3D Printing with Recycled Water Bottles for Air Force Applications

With domain expertise in large-scale 3D printing, re:3D has developed a pellet extrusion 3D printer capable of printing with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flake as well as non uniform pellets. This effort includes developing the ability to consistently dry and to easily clean & switch between materials and/or introduce additives for polymer reconstitution. A novel mechanism for feeding larger volumes of pellets and/or flake into the platform is also being developed with the requisite controls. Conversations with re:3D’s existing DoD customers who utilize re:3D’s Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printers suggest that this new pellet printer could have value to the AF customers if water bottles, a PET plastic, collected in theater could be leveraged as the feedstock. This research proposes to source such water bottles and test the ability to grind & extrude the flake in re:3D’s pellet printer to produce six objects suggested by AF stakeholders that could have value to AF objectives in a contested environment.