Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?  

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

I've only found recycled PLA and ABS manufactured the US. For PET, I've ordered FormFutura rPET from a US supplier and quite like it

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

I picked up a spool of rPETG at ERRF, but haven't had a chance yet to try it out. The company is https://greengate3d.com/ and claims (clipped directly from their About page):

GreenGate3D is PROUD to be your entryway to 100% recycled, 100% American-made 3D filament. We

ONLY use scrap plastics and we ONLY extrude those materials in the United States of America.

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

@sembazuru

Interesting, I haven’t heard of them before.  

anyone have experience withKVP n-Vire rPET?

how about 3dfuel’s rPETG?

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Hey @robb-lincoln. My name id]s Ben and I am from GreenGate3D. What @sembazuru said is true. We get our materials and make our product here in the US and it is 100% recycled. We are currently shipping from our small office in Bohemia NY but a shipment is on its way to Amazon right now or will be very soon. We are a brand new company with our official launch at ERRF this year (2019) but the product has been in development since late last year (2018).  If you have any other questions feel free to reply here or shoot us an email at [email protected] and someone will get back to you shortly.

-Ben

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

@ben-levine are you shipping spool-less MasterSpool format options?

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Unfortunately, it is not something we can offer at the moment but we are definitely looking into it as it would save a lot of plastic.

-Ben

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Posted by: @ben-levine

Hey @robb-lincoln. My name id]s Ben and I am from GreenGate3D. What @sembazuru said is true. We get our materials and make our product here in the US and it is 100% recycled. We are currently shipping from our small office in Bohemia NY but a shipment is on its way to Amazon right now or will be very soon. We are a brand new company with our official launch at ERRF this year (2019) but the product has been in development since late last year (2018).  If you have any other questions feel free to reply here or shoot us an email at [email protected] and someone will get back to you shortly.

-Ben

Ah-ha! My rank amateur sloothing was right. So if I order from you guys to Wilmington, DE area I should get ground shipments in 1-2 business days. Nifty! (I use McMaster for the same reason.) I've been visiting your webstore sporadically over the past few weeks and I see it being built up nicely. I still have to try out the clear purple that I got at ERRF, I'm guessing the sales at ERRF (and your mention of building stock for Amazon) are why you're still showing out of stock in that color. 😉

Another request for packaging, would you consider using resealable (and thus reusable) packaging? I ask because I store my filaments in a sealed bag with desiccant to try to mitigate moisture absorption. Many filament manufacturers (and including the spool I purchased at ERRF) package the filament spools in a non-resealable bag. I then throw away the bag and use 1 gallon freezer bags. Other manufacturers (Prusa & Filament PM to name two off the top of my head) package the filament spools in a resealable bag. These are vacuumed and heat sealed at the factory, but after cutting off the heat seal, there is a zip-lock type closure. Often these bags are also thicker than the freezer bags I use so they seem to seal against moisture and hold my lung-powered "vacuum" better. Also, some spools are too big to fit into 1 gallon freezer bags (I think mine are Glad brand).

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

@sembazuru

Yes, EXCELLENT sloothery!  You could be on our team any time!  Yes, if you order from us, it'll be there within those 1-2 days, if USPS behaves itself.  Yes, our website is slow to get going, but it is transactionable.  (I think I'm making up words these days...) THANK YOU for your ERRF purchase of our translucent purple.  We brought 50 rolls to the show and sold 48.  The other 2, I pulled off the shelf because it woulda left us with none 🙂  We'll be running that color soon enough, though.  Amazon doesn't even have any.  However, they DO have 170 rolls of our stuff... we're just waiting for them to post that to our Amazon site. 

Yes, we're trying to use resealable bags, but manufacturing in the US with ALL US components is really expensive.  Ben and I spoke about it but at some point we have to consider profitability.  Standard vacuum-seal bags are about $1/unit, and putting anything more into that cost becomes that more challenging.  We're hoping to get to those bags in 2020.

BTW, when we registered the domain name through Google, the Contact Privacy was a simple "check off" as I remember it.  Pretty sure there was no additional cost.

Hope to earn your business in the near future and that purple runs like a champ!  We're posting many of our customers prints on our website, so we look forward to seeing yours, when the time comes.

Stay well,
-Rich/GreenGate3D
(Lovely) Bohemia, New York

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

I just ordered 4 rolls of Greengates3d filament.  Looking forward to giving it a try...

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Hi Chris,

Thank you for your wonderful 4 spool order!!!  We're psyched you're giving us a chance!  They're going into boxes as we speak!

If you don't mind, when you've got a print you're most proud of, PLEASE forward it over to us; we'd love to post it on our webpage: www.greengate3d.com

All the best,

-Rich/GreenGate3D

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

I'm going to keep my eye on this. 

Do you have plans for recycling filament spools and/or print scrap? I realize it may not be practical yet for you to do so but this would be a big selling point; It is one of the reasons I'm very much watching Replay3D as they currently have a print scrap recycling program and hope to source and refill empty spools from customers in the future.

Small scale may not be practical but I would think most folks with printers wouldn't mind keeping a scrap box to fill over time and sending it off once it reaches a minimum viable volume or weight. 

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Hi vintagepc,

You're definitely not the first to ask (maybe more like the 93rd 😆) and we're giving that a long, hard look, but THE issue is... and I've been in recycling for 20+ years... so take my word for it... contamination is a M A J O R issue.

I've seen what Replay3D says; like everyone else, I'd like to get that done too, but if PLA gets mixed into PET-G, it's going to give disastrous filament, which means no one's going to be happy.  If there was a way to ensure its ONLY one material, we'd be happy to try it.  For now, we just can't do it.  Now, on the spool-side of the equation, that's more a possibility, but then you have cost-issues.  It can only work (at present) if our customers would send us their spools.  Relatedly , we're working on master spools; that looks like a mid-2020 possibility.

-Rich

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

@robb-lincoln

I have experience with both KVP n-Vire rPET  and 3dfuel’s rPETG.   

Both are decent, but expensive.  

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Posted by: @contact-2

[...] Yes, we're trying to use resealable bags, but manufacturing in the US with ALL US components is really expensive.  Ben and I spoke about it but at some point we have to consider profitability.  Standard vacuum-seal bags are about $1/unit, and putting anything more into that cost becomes that more challenging.  We're hoping to get to those bags in 2020.

I ordered a spool of your transparent PETG on January 13th and it arrived via USPS today January 15th. I'm pleased with the shipping time. I won't be able to print with it for a few days, but it looks quite nice.

A nice summary for those interested:

• The filament was shipped bagged in a USPS box. No issues with delivery or damage in transit. Everything looks good.
• The spool was $29.99 with $5.00 shipping. Not sure if shipping increases proportionally with number of spools. Overall, typical pricing for PETG.
• The spool is shipped in a non-resealable and apparently non-recyclable bag. Bummer, but it makes sense given the explanation. It's an interesting textured bag.
• The spool is labeled with a QR code for recommended print settings (nice touch).
• No desiccant in the bag. I'll try printing without drying, but I typically dry new PETG spools. Not a problem, but perhaps a warning and drying recommendations would reduce complaints from customers unaware of PETG issues with moisture?
• The spool is labeled for recycling which makes it one of only 3 brands that I've found that make it easy to recycle the spools. Good job there!
• The box included a nifty cardboard pen (on-message, nice touch) and a sample of black PETG, along with a hand-signed thank-you note from Barbara.

I'd love to see the shipping bag reusable, spool-less options and a reusable spool design. Otherwise, I'm quite pleased and initial impressions are good. Glad to see a US-based recycled PETG supplier. I'm hoping Greengate will be my go-to supplier for recycled PETG and RePLAy 3D for recycled PLA.

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Glad to see this option show up and I will try keeping an eye on it.

Regarding spools, I'm definitely in the "please offer spool-less options". Barring that, however, maybe you can set up a program for people to return empty spools? That would give us a way to keep the things from piling up at home or in the landfill and it should also help you cut some costs by purchasing fewer spools.

Similarly a return/exchange program could be setup for the bags too, though that may be more trouble that it is worth as they are much more likely to get damaged beyond value (e.g. punctures).

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

@gnat

It seems this company is making an honest attempt to reduce the environmental impact of 3D printing. With that said, I would think that the energy used in shipping empty spools back to the manufacturer would be greater than any savings from reuse. Making/marking them for recycling is probably the best option currently. 

In regards to the company, I think that your efforts at transparency are great. I look forward to placing an order in the future. 

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Posted by: @nicholas-m12

@gnat

It seems this company is making an honest attempt to reduce the environmental impact of 3D printing. With that said, I would think that the energy used in shipping empty spools back to the manufacturer would be greater than any savings from reuse. Making/marking them for recycling is probably the best option currently. 

In regards to the company, I think that your efforts at transparency are great. I look forward to placing an order in the future. 

I agree and it drives me nuts that so few manufacturers use recyclable spools of are serious about master spools (e.g. offer their full line up).

While shipping wouldn't improve the environmental issues, it would be less impacting that the spool being single use before living forever in a landfill.

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

Something else for consideration is that if you use 3d printing to make things you'd otherwise buy in the store, you're already having an environmental impact by the following:

-> No fuel/energy expended for a trip to the store in your car, or delivery (CO2 emissions)
-> No additional packaging you now need to recycle or throw away

-> 1 kg of filament probably ships and packs a lot more efficiently than 1k of whatever-plastic-widget you'd have bought

I have to wonder on the viability of putting recycling symbols on our printed parts via little modifier meshes you can load as parts. It's up to the user to ensure it's correct for the material, but if you are going through the effort enough to care, I think that's a moot point. But I would not design it into the model for sharing because it has no guarantee it's accurate. 

Totally agree on the masterspool stuff. I have resolved to buy available options in 3D S masterspool form going forward, and have emailed them in the past about more of there offerings in this form. But there's also the cheap bastard side of me that jumps at a good sale of a roll of filament for $4... Bottom line, if we want mfgs to supply more in masterspool, we have to vote with our wallets on their current offerings to show them that is what we want.

RE: Reliable rPET/rPETG filament manufacturer in the USA?

@bobstro

Hi Bobstro,

We’re very happy to hear the filament arrived in good condition and pricing made sense.  As far as shipping goes, it actually lowers to a big, fat $0, once a customer spends $49.

We don’t put a desiccant in the bag, but in the near 400 spools we’ve sold in a few short months, we’ve gotten ONE complaint, and the guy prefaced it saying he put our spool IN THE OVEN so “the crumbling plastic might’ve been his fault.”  I’m VERY confident you won’t need to dehydrate this for quite awhile.  We keep them out in the open in our New York offices and I’ve only had to dehydrate one spool.  Yeah, if you’re in Florida, I guess the ambient humidity will be high, but no one’s said a word about it yet.

Thanks for noting the spool itself is recyclable.  You probably got a ABS/PC blend.  Those are absolutely recyclable.  Our next batch will use ABS; plenty of strength, but much lighter.  We’re trying to improve our footprint any way we can.  And, of course, ABS is absolutely recyclable.

Yep, you noticed our pen!  We went for a fully recyclable one!  Relatedly, Barbara is the Queen of notes, and every once in a while she’ll put a 50g sample of our other colors in with an order.  Seems like it was your lucky day! J

We’re working hard on a spool-less option; they make me very nervous because printers often complain of filament tangling, and a spool-less option might open up a larger can of worms. However, we have gotten requests for this, as well as reusable spools and master (larger) spools.  We’re also working on cardboard spools, where the walls are cardboard, but the core is plastic.

Please post a picture of your prints here… or better yet, send us an email to [email protected] and we’ll put it on our website!

All the best and THANK YOU for your purchase!

-Rich