Now that all of the tools have been gathered, you can begin to recycle PET. The process is pretty straightforward, quick and easy. Just collect, sort, clean, slice and dry your bottles. Because you’re not reliant on the speed of any machines, this stage can go very quickly. Depending on how quick you want to be, you can take on a more active role to collect bottles by asking friends or collecting them from bins, or passive by just collecting a bottle here or there as you find them in public spaces. In either case, you will know exactly how the material is being recycled. Next you’ll need to sort your bottles as some of them will be better suited to produce printer filament with, than others. Cleaning will get any residue or labels off that could cause problems for your 3D printer. And while all of the previous steps are very necessary, slicing your PET bottles into strips will be the most crucial step, in addition to being very satisfying. Afterwards, just dry the strips as you get ready to start producing.
COLLECT BOTTLES
The first thing you’ll need to do is collect bottles. A lot of bottles. Each island (node/connector) of the Archipelago system requires about 50g of PET filament. While PET bottles vary in their size and thickness of the PET, on average each island will require approximately 4x1.5L bottles, with some material leftover.
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SEPARATE
Some bottles are curvy while others are straight, meaning that not every bottle can be used for the structural supports of the Archipelago system. Since the curvy ones aren’t great for the supports, any overly curvy bottles can be cleaned, sliced, dried, formed into printing filament and then used. Bottles with straight sides can be set aside for use as structural supports.
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CLEAN
You’ll want to clean all of the bottles that you collect so that nothing gets stuck inside of your filament and causes it to jam up your printer nozzle. Strip the label off as best you can, remove the top, rinse out and cut the bottom off of each. Dry them if you have time, or wait until after you’ve sliced them into strips.
SLICE
This is arguably one of the most important steps in the whole process. You will need to use the bottle slicer to produce even strips of PET that you will then use to make filament.
- Sort bottles by the thickness of their PET so that you don’t have to change the blade level of the bottle slicer too frequently.
DRY
For best results, you’ll want to dry the PET strips before extruding them—and after, if possible—in order to ensure that the filament is free of any liquids.
Archipelago has been generously supported by the following organizations: