02/24/2024
At DIVE, we’ve been running a high-flow filament system over the past few years amongst more conventional desktop-sized FDM printers. Here’s what we’ve learned:
1. Filament is easier:
You don’t have to worry about mixing ratios, the time it takes to swap materials, drying huge quantities of material at a time, or the space it takes to accommodate a pellet system with the additional required equipment.
2. Filament systems can be more versatile:
With a high-flow filament system you can easily use a .6mm nozzle for large high-detail prints, or a 2.5mm nozzle (we’ve pushed it to achieve 8mm wide walls) for ultra-fast, strong, and large parts like prosthetic sockets in under an hour, or tree trunks for our sound absorbing trees pictured printing here! You can also rapidly change materials enabling much faster exploration when assessing multiple material types or colors for a project.
3. Filament systems have a lower barrier of entry.
This one is pretty obvious, but they are much less expensive to get started with. Less complexity, less supporting infrastructure like dryers and vacuum systems, and ultimately less time to learn.
For us, we’ve seen high-flow filament systems to have the best ROI for R&D and low-volume production due to their versatility and ease of use, leaving larger parts and higher volume production to pellet systems where the ROI due to time and material saving is substantial.
It’s all about using the right tool for the job!
