WHAT: yes. the title "petMelter" sounds a little dubious. but it should be PET (polyethylene teraphtalate) melter. This is the thermoplastic that is typically labelled PET or PETE on your soda bottles. wayy too much of this stuff ends up in the landfill.
OBJECTIVE: i want to be able to melt plastic bottles, and press them into "manageable" sheets. sheets suitable for vaccuforming. i should be able to take a bottle, split it in half, place it into this press/melter - and i should have a handy dandy piece of (close to uniform thickness) PETE, ready for heatforming.
HOW: And i wont so much "melt" this stuff. i dont require this to be shot into a injection mold - so i dont require a full melt. if i dont want to mess with crystalline composition too much (which would affect opacity quite a bit), i could float it just safely above PETE's crystallization(glass) temp of 75 C and apply a steady load to hopefully reflow. If that doesnt work, i could crank this stuff up to its Vicat temp (170 C), and just squish this stuff into a sheet or "ingot". experimentation will determine the ultimate method.
APPLICATION: this wont yield any readily useful blobs of plastic. but in future projects - where i intend to shape/mold blobs of plastic, this should proove ultra handy. might even feed in to Michael's (@uptownmaker) REPscRAP project.
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