“We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be.”

We've all been there. We see something neat and that toxic, chaotic-neutral voice in the back of our head says “I can do that!” It's why you are a Maker, after all! For me, I set off on a journey of turning old soda and water bottles into useful filament nearly two years ago… just to see if I could. I tried multiple different ready-made designs for filament pultruders, and even got suckered into a couple of Kickstarters with their grandiose promises of all-in-one systems (you probably already know which ones I'm talking about). Each of them worked great in some facet or another, but lacked in others.

The largest problem I came across was consistency. Some designs produced either too much or too little pull speed depending on the hotend temp, resulting in inconsistent and strands of filament that were hard to print with. The other issue was most ready built machines only did one strand at a time.

I needed something compact enough to fit in a drawer, powerful enough to strip and pull two bottles simultaneously (and without overheating the motor and melting half the machine), and simple to build and use – something that was actually set-and-forget.

Enter the Cat-R-Puller!

This design takes no small amount of inspiration from the giants who came before me (HUGE shout out and thank you to shoaibkhan786 and Creative 3DP). It features:

• a beastly 12:1 duel sided transfer case powered by a 12V 10RPM worm drive,
• 6 selectable ribbon strip widths (6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm, & 12mm) built into the arms,
• individually adjustable temperature controls (and power switches),
• removable bottle-alignment rods,
• easy on-off spools,
• step by step assembly instructions,
• (optional) an adorable cat design!

Feel free to share your prints and your thoughts. I am always looking for new projects and ways to improve!