Season’s Greetings from all of us here at Filabot and Massive Dimension.
We would like to take a moment to reflect on the year past and thank those who followed along with us through it. 2020 was an unprecedented time, and despite the interruptions of the global pandemic we managed to keep busy. All of us here have had to make changes and adapt quickly to make sure we can keep our products shipping while making sure your printers are fed with material.
We spent the first part of the year working on the release of our Filabot Reclaimer and Pelletizer. These two products create the full closed loop recycling system that our team has been working towards since this company's inception. It is now possible to convert waste plastic into usable filament all within one system.
In terms of materials we are in the process of onboarding a new PLA supplier to increase our supply capabilities. With this change we are able to expand our access to a high quality materials development team, allowing us to offer truckload order sizes, while also being able to bulk break into smaller orders. We are phasing out all materials that contain styrene, and continue to search to find materials that are of neutral ecological impact. .
We have continued to expand our laboratory in tandem to assist our research and development efforts. Our Extrusion Database File System, EDFS for short, has been updated to reflect our current machines and the settings needed to create high quality filament. We have added new reports to detail specifications for our new material options.
During the summer and fall, we joined our local Community Based Learning initiative. Operating out of Montpelier High School, this program allows students a chance to get real-time hands-on experience in the field of 3D printing. Although we had to shorten this year’s program due to Covid-19 we look forward to continuing this outreach once the pandemic declines.
Meanwhile, our sister company Massive Dimension expanded its collaborative relationships by working with Binary and the University of Utah. Over the course of 15 weeks, students were introduced to the process of exploring digital technology and scholarship in design and fabrication. Keeping a special focus on material experiments in recycled plastics and large-format 3D printing, the students used Binary’s studio space and machines produced by Filabot and Massive Dimension. This relationship reciprocated an extremely useful demonstration of the freedom for experimentation afforded by our extruders.
Following the success of the MDPH2, Massive Dimension released a higher capacity extruder for direct printing of pellets. The MDPE10 is the newest extruder we have available. The design leverages what we have learned from the development of the Filabot EX6 extruder. The MDPE10 has many extra features and is designed to be a development platform for additional improvements, such as an ooze eliminating nozzles, active pressure reading, and even contour following directional nozzles.
In autumn of 2019 Filabot moved its research, development, and customer support operations to a larger and more accommodating location. Since that time during the year of 2020 we also added to our Filabot family, doubling our number of team members! With all of this progress, we are very positive for an even better New Year. We hope you’ll continue to follow along with us, and be on the lookout for new products and accessories for your filament extrusion!
Happy Holidays,
-The Filabot & Massive Dimension Teams
