Huh, I wonder if a similar technique could be applied to make cheap PETT filament. Probably not since the bottles make flat string but still. Neat stuff.
http://youtu.be/hQeeJEpBYsg
I like it. It’s probably possible to make a special hot end to accept flat filament. A more serious issue is that there’s a (low) limit for a length of a string.
I drew up plans for an extruder fed this way once, back in the days before high quality filament was available and we knew how important it was.
Yea, I’d develop this purely as a bargain option to print really haphazardly compared to the stuff we use today. Something like that could be used in India/Africa where HQ filament is unheard of (let alone 3D printing.)
It’s clever. Print quality would be a bit random, since the volume extruded would wobble around depending on the thickness of the bottles, etc., but it might be worth it, since you could print with near-zero operating cost, and encourage direct recycling of a huge volume of plastic. And that’s awesome!
Once it’s close enough, you might be able to pull/push it through a 1.75 hot nozzle to make it uniform…
CAN BE USED IN 3D PRINTING ! GREAT !