Bottle Cutter - Recycle plastic bottles into cord

Last crawled date: 4 years, 2 months ago

This 3D print will enable you to turn recycled plastic bottles into a tough plastic cord that can be used for anything!
After printing you need to insert a standard utility knife blade - it may help to have a hammer or mallet to bang it in nice and deep. The scoop-outs should allow you to use some pliers to remove the blade when it needs replacing. The blade slot is offset to one side as I thought it might help to have a little extra thickness behind the blade, and also having the shallower side on the cutting edge makes it a little easier to manipulate the angle of attack as you insert the bottle. In practice, either direction seems to work pretty much the same.
Successfully printed on a Ultimaker 2+, using PLA, 0.6mm nozzle, 0.15mm layer height, 20% infill.
My first print worked fine but everything was just a little too tight, I printed again at 105% scale and it gave just enough wiggle room to make the whole thing work a little smoother.
The actual feeding in of the bottle takes some practice and technique, and different bottle shapes work better than others - it will take some experimentation but it's worth persisting. It is helpful to put the cutter into a vice or clamped to the desk, to free up both hands.
I started by trying to print a similar design by Szalat (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1440014) - I couldn't quite get it to work for me though, so I designed this model from scratch but using a similar form factor and concept. So thanks Szalat!