Prusa Research is looking for your help.
The company is searching for ideas to develop new types of filament for their Prusament line-up. They’ve taken to social media to simply ask the question. They’re not so much interested in new colour requests, but more about engineering materials and combinations thereof. While not exactly an official contest, they do say they’ll provide a free spool of the new material to the suggester, if it is actually made.
My interest was in the suggestions. What types of material are people really looking for that don’t already exist? Today the range of filament products is incredibly broad, with some providers offering literally hundreds of products. That said, not all of the products available elsewhere happen to be present in the Prusament portfolio.
The market for filament is becoming quite competitive. I suspect this is because as the bulk of 3D printer sales shift towards a select few Asian companies — along with Prusa Research, the remaining companies are increasingly focusing on sales of material to survive. One company, Kingroon, officially got out of the 3D printer business and now exclusively sells materials instead. They are all scrambling to capture the ongoing material needs for these 3D printers.
Back to the suggestions. I took a look through the long list of ideas, some of which were quite interesting. Here’s what I found:
The most popular suggestion was for “retro computer” colours in ABS, so that operators could print cases that replicate ancient computers and consoles (e.g. C64, Amiga, Sony, etc.), including not only the original colour, but also the yellowing that shows with age.
Another popular suggestion was for “IKEA-like” muted colours, particularly browns, mossy greens, and multi-shade mixes.
Several folks were interested in PCTG material. PCTG is similar to PETG, but is easier to print and offers far better engineering properties.
Another group was interested in PHA, a fully biodegradable material. PHA is a bit tricky to print, and I have learned that Prusa Research has already done an internal evaluation of PHA and decided not to proceed.
After that, there were a number of unusual single suggestions, including:
- Highly reflective filament to produce, say, road signs
- Softer TPUs, which would be quite challenging to print
- Foaming TPUs, which are now often used to print footwear
- High friction filament for printing better grips
- Multiple shades of skin-tone filament
- Some kind of universal support material that doesn’t adhere to anything else — I am not sure that such a thing exists
- Semi-transparent PETG for LED lamps
- Photochromic filament that changes colour when exposed to sunlight
- Thermochromic filament that changes colour when exposed to heat
- Transparent PLA, again something that I do not believe exists
- PETG+PC blend, which might reduce warping and offer stronger layer adhesion — or not
- Cork-like filament, which would result in prints that are like cork, similar to wood filaments
- SBS/SEBS filament that would act like PP, but would print easier and not absorb moisture
- Colored PC-CF instead of only black
- Fluorescent UV-reactive filaments for high visibility prints
While some of these are likely impossible to achieve, there are quite a few very good ideas in the list. Some would be a no-brainer for Prusa Research (like PCTG), while others might require considerable investigation and development (such as the highly reflective filament).
I’m interested to see which ideas Prusa Research takes forward.
Via Reddit
