The thing is, I love filament. 3D printing filament. Kilograms of spooled plastic in all kinds of colors. Some of them transition through a rainbow of colors, some are silky, others are matte in finish and of course then there are the sparkling, glittering and even twinkling filaments. There are filaments gravimetrically infused with clay or cement. There's a filament that can be reshaped after printing like clay when heated up. There are extra strong filaments, some even with added carbon fiber. Specialty filaments can have rubber-like results, one filament foams when printed, puffing up and then, of course there is the dissolvable filament, which has a special job of supporting other filaments when printing and then melting away, exposing the final print later. So many filaments. So many colors.
I have an online friend that I've never met. We may meet someday as his son lives close to where we do, but for now, he's a person across the screen, typing back and forth to me about anything and everything related to 3D printing. We talk about filament a lot. There is nothing nicer than picking the perfect filament for a model and watching it spring into life on the print bed.
He was talking to me today about some filaments he was considering ordering. A kilogram is a lot of plastic to order if you're not sure you're going to like it. Most filaments are very economical, but even so, there are far more filament choices out there than anyone could possibly have. The question he had was if it was worth the price difference to order a particular brand. I already had that particular filament. And then it occurred to me: we could do a filament swap.
I could mail him samples of filaments of the brands or colors he was thinking of getting. I could put several in a little package and he would be able to try the out without having to buy any of them. There are some models that use a lot of filament, take hours and hours or even days to print, but many models just take a small amount of fiament to print.
It would be enough to determine how well the filament prints, what the true color was in person and how any additives change the appearance of the fiament. In short it would help make any decisions on buying full spools.
I was excited about this. I love sharing and helping. I could both share and help out one of my friends simply by sending samples of a few spools. I can't do anything about it now, because we're currently in the car on the way home from Florida. It feels like we've been cramped in the vehicle all day but I've just been told we have three more hours to go.
Tomorrow, after unpacking, I'm going to start figuring out what filaments my friend might be interested in, I'm definitely putting some surprises in rhw package.
The Big Boy Update: In the car after a long bout of travel my son said, "My foot is hungry. I can feel it rumbling." We told him him we were coming up to a planned stop shortly. He went back to his iPad and then announced a few minutes later, "Dogs and cats are a lot more alike than it seems."
The Tiny Girl Game: My daughter wanted to play hide and go seek in the hottub with me yesterday. She said the game was in your mind though. It was more like, "Mind and Go Seek," she said. The area t hide was anywhere in the backyard. On your turn you picked a place to hide. It didn't matter if you were small or even tiny, You could hide anywhere. The other person guessed and you gave hot and cold directions until you found the hiding person, or small dog, or in mouse. It was a lot of fun.
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