I am prototyping a collapsible water bottle to go with a portable water sprayer that I designed and I am struggling to source flexible sheets of TPU or silicone locally (project timeline is tight, cant wait for shipping from AliExpress) so I am thinking of 3D printing the flexible / collapsible part of the water bottle which will be the primary part of the bottle. There will be a hard base and a hard top where threads will be but it’ll be mostly flexible / collapsible TPU that will consist of the main body.
I have not printed anything with TPU yet, will TPU hold up for this application? Will it be water tight? The bottle’s main use will be to squeeze water out of the portable water sprayers mentioned earlier so the TPU will need to be tough and durable (thinking of making the TPU tube / sheet be 0.6mm thick or more). Will this work?
If not and if you know any local source (within Canada, ideally ontario) for sheets of food safe TPU or silicone, please let me know!
TPU can be fairly tough stuff and flexible (depending on the Shore hardness) but it still has layer lines so it can fail there. Is it food safe? You would have to check with the manufacturer. Even if they say yes, It means while it may be OK directly being printed there are lots of nook and cranny that can hold material (or bacteria) that can go bad and therefore not safe. Printing TPU generally requires a direct drive printer, the filament is soft and hard to push through a boden tube. 3D printed parts are not necessarily water tight. This can be mitigated by design.
You can use it to print a “proof of concept” prototype and then source other material for production. Try printing with thick walls in vase mode, better finish.
Thanks a lot Loosenut, I will reach out to all the companies you provided. Yes making something food safe with 3D printing is not there yet unfortunately.