PET Bottle Recycler: using an Arduino Uno R4 to control a 3D printer hotend

Michael Klements on the DIY Life blog posts about using an Arduino Uno R4 to control a 3D printer hotend in printing plastic recycled from PET plastic bottles.

I’m doing this as the first part of a project, working towards building my own version of a PET bottle recycler to produce filament for my 3D printer.

The Uno 4 comes in two versions, the minima which is the more basic version and then the WiFi version which has WiFi and an integrated LED matrix. They both have a new more powerful 32-bit processor as well as significantly increased SRAM and flash memory, allowing more complex projects. The LED matrix on the WiFi board is really useful for quickly displaying a status or mode, and you can even run some animations and games on it.

For prototyping, I’m going to use the display as a rolling graph of the hot-end temperature to see how it is tracking towards the setpoint.

A PCB for the recycler controller was designed in the form of a shield to fit on top of the Arduino.

See the video below and more in the post here.

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• Source: https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/07/25/pet-bottle-recycler-using-an-arduino-uno-r4-to-control-a-3d-printer-hotend/