3D printing is an incredibly cool technology, but I’ve always had a bit of trouble with too much plastic. Giving people the tools and power to create at home has resulted in amazingly imaginative creations like this printed Cities: Skylines square. (opens in new tab)or these handy adaptive controllers (opens in new tab)But it still has the potential to increase plastic waste and as a global community we don’t need it.
That’s why it’s always exciting to see people start 3D printing with more sustainable materials.We’ve seen printers that can make amazing shapes out of delicious chocolate (opens in new tab)have heard promises of china being printed on waste (opens in new tab)Watch a thrifty man build a foldable Raspberry Pi case out of a plastic bottle right before your eyes.
@function.3d (opens in new tab)
♬ Mozart Minuet and Violin (815356) – Issaku Matsumoto (opens in new tab)
Function.3d on TikTok shares a video of the project with a calming instrumental thanks to Mozart. The video shows the whole process, starting with what looks like a fairly ordinary big green plastic bottle. As the 3:41 video shows, it takes a lot of work to get from this bottle to a tiny computer case.
At first, the bottle seems perfectly prepared. This starts with nice warming by fire, then vigorous rubbing with solvent. When finished, the bottom was cut off and we never heard from them again. These are often made of thicker plastic, which can be too difficult to work with in this piece. increase. This turns most of the rest of the bottle into thin strips of plastic, not yet ready to become filament.
It is then attached to another machine that appears to heat and shape the strips. This originally has to be pulled by hand, but it looks like you’re going to let the machine take over after the initial setup. This allows the thread to be loosely wound onto the large bobbin.
However, this bobbin is not enough, so the new filament is transferred to another bobbin and loaded into the 3D printer. This will spit out a nice little 3D printed case for your Raspberry Pi. This looks very nice with the green color of the bottle. Plus, no new plastic was needed for this little project. This is always great.
Watching this video gave me the distinct impression that this process takes a lot of time and effort, especially if you want to get a good amount of prints. It is one of the , and it seems that it is actually feasible even for individuals. in the FAQ (opens in new tab)They note that they weren’t the first to attempt this process and that they worked hard to create this design thanks to inspiration from other projects.