3D printing has a problem.
Let see what we can do about it.
I run a nerf mod hobby shop, and a big part of that is 3D printing.
I've been doing this for about 5 1/2 years now; I got my first printer almost 6 years
ago, and I just love 3D printing.
I think it's one of the most amazing technologies.
It's completely democratizing.
And in our little space of hobby, this little community of people who modify blasters, who
make their own original designs.
It's really blown open the possibilities because we can make things that 5-8 years ago were
just not possible.
This whole business-hobby-YouTube channel really happened by accident, and it happened
kind of organically.
I bought one 3D printer to make prints and mods and little parts and things I wanted
to do, and pretty soon, people were asking me to buy the parts.
One printer turned into two, two turned into four, four turned into eight, and we had to
move from California up here to the Northwest.
Eight turned into 30, and now we're at nearly 100 3D printers running full-time.
I've got 7 employees, and it's been this crazy journey, but one of the things that have irked
me since the very beginning are these spools.
In case you haven't seen any other videos, news articles, and other discussions on the
topic, plastic recycling is pretty much broken.
I won't get into the details because I am not qualified to speak on it, but I will put
a whole mess of links for reading and viewing in the description, and I highly recommend
checking those out.
It's gotten so mainstream now that John Oliver recently did a piece on it on how the broken
the system is.
And the numbers I've seen is of all plastics created, only about 9% has been recycled or
reused, and frequently that's not even to make the same product it was in the first
place.
Let's circle back to the spools.
We print with a variety of different brands, including Atomic, Hatchbox, and Prusament...
along with Proto-Pasta -- more on them later because you will notice their spool.
One of these is not like the other.
These spools all have various different weights, and Prusa even took the step to put a cardboard
center in and reduce the amount of plastic, and that's a pretty good step forward because
this spool uses almost half the amount of plastic than some of the heavier alternatives.
The problem with these spools is most of them are either not stamped or marked at all for
recycling -- even with an identifier of what kind of polymer went into making the plastic,
in the case of this Hatchbox spool.
Or, in the case of this Atomic spool (which is PC-ABS, it says): I've called around to
our recycling facilities here; there's no place that will take these in the US anywhere
near us.
I could mail them back to the company, but the carbon footprint of sending pallets of
these back all the way cross-country doesn't make sense either, it's not economical, and
it ultimately doesn't solve the problem.
The plain fact is, unless you're in a unique situation in the country, these are not recyclable.
At the scale we keep growing, I just don't feel right with this being an ongoing issue.
Yes, we make plastic products.
Yes, we're printing little plastic doodads, and designs, and different modification parts,
and even blasters, of course.
That at least adds value; this is just waste.
And, in the lean manufacturing sense, we can find a way to cut this out.
It's also worth noting that in addition to the filament spools themselves, there's also
a substantial amount of waste in packaging, in these being wrapped up, boxed, shipped
across the country or around the world.
Even just across the country, it's just a lot of additional footprint because you've
got a bunch of those raw supplies being shipped to those manufacturers, then made, and then
shipped back to me.
Ultimately, it's a lot more boxes; it's a lot more packing material, bubble wrap—all
of these things that get tossed.
So, let's move onto the solution.
Proto-Pasta has been really helpful in working with me to get filament made that works well
with our printers, that prints the way we want, that's consistent, and that comes -- most
importantly, in the colors we need.
So, this is a limited set of what we're doing so far.
This is five of eight colors that we've done with them to date, and we are slowly working
our way down from the most popular colors to the least popular colors and replacing
them with new Proto-Pasta variants.
Proto-Pasta was an obvious choice because they are so close to us.
I can literally drive over and pick up my filament, and I can return the boxes, I can
return the spools, and I can minimize the packaging waste on top of the spool waste
itself.
So, they've been willing to take back the used spools, reuse them until they reach end-of-life.
Now, I say "end-of-life" because they are made of cardboard.
So, they are actually recyclable, and [cardboard is one of the few materials that can be recycled].
However, even if they weren't to be recycled, the waste footprint compared to a plastic
spool is just substantially lower.
And I want to commend them for sticking with this cardboard spool.
Even though they make a premium product, putting it on a cardboard spool, I think, is a really
responsible thing to do.
A lot of people give companies flak -- they think it's cheap, or it's lazy, or whatever
else.
But honestly, this takes more work for Proto-Pasta to do because they are hand-gluing these spools
together in-house.
It's a lot easier to just shoot something out of an injection mold, and you've got a
[part] -- and I don't mean to poke fun at specific companies or anything, but...
This has really solved a lot of the waste problem, and when you look at a scale like
ours in our 3D print farm here, it makes a tremendous difference.
So, these spools will get to be used 2, 3, 4 times at least instead of once.
I'll pick them up when I'm doing errands in the area already, so there's almost no additional
freight incurred.
It's USA polymers, so it's a more reliable source here, which also great because, during
the pandemic, it's been difficult to keep the filament from multiple brands, with multiple
different supply chain issues in stock.
Moving forward, we will transition our entire filament line over to Proto-Pasta.
We've done the first seven or eight colors are either paid for or confirmed and done,
and at that point, that represents over 75% of our filament consumption.
Since Proto-Pasta is so close to us (it's literally just a few miles away), we've been
able to go over there and chat with them; kind of give them direction on the colors
we wanted; work out pricing and other concerns and get to tour and see behind the scenes.
I think it's kind of a neat process.
Extruding filament is a lot similar to 3D printing, except you've got a larger nozzle
producing the larger piece of filament, and it goes down the line and gets spooled up.
It's obviously a bit more complicated than that, but it's a neat process to see happen
first-hand, and Proto-Pasta has been one of the more transparent companies actually showing
the behind-the-scenes of how they make the filament.
I'm really excited for this, and I'm so excited that Proto-Pasta was willing to work with
us to make these colors and to get this to work.
We've started with some pretty basic colors we've got a nice orange for a safety orange
for us, and we've got a black, a white, a sparkly black, Proton Purple, and we've got
a blue and a red that are in manufacturing now over at Proto-Plant.
And then we'll move on down the line through the less popular colors.
Doing it this way allows us to do the maximum impact as soon as possible, and I couldn't
be more happy about the direction we're going with them.
Their filament has been spectacular -- this black here is their filament.
The blue is another one, but we're doing kind of a similar color, a little bit of an upgrade
if you will.
And it's been nice to work with them and tweak...
We're also getting a little bit more custom; we can say we want this a little bit less
opaque; we want it with a little more pearlescence, we want it with a little glitter or sparkle,
or whatever.
I'm frequently using the wrong terms, so do not quote me on these types of things.
I think this actually has glitter in it versus this is pearl (?) I'm sure Alex over at Proto-Pasta
is probably laughing because he always has to correct me on what additives do what.
Overall, I'm really thrilled to be offering this filament.
It does cost us a little bit more; Proto-Pasta's paying wages in Washington State, where we've
got higher minimum wage.
We've got higher wages than China, of course.
And they're a very boutique shop; they're a smaller shop like us.
It's great to support another local business, solidify our supply chain, and really get
something more custom.
So, to my customers, you're going to see this change on the website, and some of it's going
to happen without you really knowing because a lot of you have bought other colors that
might be named something else, but they've already been substituted.
We'll be rolling out the color picker across all of the listings on the website, and you'll
see the colors shift and change, and some new ones get added.
This opens up some other opportunities for us to do some super custom colors, where we
might do a limited run of something, and we offer a blaster in a certain color.
So, we'll have some voting and other options coming up in the future after we finish our
initial launch of about 20 colors.
We're currently offering about 24, and it's been a little bit much, so I think back down
to about 20 colors and focus on the ones we know are going to be the most popular, and
you've shown (through your purchasing) that you like the most.
Thank you so much for watching!
I am thrilled to get this going.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this process and the waste side of 3D printing
in the comments.
If you're new to nerf and you're coming to the channel for the first time, do check out
some of the other videos on the channel.
We do all things nerf mods.
We produce custom blasters, we do parts and upgrades -- like this hopper that expands
the capacity of blasters, and we make a product called the Proton Pack, which is a backpack
feeder that shoots 20 rounds a second.
It's a really fun hobby, and if you're already into 3D printing and you haven't done nerf
yet, it's a perfect... they go hand-in-hand so well.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Until next time, I'm out of darts.