Most filament comes on plastic spools. They take up space and, when the filament is used up, often wind up in the trash. Most folks with 3D printers have a few empty spools just sitting around.

Filament-based 3D printers are remarkably wasteful. If you buy a kilogram of filament from your favorite supplier, the odds are that it will come wrapped around a plastic spool weighing about 250 ...

We need cardboard spool hubs that the filament gets wound onto then secured. Then when you receive it, you attach reusable plastic/metal side walls and then remove the zipties or whatever method ...

The molten plastic is then extruded out through interchangeable nozzles – 3mm or 1.75mm in diameter – to produce the plastic filament. The filament is then shaped to the right size for printing as it ...

If you want to 3D-print all of your ideas, you’ll need to start with a hefty supply of plastic filament—the “ink” used by 3D printers. ... and winds it onto a spool.

For desktop 3-D printers to work, they need some kind of material to work with. Most contemporary printers use plastic filament, available in spools from various suppliers.

3-D printers melt strips of plastic filament into a gooey paste that is spewed out one layer at a time to create all sorts of plastic ... plastic filament starts at around $50 for a 2.2-pound spool.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Lorena James wants to make 3D printing filament out of invasive quagga mussels in Lake Erie. James, who likes to hang out on the beach with friends, hatched the Z Spools idea in ...

As more 3D printers fire up and start chewing through plastic filament to extrude the objects of your dreams, more and more spools of PVC are going to be required to build our DIY future.And that ...