<p>There are many videos on YouTube now showing how to do this and also a selection of 3D printable devices that will do virtually the whole task for you (cutting the bottle strips and heating them, extruding them into filament and spooling them). Strong, high quality 3D prints can be made. The best up-to-date resource I've found is:</p>
<p><a href="https://petamentor2.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://petamentor2.com</a></p>
<p>It includes instructional videos, part lists, a 3D printed PET showcase gallery, details on required PET strip width for the best filament, and an active facebook community.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-11-13T18:13:36.733Z
Linking to those videos and models may improve the quality of the answer! 
0scar
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-11-20T07:52:30.363Z
@Oscar Yes, I considered that but I didn't want to paste links that go stale. What's the general etiquette on that? Most people put them anyway?
Jonathan
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-11-20T08:08:16.567Z
You are right about link and link rot, and I/we do agree, but in this case the answer could really use an example video. You could even take some screenshot and explain the process based on a few pictures! Note that if links go stale, our users generally update the answer with a more current link. Now this answer is more like a "Google it yourself"
0scar
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-11-21T13:01:58.373Z
This does not answer the question if you can print a PET Bottle, get it certified and if it's economical, but can you use PET Bottles for printing, which is only a tiny subpart of the main question.
Trish
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-11-13T04:10:09.857Z
2024-11-20T09:04:46.217Z
2024-11-20T09:04:46.217Z
Jonathan
<h1>No, due to 3 reasons</h1>
<h2>PET is not (easily) printable.</h2>
<p>There is a lot of confusion on what Filaments you can buy: <strong>most times filament branded PET is actually PETG, sometimes PETT.</strong></p>
<p>PET is not an easily printable material at all. With expert knowledge and the right machine settings it <em>can</em> be printed, but even then, it is not as easily recyclable into a useable 3D-printer-filament as you might think. To make normal, circular filament you need full reprocessing capabilities, which means the need for machinery to allow thorough cleaning, grinding to a base substrate, melting it up, pelletizing, and finally extrusion as a fresh filament.</p>
<p>The closest related material that is commonly regarded as easily printable is PET<strong>G</strong>, a modified PET that also contains glycol. You can't convert PET into PETG with home or hobbyist applications at all - they are <a href="http://blog.wheaton.com/pet-vs-petg-what-is-the-difference/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">totally different</a> in their chemical behavior, even as just one material was added in production. PETG is not brittle like PET, it does not haze on heating, but it ages in UV light, scratches easily and can't be autoclaved like PET. But the chemical modification has to be done during the initial manufacturing of the material, and it is <a href="https://blog.teqnow.com/pet-and-petg-a-bad-combination" rel="nofollow noreferrer">a huge mess</a> to try to recycle the two together, which can and will happen if you try to work with material you source from recycling.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When they’re processed together, PETG melts and becomes sticky while PET remains solid. PETG sticks to PET chips and forms large clumps that pose processing problems.” <sup><a href="https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2017/10/24/pet-resin-code-changes-california/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Resource Recycling</a> (magazine/blog)</sup></p>
</blockquote>
<h3>But... What about recycling bottles with shaped-filament?</h3>
<p>Between 2021 and 2023, recycling plastic bottles into a filament became somewhat viable and doable. It does not create a normal round filament, but a folded-over one by <em>pulltrusion</em>. While this material is <strong>very printable</strong> it is not necessarily economic, as Stefan (CNC Kitchen) explains in his <a href="https://youtu.be/1yIe1Pp_Nrg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">excellent video</a> on the recreator, and <a href="https://youtu.be/N06FWr06iOI" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this one</a>.</p>
<p>The main sticking points from the summary are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Some countries have a bottle deposit system, which would make the filament base still cost.</li>
<li>Different bottle types can have vastly varying print qualities or not work at all as they use different plastic mixes.</li>
<li>Emissions of the pulltrusion system are unknown.</li>
<li>Splicing bottles is very tricky.</li>
</ul>
<p>While a perfect way to reduce PET bottle waste, it's not a good solution for selling <strong>food</strong> (see below). It's also not necessarily economical when the bottles are not free: At 25 cents (Germany) a bottle and about 20 grams outcome per bottle, that's 12 euros per kilo <strong>before</strong> the power costs to make and splice the material and labor cost to set up the machines. As a result, in Germany you don't get an economic advantage, while in other countries you might get to a spool of printable filament for maybe half the price of virgin material.</p>
<h2>3D printed objects are very unlikely to become food certified.</h2>
<p>You can't easily manufacture (certified) food-rated printed products, like food containers due to the requirements that a machine that manufactures food-certified products needs to comply to. I advise looking at <a href="https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/6941/8884">this answer</a> regarding food rating for more elaboration.</p>
<h2>It is hard to print really transparent with FDM.</h2>
<p>Due to the method how FDM works - extruding lines next to each other - it is often impossible to print fully transparent objects right of the bat - there is <em>almost always</em> air inside a printed object, and there are so many boundaries between the extrusion paths that refract and change the photon paths that the best one can achieve somewhat easily is translucent (=semi-transparent). Read <a href="https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/3516/8884">this answer</a> for further information.</p>
<p>But if you manage to get the object <a href="https://learn.colorfabb.com/lets-make-something-clear/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">really solid</a>, you might get some near-transparent, icy results from some orientations while looking in others still will look matte.</p>
<p>To get them fully transparent you <strong>then</strong> will have to <a href="http://fenneclabs.net/index.php/2018/12/09/3d-printing-transparent-parts-using-fdm-fff-printer/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">post-process</a> them to become fully transparent by grinding the surface up to 4000 grit, but that is very labor intensive and most likely not possible for the inside of a bottle. To be clear, you spend hours polishing one surface.</p>
<h1>Could it be economic in the slightest?</h1>
<p>On a side tangent, the viability of printing a bottle via buying new ones will need to be expored. <em>Shapped</em> PET Bottles with caps start at \$0.01 per piece and top out at \$1 per piece - you get the better prices if you order in larger quantities. You will have to compete with getting under \$1 per bottle, or rather with what the price of a typical bottle you want is.<sup>alibaba.com</sup></p>
<p>A typical PET bottle ordered from China weighs 30 g for a 300 ml bottle, and the particular example I looked at comes \$0.22 to \$0.28, depending on the bottle cap, with a minimum order of one parcel with something around 300 items. That seems to be in the average range.</p>
<p>A roll of 1 kg of PET(G?) filament starts at ~\$30 at the moment. That is the weight of 33 shaped bottles per roll. Your print will most likely be heavier than the blown up bottle to get it watertight, but let's just assume you might manage the same weight. Then it's about \$0.90 in the material alone - so we are at more than 300% of a bought product with cap already!</p>
<p>Atop that comes the running cost of the printer, which depends on your print time, printer and electricity price. I know my hobbyist machine comes, maintenance and electricity combined, down to 0.21€/h, so roughly \$0.25. Printing a bottle will take <em>several</em> hours. So <strong>even</strong> if we assume that we get our filament for free, it is economically impossible to get to even a close price point.</p>
<p>PET preforms that can be blown up to almost <em>any</em> bottle shape, type and size and ship much cheaper come to prices due to better density. Which means you compete against \$0.015 to \0.15 per bottle in material costs.</p>
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
<p>It is not economically viable to even attempt to print bottles beyond a prototyping stage.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-02T20:36:58.440Z
I think there's a fourth issue: 3D printing is designed to replicate the *shape* of an object. It's not designed to replicate the *structure* of an object.  One shouldn't expect a 3D printed replica of an object to have the same physical properties, even if the same materials are used. It's a little bit like expecting to be able to replicate a forged sword using cast iron.  PS. "I advice looking at this answer" ->  "I **advise** looking at this answer"
Acccumulation
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-02T23:13:43.013Z
PET bottles are made by heating and expanding a thick-walled blank inside a mold.  Would a PETG blank balloon out if heated and inflate4d in the same way?  Or would it jus tear?
Criggie
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-03T00:25:55.717Z
@Criggie that is a different question, one for engineering.SE under Material Science. In general: PETG does melt while PET at the same temperature becomes moldable. With the right temperature and timing... maybe?
Trish
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-03T03:09:30.627Z
Forget about transparency and food certification.  The first problem you'll get with FDM is that your bottle won't be watertight, due to small gaps caused by the layering process and minor variations in the extrusion rate during the print.  Especially if using consumer-level hardware.
aroth
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-03T12:10:23.710Z
@aroth I have managed to print watertight objects with china machines. You just need to print more walls.
Trish
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-28T17:59:22.293Z
@Trish: I've printed watertight with single-wall/vase-mode. You mainly just need to make sure nothing is badly out of tune. Localized underextrusion due to material loss during travel and lagged response of extrusion with respect to extruder motor motion are probably the biggest threats to messign it up, and largely fixed by using retraction and a printer with linear advance feature in firmware.
R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-28T19:04:14.430Z
@R.. which makes it extremely hard, but yes, technically it's possible.
Trish
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-02T17:38:15.997Z
2024-11-21T13:00:41.347Z
2024-11-21T13:00:41.347Z
Trish
<p>I want to print a transparent PET bottle for my homemade lemonades and thought about 3D-printing them.</p>

<p>I would like the printed bottle's quality to be as fine as a Coca-Cola PET bottle for coke and the printing substrate or material be something that's cheap or readily available. I thought I might recycle some old PET bottles to print the custom one for my lemonades as I don't want something that would require me buying new materials or re-exporting from the manufacturer.</p>

<p>Is it possible to recycle PET and print it into food-certified containers?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-02T17:43:23.133Z
Technically recommendation questions are forbidden, but in this case there is a doable core: "Can I print recycled PET fully transparent and food rated?"
Trish
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-02T23:16:32.850Z
Glass bottles and homebrew-style caps would probably be your best packaging suggestion.  Or reusing cleaned PET bottles, if permitted.   You could personalise the packaging with labelling, or print some kind of nubbin to stick to the top of the cap/lid.
Criggie
<print-quality><print-material><pet>
Can I 3D-print a PET bottle?
linker
# Can I 3D-print a PET bottle?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-01-02)

I want to print a transparent PET bottle for my homemade lemonades and thought about 3D-printing them.

I would like the printed bottle's quality to be as fine as a Coca-Cola PET bottle for coke and the printing substrate or material be something that's cheap or readily available. I thought I might recycle some old PET bottles to print the custom one for my lemonades as I don't want something that would require me buying new materials or re-exporting from the manufacturer.

Is it possible to recycle PET and print it into food-certified containers?

**Tags:** print-quality, print-material, pet

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Technically recommendation questions are forbidden, but in this case there is a doable core: "Can I print recycled PET fully transparent and food rated?"  
> **username_2**: Glass bottles and homebrew-style caps would probably be your best packaging suggestion.  Or reusing cleaned PET bottles, if permitted.   You could personalise the packaging with labelling, or print some kind of nubbin to stick to the top of the cap/lid.  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-01-02. Score: 28 | Accepted answer

# No, due to 3 reasons

## PET is not (easily) printable.

There is a lot of confusion on what Filaments you can buy: **most times filament branded PET is actually PETG, sometimes PETT.**

PET is not an easily printable material at all. With expert knowledge and the right machine settings it *can* be printed, but even then, it is not as easily recyclable into a useable 3D-printer-filament as you might think. To make normal, circular filament you need full reprocessing capabilities, which means the need for machinery to allow thorough cleaning, grinding to a base substrate, melting it up, pelletizing, and finally extrusion as a fresh filament.

The closest related material that is commonly regarded as easily printable is PET**G**, a modified PET that also contains glycol. You can't convert PET into PETG with home or hobbyist applications at all - they are [totally different](http://blog.wheaton.com/pet-vs-petg-what-is-the-difference/) in their chemical behavior, even as just one material was added in production. PETG is not brittle like PET, it does not haze on heating, but it ages in UV light, scratches easily and can't be autoclaved like PET. But the chemical modification has to be done during the initial manufacturing of the material, and it is [a huge mess](https://blog.teqnow.com/pet-and-petg-a-bad-combination) to try to recycle the two together, which can and will happen if you try to work with material you source from recycling.

> “When they’re processed together, PETG melts and becomes sticky while PET remains solid. PETG sticks to PET chips and forms large clumps that pose processing problems.” [Resource Recycling](https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2017/10/24/pet-resin-code-changes-california/) (magazine/blog)

### But... What about recycling bottles with shaped-filament?

Between 2021 and 2023, recycling plastic bottles into a filament became somewhat viable and doable. It does not create a normal round filament, but a folded-over one by *pulltrusion*. While this material is **very printable** it is not necessarily economic, as Stefan (CNC Kitchen) explains in his [excellent video](https://youtu.be/1yIe1Pp_Nrg) on the recreator, and [this one](https://youtu.be/N06FWr06iOI).

The main sticking points from the summary are:

* Some countries have a bottle deposit system, which would make the filament base still cost.
* Different bottle types can have vastly varying print qualities or not work at all as they use different plastic mixes.
* Emissions of the pulltrusion system are unknown.
* Splicing bottles is very tricky.

While a perfect way to reduce PET bottle waste, it's not a good solution for selling **food** (see below). It's also not necessarily economical when the bottles are not free: At 25 cents (Germany) a bottle and about 20 grams outcome per bottle, that's 12 euros per kilo **before** the power costs to make and splice the material and labor cost to set up the machines. As a result, in Germany you don't get an economic advantage, while in other countries you might get to a spool of printable filament for maybe half the price of virgin material.

## 3D printed objects are very unlikely to become food certified.

You can't easily manufacture (certified) food-rated printed products, like food containers due to the requirements that a machine that manufactures food-certified products needs to comply to. I advise looking at [this answer](https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/6941/8884) regarding food rating for more elaboration.

## It is hard to print really transparent with FDM.

Due to the method how FDM works - extruding lines next to each other - it is often impossible to print fully transparent objects right of the bat - there is *almost always* air inside a printed object, and there are so many boundaries between the extrusion paths that refract and change the photon paths that the best one can achieve somewhat easily is translucent (=semi-transparent). Read [this answer](https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/a/3516/8884) for further information.

But if you manage to get the object [really solid](https://learn.colorfabb.com/lets-make-something-clear/), you might get some near-transparent, icy results from some orientations while looking in others still will look matte.

To get them fully transparent you **then** will have to [post-process](http://fenneclabs.net/index.php/2018/12/09/3d-printing-transparent-parts-using-fdm-fff-printer/) them to become fully transparent by grinding the surface up to 4000 grit, but that is very labor intensive and most likely not possible for the inside of a bottle. To be clear, you spend hours polishing one surface.

# Could it be economic in the slightest?

On a side tangent, the viability of printing a bottle via buying new ones will need to be expored. *Shapped* PET Bottles with caps start at \$0.01 per piece and top out at \$1 per piece - you get the better prices if you order in larger quantities. You will have to compete with getting under \$1 per bottle, or rather with what the price of a typical bottle you want is.alibaba.com

A typical PET bottle ordered from China weighs 30 g for a 300 ml bottle, and the particular example I looked at comes \$0.22 to \$0.28, depending on the bottle cap, with a minimum order of one parcel with something around 300 items. That seems to be in the average range.

A roll of 1 kg of PET(G?) filament starts at ~\$30 at the moment. That is the weight of 33 shaped bottles per roll. Your print will most likely be heavier than the blown up bottle to get it watertight, but let's just assume you might manage the same weight. Then it's about \$0.90 in the material alone - so we are at more than 300% of a bought product with cap already!

Atop that comes the running cost of the printer, which depends on your print time, printer and electricity price. I know my hobbyist machine comes, maintenance and electricity combined, down to 0.21€/h, so roughly \$0.25. Printing a bottle will take *several* hours. So **even** if we assume that we get our filament for free, it is economically impossible to get to even a close price point.

PET preforms that can be blown up to almost *any* bottle shape, type and size and ship much cheaper come to prices due to better density. Which means you compete against \$0.015 to \0.15 per bottle in material costs.

### Conclusion

It is not economically viable to even attempt to print bottles beyond a prototyping stage.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: I think there's a fourth issue: 3D printing is designed to replicate the *shape* of an object. It's not designed to replicate the *structure* of an object.  One shouldn't expect a 3D printed replica of an object to have the same physical properties, even if the same materials are used. It's a little bit like expecting to be able to replicate a forged sword using cast iron.  PS. "I advice looking at this answer" ->  "I **advise** looking at this answer"  
> **username_2**: PET bottles are made by heating and expanding a thick-walled blank inside a mold.  Would a PETG blank balloon out if heated and inflate4d in the same way?  Or would it jus tear?  
> **username_1**: @username_2 that is a different question, one for engineering.SE under Material Science. In general: PETG does melt while PET at the same temperature becomes moldable. With the right temperature and timing... maybe?  
> **username_6**: Forget about transparency and food certification.  The first problem you'll get with FDM is that your bottle won't be watertight, due to small gaps caused by the layering process and minor variations in the extrusion rate during the print.  Especially if using consumer-level hardware.  
> **username_1**: @username_6 I have managed to print watertight objects with china machines. You just need to print more walls.  
> **username_7**: @username_1: I've printed watertight with single-wall/vase-mode. You mainly just need to make sure nothing is badly out of tune. Localized underextrusion due to material loss during travel and lagged response of extrusion with respect to extruder motor motion are probably the biggest threats to messign it up, and largely fixed by using retraction and a printer with linear advance feature in firmware.  
> **username_1**: @R.. which makes it extremely hard, but yes, technically it's possible.  

---

### Answer by username_3 on 2024-11-13. Score: 0

There are many videos on YouTube now showing how to do this and also a selection of 3D printable devices that will do virtually the whole task for you (cutting the bottle strips and heating them, extruding them into filament and spooling them). Strong, high quality 3D prints can be made. The best up-to-date resource I've found is:

<https://petamentor2.com>

It includes instructional videos, part lists, a 3D printed PET showcase gallery, details on required PET strip width for the best filament, and an active facebook community.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: Linking to those videos and models may improve the quality of the answer!   
> **username_3**: @Oscar Yes, I considered that but I didn't want to paste links that go stale. What's the general etiquette on that? Most people put them anyway?  
> **username_4**: You are right about link and link rot, and I/we do agree, but in this case the answer could really use an example video. You could even take some screenshot and explain the process based on a few pictures! Note that if links go stale, our users generally update the answer with a more current link. Now this answer is more like a "Google it yourself"  
> **username_1**: This does not answer the question if you can print a PET Bottle, get it certified and if it's economical, but can you use PET Bottles for printing, which is only a tiny subpart of the main question.  

---

