Once a friend of mine came over to my house with his filament that I used in my 3D printer to make him an object he needed. When we were done he cut off a piece of the filament to take the rest of the spool home without waiting for me to unload the extruder.
I remember thinking “Now I have to unload the extruder, what a drag”, then I realized that “Wow, I could make something with that piece”. With the possibility the FDM 3D printers offer to make empty walled extremely light objects you don’t need a lot of filament to make something cool. In fact you only need a few grams, or maybe a yard. In other words, just a scrap.
There are many who got rich selling scrap metal. Now an entrepreneurially-minded college student has thought of doing something similar with filament and turned to Indiegogo to launch his “Footle” campaign and sell filament by the yard.
In fact, by his own admission, the idea is not entirely original, UK filament manufacturer and online eCommerce website Faberdashery uses a similar business model selling its proprietary filament by the meter. The Footle project does not propose filament manufacture but does want to sell a much wider variety of filament — even the more exotic types. The idea is that lowering the threshold necessary to experiment with different types of materials will free people up to create and innovate more.
The global scrap metal industry is thriving, one day the scrap filament industry might be as well.
