why are we wasting so much filament?
3d printer users waste tons of filament switching colors and people can end up with kilograms of purge which end up in the trash.
very simple solution: bambu should sell a device that melts down purge into usable filament.
how much would you spend on such a machine?
Great poll and good topic.
I voted no for now. The reason is simple: every attempt I’ve seen so far to recycle filament or turn things like plastic bottles into usable 3D printing filament has been slow, inconsistent, and hard to justify economically.
Creality has announced its M1 system, which uses two machines: the Shredder R1 and the Filament Maker M1. Creality claims the M1 can extrude at up to 1 kg/hr, which would be a meaningful improvement if it works as advertised.
The problem is that, right now, it is still a crowdfunded product with limited real-world validation. A few early review units and controlled demos are not the same as thousands of machines running reliably in normal hobbyist environments.
I like the concept. I want this category to succeed. But at the moment, it still feels closer to a science project than a practical home-lab tool.
There is also the Creality factor. They have a history of releasing products that are ambitious but not always fully baked. My K2 Plus is a good example: it is about 95% there, but the remaining 5% matters. My Creality Pi dryer gives me the same impression.
The current combo price is around $1,700, which is a non-starter for me. At that price, I can buy a lot of known-good filament without giving up bench space, time, and patience to become my own filament manufacturer.
For me, this class of product needs to be under $300 before I would seriously consider it for a crowded home lab.
Another issue is all your filament scraps HAVE to be sorted with no mixing types. You just would not be able to extrude PLA and PETG and ABS and ASA an PA and… at the same time and get a reliable filament.
And, if you want a particular color, you would have to sort by that also. Otherwise, I’m afraid the color that comes out of that extruder may not be very appealing or even concistent.
The issue with making filament is, that it actually is very demanding and even small machines that are able to produce the quality you would expect are far more expensive than your printer.
There have been a bunch of machines in the range 1000-3000 bucks, but they all fail to deliver.
But there are companies where you can send your sorted scraps and they will produce new filament from it on industrial machines.
I think for us, that is the more sensible way to prevent all that waste.
Bambu literally released the H2C for precisely this reason - to reduce color swapping purge waste. The X2D achieves some of that, but more for support swapping purge waste for single color prints.
If you examine the challenges of filament recycling more closely, you’ll realize this is a very tricky problem to solve - nobody has done it yet, period. The Creality solution had yet to be proven, and is hideously expensive. Your price brackets are laughable. Add an extra zero to each of them and it becomes more realistic.
you are all right about the current complications in this type of machine.
however, i was trying to suggest a cheaper more commercial version which is cheaper but gets the job done with decent to high quality.
i didnt mean high quality in color
I a device that could make high quality filament and only cost $150 existed, why wouldn’t the major filament company’s use it?
High quality in what then?
Shredding performance?
Noise level?
Reliability?
Filament diameter?
High quality as in no stringing and not brittle like the $5 rolls on temu.
Honestly, and I am not trying to be mean here, you need to study the process more to get the full understanding to what goes into it. Prusa has a few good videos on their filament manufacturing.
I promise that has little to nothing to do with the machine extruding the filament.
Do yourself a favor and spend some time watching videos on YouTube of people’s attempts to build a filament recycler.
I mostly agree.I also consider this an important topic.
I don't own an AMS, but I waste a lot of filament on test prints.
(Right now I'm obsessed with experimenting with printing the largest size possible on my A1mini. Trying bigger things inevitably increases waste!)
(Compared to when I impulsively bought my A1mini a few years ago) there are now more affordable and usable third-party filaments available, and they're much easier to find.
I think it's becoming increasingly difficult to consider "filament recycling" solely from an economic standpoint.
Considering that even inkjet printer cartridge recycling only began after printers became widespread enough to exceed one per household, filament recycling will likely be even further down the line.
(Shouldn't spool recycling come first??)
Thats the thing tho, you would not get high quality filament out of a small “in the garage” type machine.
I have watched the field closesly, and as of now there is no cost-effective at homme alternative that works reliably enough for anyone but VERY interested enthusiasts to even give it a go.
Its not only shredding the material, you also need to clean it, as any dust or other impurities will lead to issues. Then you need to dry it thorougly, and the amounts are more than you can stuff in your oven or good old dehydrator.
Then you need to add virgin PLA pellets to the mix, as PLA can not be extruded unlimited times without degrading.
All this is before even extruding a single milimeter of filament.
So to even get to this point you are atleast looking at a couple of grand in investments.
Then is the actual extrusion of fresh filament, you have to have enough space, a very consistent system for sizing, cooling and winding.
Then, if one scrap of filament had an additive that you were unaware of, that might throw off the entire ting, and you go back to square one.
Oh, your silk PLA scrap had a bit of TPU in it? Potentially redoing everything.
Your PLA+ had some abs in it for strenght? Same thing.
Its the same thing with pretty much every deviation from pure pla, it can cause issues and contamination.
If it were currently feasible, there would already be an enthusiast “standard” alternative, but they all have big flaws, filament making is not something thats easily scaled down.
Recycling the waste is just not practical. The equipment costs as much or more than the printer, the results are low-quality, and the whole process is too time-consuming.
It makes more sense to buy a more expensive tool-changer printer that produces less waste than to spend the money on recycling equipment.
I used to do a lot of woodworking which resulted in lots of waste due to cut offs and sawdust, even from some very expensive woods. Most of it ended up in the compost pile and contributed to my raised gardens.
Nonetheless, it seems to me that wood waste was much more of a problem to deal with. Even though I print a lot of multicolor objects with three printers, It takes a very long time to fill up a 1 ft cube with filament poop.
Are we wasting it?
Everything I do is perfect, you just dint know how to label stuff.
I take a â– â– â– â– every day, why not do it in a bucket, throw it in the microwave and start the cycle again.
An interesting direction of your pitch to the audience.
Someone has already tried to come up with something like that, but it’s impractical from every point of view. I wouldn’t start separating all the different types of filaments I use, because obviously you’d have to sort everything out (fibers, glitter, etc.)