RepRapped Soda Bottle Cutter

A week or so ago, I designed a Soda Bottle SIP irrigation block to keep all my planters watered automatically. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:20753 Now all I needed was a bunch of soda bottles cut to make the planters.

I tried a knife resting on a stack of books, and that worked pretty well, but not great. I ended up with an uneven edge on the cut edge.

So I designed and made a cutter!

This was a serious learning project for me. The first one I designed I got my diameter and radius confused, so I had something that was 8 inches across! The 2nd design came together much quicker.

It than took me 3 tries to get it printed!

The first try my filament roll got caught and the printer picked itself right up off of the table! It then stripped the plastic at the extruder gear and let itself back down.

The second try, the part popped off the build bed about 1/4 of the way through the print and made quite a birds nest before I caught this issue and stopped the print.

The 3rd print was a success! But just barely.

I am quite happy with how it cuts bottles. I could have just grabbed a scrap of wood and cut it off at the right height and screwed the blade on and been done in 4 minutes. Instead, I wanted to do the 4 hour print with 4 days of prep.

Print Details:
Designed in Google Sketchup
Printed on a MG Prusa
Slicer 7.1 /Pronterface .7?
.2mm layer height on 3mm natutal ABS with a .35mm nozzle
90 degree Celsius HBP for the successful print.

In album

This is the 2nd try. Getting so much further than the first print.

DOH! The part popped off the bed and kept trying to print a couple of layers before I had checked on it. Upped the bed temp 10 degrees and time to try again.

This is some serious overhang! It nearly wasn’t printable. I had to pause the print and push that edge down and let it cool flat a couple of times.

I was confused as to why netfabb had said 4 meshes when I was only expecting 2. Because some interior geometry was being printed that I wasn’t intending.