space for the stepper motor once the puller is in place i mark the holes for the stepper motor support and make sure that the small gear will be in touch with the big gear and then i use the drill once again and make the holes i use some short m3 screws and a nema 17 stepper motor and screw it in place on the 3d printed support and then i screw the support in place next to the other gears and basically the puller system is now ready the next part we have to solve is the heating block so for that i've ordered all sorts of aluminum blocks of different sizes i've even ordered some aluminum bars so i could maybe try making my own block but finally i've ended up using this stock block from one of the 3d printers and it has a 12 volt heater inside and a thermistor so we could measure the temperature and my pcb already has a voltage divider and a thermistor connector so we could later measure the temperature using the arduino i first enlarge the input and remove the thread of the aluminum block with a six millimeter drill then i make the input angle of the hole a little bit bigger then i added a brass nozzle and enlarged the hole using a 1.8 millimeter drill the standard filament size is of 1.75 millimeters but by pulling harder on the filament even with a two millimeter hole for example we can make it closer to 1.75 but we should try to use different hole size and see the results anyway now using this metal bracket use with stepper motors and also this piece of an old pcb i secure the heating block in place it's important to use metal parts because this will get very hot the melting temperature of pt is above 200 degrees so now we have the heating block with the support wires for the heating element and the thermistor but i don't screw it in place just yet and next i've made this small spool to keep the bottle pt strip and this will be screwed in place on the other side of the board but a little bit to the side and this is why in order to make sure that the plastic strip won't rotate and it will always be horizontal we have this other part and this will keep the strip straight and point it towards the hitting block so i screen place this part as well and next i decide where to place the hitting block and using two more screws i fix it in place as well so when i have everything where i wanted more or less i make some holes for the wires so they could go below the wood board because i want to keep all the electronics below i've also printed these legs and this will give some space from the ground so the electronics could fit below so i make the hose and add a leg on each corner now the pulling and the heating system is ready it's time to repair the pcb so order my design from pcbway.com as you can see the board has a space for an arduino a stepper driver connector for the main input supply connector for the heater and the fan more connectors for the thermistor a router encoder a display and some other inputs and outputs it also has spaces for two mosfets and this will control the power applied to the heating element and the power for a possible cooling fan so i solder some female pins for the arduino and the stepper driver and then i add the mosfets finally i add all the capacitors and resistors and i also add the input and the output screw terminals this is the schematic for this pcb and you could download it from below this video as you can see the board will work at 12 volts so we need a 12 volt supply now the pcb is ready as you can see it has some three millimeter holes so we could screw it in place below the wood board but first we have to test it first i connect an ice crusty display and the thermistor to the pcb i want to see if i can read the temperature i upload the first code that will only read the thermistor temperature and print it on the screen and it looks that it works okay next we need to control the stepper motor connect the motor to the driver output to test this i have this other code that is using the excel stepper library to change the speed of the motor according to the potentiometer value i upload it and as you can see i can activate the rotation with a push button and then using a potentiometer i can change the speed so this also works ok and the last part is to control the power that is applied to the heater with the mosfet and also read the temperature and control the set point at a certain value let's say 200 degrees i've made this code with a pd control that will change the pwm value applied to the mosfet and keep a steady value i've uploaded a code to the arduino and connected the heater and the thermistor to the pcb together with the lcd screen once again as you can see the pd value gets lower and lower as the temperature reaches the set point of 200 degrees and then the temperature will stay steady more or less on that point so the temperature pid control also works so everything works i've connected everything below the wood port and fixed the pcb with screws for now i've just glued the screen and the controls here on the board as well and then i create the final code that will heat up the block read the temperature and control the speed of the stepper motor all at the same time and this is the final code that you could download from below so upload it and let's give it a test the temperature will stay at around 200 degrees and the values are printed on the screen and i can control the motor speed using the potentiometer it's time to create some filament but for that we first have to make some bottle plastic tape strips but before that we need to make the bottle smoother because as you can see this bottle is not smooth it has all sorts of shapes on it and we don't want that and the best way to make that is to place some water inside of the bottle and then we put some water to boil in a cooking pot place the bottle inside of the cooking pot and let it boil so the water inside will vaporize and increase the pressure at the same time you could also make the plastic softer by hitting it with a heat gun and as you can see the bottle is now smooth we can now cut it i've tried some different methods for the stripes cutter the one with the bearings should be better but i wasn't able to make the bearings perfectly flat but anyway i've just printed this support and place a cutter knife the 3d printed part should give the maximum width of the plastic tape so cut the bottom of the bottle then you cut a small part and insert it into the cutter now just pull and you will see how the tape is created you can make a few meters out of each bottle but it also depends on the bottle size i wind the plastic tape on the spool holder now heat up the machine we cut a very thin part of the tip of the plastic tape and then insert that into the extruder and pull it using some pliers and we pull till we have enough length and insert that plastic filament into the pulling spool now increase the speed and adjust it to have more or less 1.75 millimeter filament and you might need to change the speed the width of the plastic tape or the nozzle diameter so try this till you get good results also the more you inflate the bottles the thinner will the plastic be so the filament will be smaller later have that in mind so just like that in a few minutes i have my first filament that is made out of a pt bottle and looks promising and using the same method i try some different colors and all is left to do is to try the new filament with a 3d printer i place the filament over an old empty spool that i had laying around i preheat the printer at 260 degrees insert the filament until you can see some plastic coming out from the nozzle i print an example file of a cube we start and it seems to go okay but the printer was having some problems staying at 260 degrees i never printed at that value so the test cube was turning out more or less but as you can see after a few layers i decreased the speed and increased the flow rate and you can see the difference also after a while the filament got stuck for a moment so a few layers weren't printed but then the print continued without any problems so i guess that the material is okay but you have to make some more tests till you get the good configuration for the speed the temperature the flow rate and so on but hey i was able to print something using some plastic from a pt bottle that's pretty cool right and obviously there are a lot of parts that could improve with this project but that is for a future update video because i was working on this one for more than a month but feel free to improve it yourself so guys that's how you could make a filament out of pt bottles you have my pcb below for download so get it and order it at pcbway get my schematic my code and everything that you need for this project from electrons.com and try your own filament puller machine i hope that you like this project and if so consider giving me a like or comment below thanks again and see you later guys hey guys so that was the video for this week i hope that you like it and as always the most important part for me is that you have learned something new and i would like to thank you to all of you who are supporting me on patreon because that for me is huge and by the way if you would like to support my project you have all my links below for this patreon page for my social media for my shop and so on so thanks again and see you later guys

Channel: Electronoobs

Views: 413,902

Keywords: PET, filament, homemade, plastic, bottle, recycle, extruder, filastruder, puller, how to make, Arduino, DIY, PET bottle, cutter, polyformer, pullstruder, Recreator

Id: ueJXQ7appC0

Length: 16min 3sec (963 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 31 2022