Easy Conversion of PET Bottles to Eco-Filament for 3D Printing and Process Characterization

Due to the economic and ecological impact, material recycling technologies are increasingly privileged and preferred over to standard processes. In this article, we focus on the potential to recover polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from water and soft drink bottles that have been poorly stored, transported and used, as well as from bottles from different manufacturers. The process used is to convert the bottle into a 1.75 mm diameter filament without fragmentation or dissolving. It does not require any heavy or industrial equipment and can be easily made even by 3D printing enthusiasts. We then used an FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) 3D printer to build the modeled shape using the resulting filament. The results of the process were characterized (tensile strength and hardness) and compared with those of 3D printing with “polylactic acid” (PLA), the most commonly used material in this type of printing. It offers adequate properties for many applications (close mechanical properties: elasticity around 230 MPa, maximum mechanical strength around 29 MPa, hardness around 10 MPa).