3D Printing

XYZprinting Releases Flexible 3D Printing Filaments

Despite the amazing price point of XYZprinting’s 3D printers, most Makers are more concerned with the Taiwanese brand’s filament situation.  Following the 2D printer industry’s razor-and-blade model, XYZprinting offers proprietary filament cartridges for its line of FFF 3D printers only swaying from the path to allow their da Vinci Pro system to accept third party filaments.

One of the biggest appeals of third party offerings is the vast supply of exotic and industrial filaments that greatly open up the range of applications for desktop 3D printing.  To keep their customers happy, then, XYZ will have to release its own competitive versions of these materials (growing by the day) or open up their printers to an even greater extent.  Now, their first entrance into the exotic filament market was just announced with the release of the company’s own brand of flexible filament cartridges.

xyzprinting Flexible Filament 3D printing

XYZprinting’s Flexible Filaments are non-toxic and waterproof elastomers meant to result in malleable prints.  Working exclusively with the brand’s da Vinci 1.0 Blue and da Vinci AiO systems, the filament is stored in the easy-to-install cartridges with a built-in chip, which ensures the use of XYZ filaments within these machines and tracks material usage levels. Currently only available in white, 600 grams of the material can be purchased for $49.

One benefit of the proprietary system for what might be an otherwise finicky material is that, rather than allow the user to figure out the nuance of their printer’s settings and filament feeding mechanism, the printer and its software do all of the work.  The direct feeding tube ensures that the material is led properly into the printhead, while the software instantly recognizes the material and adjust the settings appropriately. Then again, we may be in the midst of a Maker revolution, so the more we learn from such challenges, the more well-rounded we may become as fabbing enthusiasts.