

How an 83-year-old inventor beat the high cost of 3D printing - technologizer
http://techland.time.com/2013/03/04/how-an-83-year-old-inventor-beat-the-high-cost-of-3d-printing/

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krschultz
Great work, and if the spools continue to be $50 I definitely would want one.
However I don't think the spools are $50 because they cost $50 to make, they
probably cost $1 to make. It's the razors/blades or printer/ink cartridge
business model. I'm sure all the 3D printing companies are making fat profits
off the spools of plastics, and this will push those prices down a bit.

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rorrr
ABS pellets are $1000-2000 per ton ($0.45 - $0.91 per lb).

I'm surprised nobody is selling cheap spools in the $5/lb range.

EDIT:

Acutally, they do.

[http://www.alibaba.com/product-
gs/542698056/Best_Quality_ABS...](http://www.alibaba.com/product-
gs/542698056/Best_Quality_ABS_Filament.html)

~~~
Zuph
Speaking from experience, Chinese plastic filament is almost always out-of-
spec enough to mess up prints on today's 3D printers.

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smoyer
Interesting ... I've been playing around with the idea of having a hopper
(mounted above the 3D printer) that fed pellets to the print head and used the
same heater to extrude the filament right as it was being joined to the work-
piece.

The two stage process is convenient for existing printers, but wouldn't it be
nicer if new printers took pellets as their raw material?

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unwind
Based on the numbers for cost of pellets vs cost of filament, it seems
reasonable for someone to simply integrate this and make a printer that takes
pellets instead of filament.

The device shown doesn't look overly complicated, and I would guess/hope the
"crucial core" parts cost even less than the competition's requirement since
that was for the whole machine.

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DannoHung
My guess is that it'd be a bit of a pain to switch between filament colors
like this.

Maybe when multi-head extruders become very common.

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kefka
Not really. Just run maybe 50g of new material. You'll end up with blended
colors, and then solid color of new material.

If you are really deadset on perfect color, you can take it apart and detail
clean it.

HOWEVER, this is also a way to make new colors not purchasable: you can mix
quantities of each color in a bucket, and then put the mixture in the hopper.
Out comes new color. This is how the injection molded plastics companies do
their products. In the drawings/contract, exact mixture is specified.

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bhickey
This is where the Dum Dums Myster Flavor comes from!

[http://mentalfloss.com/article/30823/what-mystery-flavor-
dum...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/30823/what-mystery-flavor-dum-dums)

~~~
PebblesRox
What a fun fact, thanks for sharing! I found a video that shows the whole
process: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUpGTvPrCG8>

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axusgrad
Contests are a great way to attract a lot of interest to neglected problems.

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lancefisher
So if you can make it at home so cheaply, why can't it be mass produced in a
factory even more cheaply? It doesn't seem like shipping pellets would be much
less expensive than shipping filament.

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adventured
It's because the demand for plastic pellets is radically larger than for
plastic filament.

Since the filament side of things has been caught in a sea of change - where
sudden demand swamps supply - companies making the filament are able to start
and hold prices from a high point. This kind of event is common, and it
usually just takes time + competition to bring prices down.

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joshuaheard
I would like to see this technology built into existing 3d printers. I would
also like to see 3d scanners built in. I envision a single device that will
allow you to put in a model, have it scanned, then replicated using cheap
plastic material. You could even used recycled plastic with a macro shredder.

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masonhensley
The guys at makibox have been tinkering with this idea. I think it is on the
back burner until they ship their printers. (per request of printer pre-
orderers)

<http://makibox.com/details/product/ramen_kit>

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samstave
THis is awesome - the only modification which I think would make it better
would be to have the filament loop back to a spool that is attached to and
turned by the same motor that is pushing the material out.

In the video - he shows the filament being spooled across the room by a device
with a separate power source. Make it a singular closed little process.

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001sky
_This home-made filament dramatically improves the economics of 3D printing.
For instance, producing 392 chess pieces in a particular color requires one
kilogram (2.2 pounds) of plastic. Buy one spool of mass-produced filament, and
that will cost you about $50. Buy a kilogram of pellets and make your own
filament, and the cost goes down to $10. Buy 25 kilograms of pellets in bulk,
and you can print the chess pieces for just $5._

\-- Seems to meet the "10x better" criterion.

Nice work.

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bnegreve
Yep, you can get 9800 chess pieces for a total price of $49000. (392 per kg x
25kg x $5). Still a significant investment :)

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chongli
$5 per 392 pieces, not $5 each. So that's 9800 pieces for $125.

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bnegreve
oops, you're right.

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ohwp
Seems to me this method is patented. How are they going to sell these kits?

Reference: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastics_extrusion>

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kefka
We deal with your type fairly regularly over at hackaday and other discussion
sites.

The Lyman extruder documents (including BOM and assembly and 3 view drawings)
are published for free. The parts are easy to obtain.

How are you (the possible patent holder) going to stop individuals from
sourcing the parts and building these machines?

The reprap machines are also, Im sure, violating multiple patents in the US.
Go ahead and try to stop the international audience from furthering the
science and art. I'll just use TOR and download the assembly drawings from
evil foreign servers.

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noonespecial
"You wouldn't download a car, would you?"

A whole class of patent holders are about to get napstered. Once you can
simulate just about any electronic board with a RasPi for $25 and make just
about any plastic part on your 3d printer, what good will a patent even be?

I'm making popcorn.

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kefka
Damn straight I would.

I also do casting, and natural PLA has a nice burnoff for it. I also have
access to a metal lathe and a few other pieces of heavy equipment. I can make.
out of junk and scrap, pretty much anything I want. My next work will be a CNC
table using a mounted dremel (printed bracket, of course).

And some of people who know what I do already have asked "can I make them guns
for them?". Yeah. I could do nice guns. Dont really care too much about 'vs
human' and 'vs animal' ballistsics.

I'm also working on a cheap 3d scanner to feed fodder into my system :) Im
sure I breaking copyrights AND patents, and maybe a few trademarks too.

