Filament for supports. What to do with them when not used for supports 🙂 ?  

RE: Filament for supports. What to do with them when not used for supports 🙂 ?

> I have some spools with filament only to be used as filament.

This part is a bit confusing.

Can you explain what you have exactly, and what problem does it make or you want to solve?

RE: Filament for supports. What to do with them when not used for supports 🙂 ?

I have no problem 🙂 

But those spools are laying here, and I have no use for them. If I need supports, I print them with the filament what is used for the main object. 
Every time I look at this spools, I wonder if this material can be used for other functional, usefull things. 

RE:

I still don't get it,  you just have spools with filament on it, and you use it for printing normal parts and supports for it? That's a normal way of work with a non-MMU printer.

Some printers have filament end sensor and those ay you could just use the remaining spools. Can do funky colored prints that way.

If you have spools that have not much filament left on it (let say 20m) and you still want to use it, then yeah you could use it for supports and just sit there switching filament 😉

Otherwise just weight the spool before print and check the weight of the empty spool and based on filament you have left see what can be printed with it, but usually it's going to be something really small items, like gridfinity boxes.

Another idea is to prepare a tool to join filaments of the same type into a one longer filament by melting the fragments together, which allows to print funny things in stripes especially if you have different colors. For that you can do your own tool for joining filament ( need a bit of PTFE tube and a hot station/torch/cigarette lighter.

Another option is to grind unused filament into pellets and extrude a new filament from it, but that's usually for the companies that have print farms, because it becomes worth it only when you reach certain scale of waste produced.

You could donate remaining spools to the local hacker spaces so people can experiment.

Or just give it back to the company that sells the filament (if they accept it, most don't) so they can reuse spool base and maybe filament. As a result you can get some percent off on buying new filament.

Finally you just can dump it to trash, but usually only spool base is recyclable, filament usually goes to the mixed waste.

RE: Filament for supports. What to do with them when not used for supports 🙂 ?

Eef, the confusion is you haven't actually stated what TYPE of filament you are posting about. 

To quote you "I have some spools with filament only to be used as filament."  Can you see how that sentence makes very little sense.  What filament ?  PLA, PETG, BVOH, ASA etc .  Without knowing then no one can give any sensible advice.

RE: Filament for supports. What to do with them when not used for supports 🙂 ?

I think it was supposed to say "I have some spools with filament only to be used as supports". If you read it like that everything else he says and the thread title make a lot more sense

RE: Filament for supports. What to do with them when not used for supports 🙂 ?

If you read it like that everything else he says and the thread title make a lot more sense

Yep, just as the title says. :-). 

So with do you do with that stuff (besides making supports).? 

I presume you mean you have some cheap filament which you intend only use for support as opposed to expensive solubles?

I buy far more cheap filament than quality.  It will rarely be used for a final print but the first few prototypes of any non trivial design are bound to be discarded so 'throwaway' filaments are ideal until the project reaches practical testing stages - and even then it's worth using for parts to be tested to destruction in order to discover and eliminate the simpler failure modes.

As a result I often also reduce, quite quickly, the need for supports - or replace slicer-generated support with ones specifically tailored in CAD.

So -

Get designing and use the cheap stuff for the first iterations.

Cheerio,

RE:

What have I started with my question? This is getting funny 😉 Could be my bad English, or bad didactic skills? 

- I have 3-4 spools with filament (Bambu put these in the boxes with new printers). 
On the label is says:  "Support for PLA" 
- So it is meant to be used to print "supports" 
- I do not print supports this way, I use the "as cheap as possible method" described by Diem. I only have one extruder, so using this "support for PLA" material would only cause much work. 
- Now it is laying there. So my question is:  "What to do with them when not used for supports 🙂 ?  "
I can put it in the garbage bin. But maybe.... there are other things it can be used for? 
I assume it is printable, so what should I print with "support for PLA"? 

RE:

Oh ok now this makes sense.

I believe Diem statement is still valid, printing prototypes, but I would just add that it probably would be useful  for size/assembly fit, and nothing else.

Just assume that 'free' is cheap and use it for prototyping.

Cheerio,