We've come a long way in terms of new 3D technologies since this blog began more than a decade ago..
Perhaps, the biggest steps forward have come with the advent of multi-material and multi-color printing. Every day seems to bring us new steps forward toward full color 3D printing with FDM printers. But, these new changes have also brought with them new demands on our filament management. Gone are the days when we would simply load a filament and use that color until it ran out.
Multi-Material / Multi-Color Printing Requires Broader Inventory
To maximize our new multi-material and multi-color capabilities, we find ourselves constantly swapping materials and colors. Where in past years, we might have had four or five colors on hand we now find the need to maintain an inventory of dozens of colors of several different types of filament from a variety of vendors. The cost of materials easily exceeds the cost of the printers.
Refillable Spools Lower Costs
Not all new great ideas are limited to the latest 3D printers available to us. They've also come with the accessories. And, among the accessories we have come to appreciate most have to do with the introduction of refillable spools. We have used a variety of refillable spools over the past year.
The advent of refillable spools has helped lower the costs of having to maintain a large inventory of materials. But, recently, we came across a new reusable spool that offers so much more. In fact, it has completely altered our storage and workflow in surprisingly useful ways.
MARSWORK Quick-Swap Reusable Spool System
The MarsWork Quick-Swap re-usable spool design is truly noteworthy in approach that goes way beyond any we're used in the past. In fact, I am so impressed by the thoughtfulness that went into the design of these spools that I have to give the designers a special nod to their creativity and user focus.
 |
| MarsWork Quick-Swap Reusable Spool Features |
Let's go over some of the unique features of the MarsWork Quck-Swap reusable spool system.
A. Spool Locking Mechanism
Most reusable spools reply on a twisting action to lock the spool halves together. From experience, we know that this is not always foolproof. The MarsWork locking mechanism is much more secure and, frankly, much easier to open and close reliably. This feature, alone, would make this a stand-out design. Bur, it doesn't stop there.
B. Easily Visible Filament Status
Wide openings and a marked filament guage make it very easy to quickly and accurately determine the color and status of the available filament. This is in stark contrast with the reusable spools from Bambu and Inland. Each refill from MarsWork comes with a sticker with markings that can be used to help determine type and quantity.
C. Built-in Filament Locking Slot.
While the Quick-Swap reusable spools retain the holes we have traditionally used to lock the ends of the filament when not in use, it goes one step beyond by providing a slot into which filament can be secured without harshly bending the material. This is a nice touch that demonstrates the care that MarsWork engineers took in an effort to provide a little extra when it comes to user's experience.
D. Identification Tag Slot.
This is a truly unique feature that turns the concept of a reusable spool into a true filament management system. This slot is designed to accommodate 3D printed tags that can be customized by the user to quickly identify the loaded filament. In our case, we create a tag for each material we load onto the spool with information about the type of material, the official color name and manufacturer.
While this, alone, is useful enough, there is another special capability provided by these tags.
Our current 3D printer complement includes a half dozen Bambu printers. One of the benefits of Bambu filaments are the RFID tags that automatically select the correct printing profile for each filament. As we finished spools of Bambu filament, we would throw away the RFID tags. We no longer do that.
The print profiles of MarsWork PLA Basic and PLA Matte filaments are an exact match for the profiles of their Bambu equivalents. MarsWork provides double-stick tape that allows us to attach the RFID tags from expended Bambu spools to the back of a 3D printed insert. RFID tags from an expended Bambu Yellow spool has been taped to the back of the MarsWork PLA Basic Yellow insert in the above image. When this spool is loaded into an AMS or AMS Lite the material type and color will automatically be read by the Bambu system and the slicer will load the correct profile!
This is a hugely clever capability!
But, I want to make it clear, one does not have to use RFID tags with these 3D printed inserts for them to be enormously useful. Between filaments we use on a regular basis and filaments of unknown origin we have used once in the past, we probably have well over a hundred. It's amazing how many filaments have no identifiable information once they have been removed from the original box. Had we printed out identifying tags listing specific type, official color and maker it would be a lot easier to include these filaments into our daily print routine.
These inserts have another benefit. We use them to capture the RGB values with a Datacolor ColorReaderEZ so that we know precisely what we have in our inventory using an Exel spreadsheet that includes a color swatch. This helps us to compare available colors between manufacturers by the numbers rather than subjectively.
By the way, the usefulness of these 3D printed tag inserts applies both on and off the Quick-Swap spools!
And, that brings us to another great feature of the Quick-Swap system.... the Quick-Swap.
The Quick-Swap Innovation
To understand this last innovation from MarsWork, let's take a look at a filled spool.
The Quick-Swap Reusable spool hub is designed so that there are four spaces, or tunnels, created between the refill cardboard spool and the hub of the reusable spool. Each reusable spool comes with four velcro straps. These straps are run through these tunnels and then wrapped around the filament to secure it so that it can be safely removed no matter how much remains on the cardboard hub.
Hence the description of "Quick-Swap"/
This feature can only become even more valuable as more varieties of filament are released as refills. We don't print huge quantities of objects requiring specialty filaments like 'sparkle' or 'color-changing'. But, they can be useful every now and then. Being able to safely and compactly store these filaments on their original cardboard hubs while freeing up valuable reusable spools for more frequently used materials definitely provides some benefit.
By the way, along with the velcro straps, adhesive velcro patches are also provided that can be attached to the 3D printed color identifier inserts we mentioned above. This allows the identifier insert to be attached to the refill spool so that it retains all of its identifying information, ready to be used in the future. An added benefit is that filament off of the spool is much more compact to store.
Proof of Intention
I didn't find this next item until after I had already concluded that the MarsWork Quick-Swap Reusable spool was going to become an important part of our filament management strategies from this point on. MarsWork actually has sells a companion "Filament Management Kit" for their reusable spools. It includes 80 hook and loop straps, RFID Tag stickers, labels and a color card organizer for managing filament inventory. .
|
| MarsWork Filament Management Kit |
|
| MarsWork Color Organizer |
I was very happy to see that this kit was available as it's going to allow us to quickly port our inventory of refills from Bambu and Inland over to the MarsWork Quick-Swap system. It remains to be seen how we can best use the color organizer, for loaded colors or out of inventory colors, I'm sure it will be helpful.
All of these features combine to create the basis for a highly efficient and effective filament management system that optimizes both storage and use. I am amazed by the detailed thought processes that went into taking what we normally would consider a simple utilitarian product into something much, much more. By paying close attention to the needs of the user, MarsWork has brought us a uniquely useful system.
It's impressive. Very impressive!
No comments:
Post a Comment