Fresh hacks every day
[Chris Nafis] crunched the numbers and found out he could get filament for his 3D printer in bulk for about one-fifth the cost of the cartridges the company sells. This led him to print a feeder for his Cube 3D printer.
We’re skeptical about the Cube 3D printer’s cartridges. They contain a spool of filament, but also include a … Read the rest
If there’s one problem with the RepRap, it’s the cost of filament. Sure, there’s also the computationally difficult problem of slicing 3D models, but a 5 to 10 times markup on turning plastic pellets into filament is the biggest problem. It’s even a bigger problem than the problems of compatibility and interchangeable parts that comes with everyone forking a ‘standard’ … Read the rest
The 3D printer world has the creation of plastic trinkets pretty much down pat. The next step, obviously, is the creation of multi-material models, whether they be made of two different colors of plastic, or completely different materials entirely. A few folks from the University of Warwick and GKN Aerospace in Bristol, UK have come up with a way of … Read the rest
The holy grail of desktop 3D printers – aside from manufacturing full color objects in any shape imaginable – is turning tiny plastic pellets into a plastic filament. Many projects have attempted this with moderate levels of success but turning pellets into filament still an open problem. MakiBot hopes to solve this problem by manufacturing plastic filament just in time … Read the rest
Believe it or not, you can now squeeze wood through the nozzle of your 3D printer.
This new addition to the maker’s palette of 3D printer filaments comes from the mind of [Kai Parthy]. The new filament – going by the name Laywood – is a mix of recycled wood fibers and polymer binders that can be melted and … Read the rest
There’s one problem with the popularity of plastic-extruding 3D printers such as the RepRap and Makerbot; since they’ve become so popular, the price of plastic filament has skyrocketed over the past few years. Without a way to produce filament at a hackerspace or home lab, the price of 3D printed objects will remain fairly high. Project Spaghetti hopes to rectify … Read the rest
3D printers such as the RepRap and Makerbot turn spools of plastic filament into just about any object imaginable. There’s a problem though: this filament costs about $40 a kilogram, and raw plastic pellets cost about 1/10th of that. Obviously, there’s a lot of room for improvement. The folks at Inventables are throwing $40,000 at the problem in a contest … Read the rest
Subscribe for weekly videos
Recent comments