This is a really cool result. Basically you know how much filament you're going to feed into a print, so you can back compute what part of the filament would be in what part of the print, and then construct a filament with the right materials in the right places. That it works as well as it does is pretty neat.
I expect it also makes for some interesting print failures when you're print/filament registration is messed up. :-).
If this becomes a 'thing' then you could design a filament making machine that would make a custom spool of filament. Even if you had a printer with a 'belt' for the bed, then you could make as much filament as you wanted.
There's a device called Palette, I think, that can do this on the fly. You hook it up between your filament(s) and your printer, and send it your print as well. It basically looks at your print and determines how much filament is needed for each segment, and then splices together a few different inputs into one continuous thread. I don't know how well it works or how difficult it is to get setup, but the concept does exist.
They print the filament, agreed, but because they are using a machine with a print bed they are limited in how much they can print. Imagine you had what was essentially a 1 axis 3D printer. That printer had what would look kind of like a tank tread with a bunch of very small (~10mm^2) steel plates that were hinged like a tank tread, and formed a loop along the printers single axis. Say there was roughly 40 cm or tread that would be level. The printer, then prints a few cm or filament along the plate and the set of plates move underneath the print head. As they get far enough away, the plates drop down along the idler wheel and the printed filament attached to that plate is popped off and hanging in air because it is still attached to the rest of the filament that has been printed.
If, of the end of that tread/surface you had a take up spool you could just print until you filled up the spool if you wanted too.
Exactly. And using existing 3D printing technology out there I'm guessing one could arrange the parts of a 3D printer into something that just printed filament.
I expect it also makes for some interesting print failures when you're print/filament registration is messed up. :-).
If this becomes a 'thing' then you could design a filament making machine that would make a custom spool of filament. Even if you had a printer with a 'belt' for the bed, then you could make as much filament as you wanted.