Pellets V Filament where do people think 3dprinting will head?

[3dfilemarket]

At the 3dprintshow in London there was a printer company offering pellets instead of filament and they claim it would reduce the cost of materials. Does anyone have any experience of this? The sales guy said you could mix colours together to get multicoloured prints, but is there a demand for this or just a gimmick? Not sure about the thought of a hopper on the top of my printer.....

[JohnA136]

The giant Kossel at the NY Maker Faire (18 feet tall) used pellets to feed it's 4mm nozzle. They had them in a plastic garbage can with a hose in it. Occasionally, they would turn on a small shop vac and suck them up into the hopper.

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[curious aardvark]

so they were melted and extruded on the fly ?
That's very neat.

At the moment - filament is cheap enough and the only small volume pellet supplies I've seen have actually cost more per kg than filament.
The mixed colour thing could be interesting. But there was an article last week about some dual colour 3mm filament and the results did look pretty awful.

I just don't see any point in home printing with pellets at the moment.

[3dfilemarket]

so they were melted and extruded on the fly ?
That's very neat.

At the moment - filament is cheap enough and the only small volume pellet supplies I've seen have actually cost more per kg than filament.
The mixed colour thing could be interesting. But there was an article last week about some dual colour 3mm filament and the results did look pretty awful.

I just don't see any point in home printing with pellets at the moment.

I agree, also there is the storage of the materials. Rolls of filament can be stored away nice and neatly and is easy to manage.... imagine trying to store big bags of pellets and then feeding them to your machine, could get messy.....