You Try And Support Local And This Happens

You try to support local businesses. You have a problem with a product. You ask - not even for a replacement, just some explanation. You get - Well, I'll post a sterilised version of the email exchange:

The Email Exchange:

=====================================================
Tue, 24 Oct, (9 days ago)
to Sales@FilamentCo
About two years ago I bought three rolls of  FilamentCo PLA in colours I needed for an order , then . . . (recently) . . . the filament just snapped while printing . . . 
. . .(Omitted: Full explanation.) . . .
. . .(TL;DR: Three rolls of filament only two years old are crumbling and snapping like very thin uncooked spaghetti ) . . . 
And I'm not complaining, just very curious to learn . . . hope you can solve this mystery for me
=====================================================
Oct 30, 2023 
to Sales@FilamentCo
. . . (They aim to respond to emails within three days) . . .
Almost a week. Has this been an unusually difficult question? I really would like to learn what's happening with the filament, and how to avoid it happening again. Please can you give me some kind of response?
=====================================================
Sales@FilamentCo
31 Oct 2023 
to me
Your request (35260) has been updated. To add additional comments, reply to this email.
FilamentCo Team (FilamentCo)
Oct 31, 2023, 07:02 GMT+11
Hi *******,
The filament is really old and all sorts of stuff might be hapenning.
Try to put it in the oven for few hours at around 65C and that should help
Kind regards,
FilamentCo Team
=====================================================

The Background:

Okay - I bought a few rolls of filament from an Aussie filament maker/supplier two years ago, and when I opened it way back then, it seemed a tad brittle compared to my other filaments - but it was also in great colours that I wanted for some ornaments, so I dealt with it. It was all ornamental items anyway...

The remnants of those spools stayed in my filament cabinet. Along with several remnants of even older filament. These details will become important as the story goes on. The filament cabinet has a solid state dehumidifier that keeps the inside at 30C and 30% pretty much rock steady. Got all that? Okay.

Okay a week before the first email I got those FilamentCo brand spools out and printed a few more luckily non-critical models that wer. . . Oh hang on. The filament snapped between the spool and the top of the extruder? Cleared the nozzle, put the filament back into the extru . . . and . . . WTH? Damn stuff snapped again as I was feeding it in.  

Fed it in again and left it ready to restart the prints next morning, only when I checked next morning, the filament had snapped again - in mid-air. With everything turned off overnight, cabinet door closed, not even a stray breeze to disturb things.

So - I also had some XingTongZhiLian filament I'd bought a year before the FilamentCo filament and - it printed fine. Hence, the exchange with FilamentCo. That lot above. Had I not gently prodded the people at FilamentCo, I imagine they'd not even have bothered to respond.

But their answer really floored me. 

Why?

This: ". . . filament is really old and all sorts of stuff might be hapenning . . ."

Whut? So filament they sold two years ago is already - old? Do they expect me to print with it and set a timer to let me know when the damn models made with it will crumble? Or are they saying that they had it in their warehouse for a few more years before I bought it? Plastic is one of those things that last for hundreds of years, which is why we're drowning in plastic waste right now. Exactly how old is this FilamentCo filament anyway? 

Are the decorations I printed originally for family and friends going to start cracking and shedding microplastics? (I know - it was heated in printing and re-formed but then again - the filament was heated and re-formed as part of the extruding process, and it seems that only kept it somewhat supple for maybe three years. ) Can you see what I'm getting at? Just how long after melting it will it once again turn to fragile toxic waste? Assuming they don't keep stock for more than a few years, the things I printed two years ago - *tick tick tick tick* may start to degrade in less than a year. 

On second thought, maybe it wasn't all that old, just stored without any kind of moisture protection. Because, come to think of it, two out of three of the spool packages had lost their vacuum. There's every possibility this stuff has been improperly stored. Nothing would surprise me at this stage. Which still leaves the same sort of situation - how long stored in non-humidity-controlled environments before the models start shedding?

And as well as that, I print models that have to work. Handles for tools, parts for mechanisms, casings and housings. Imagine that handle on my plunge router in another year or two letting go during a cut in hardwood, I could lose fingers. It's not on.

BTW that XingTongZhiLian filament I mentioned really has been a pleasant surprise. They are not paying me for saying that, it's just been a lucky find. You can search for them on Amazon, which is where I came across their product. I found them, did a double-take at how inexpensive it was, and now always keep a few rolls of their filament on tap. 

I'll not buy FilamentCo's products again, nor FilamentCo#2's products. Honestly - I got support out of Creality when I first got my Ender3 Pro, worked with them so closely that I got sent a heated bed and print surface, six POM rollers, and a new front panel. Ask your 3D printing network - how many people ever got that level of TS from the company? And yet when approached in a friendly and detailed conversation, they were downright courteous to a fault.

It took me two months to get a result and was delicate - but it proves I can collaborate even with the not-so-cooperative tech support Creality had, back at the beginning of its success story. I still have my old, bowed print bed in the box that the new one came in as a trophy, as proof that I am a reasonable negotiator. But both Aussie FilamentCos I dealt with are just poor experiences and poor negotiators.

Homily?

Don't piss off customers, don't sell unstable rubbish, and answer enquiries properly. Or don't, and get a few more articles like this one, remember that while I won't name and shame because I'd like to see local businesses prosper and become good local businesses, there are other customers out there who won't be similarly restrained. 

Hey - help me out so I can afford a few spools of reasonable plastic. Also, please share this post and others like it with your social network. 

How To Tell A Project Is Cr*p

Here's a technology idea that's bound to fail, along the way wasting resources, researchers' time, and a lot of time. THIS is why we can't have nice things.

Why am I so against this idea? Name me ONE reason I should agree with it. Just one. 

What's This Project? Why Cr*p?

The project is a discovered resource under every high-rise building - that parking garages underneath them. These parking garages are heated up by the vehicles parked there, and the heat transfers to the underground soil and water. It's a great resource if it can be tapped, providing enough energy to heat well over 14,000 houses' heating requirements in a city the size of Berlin. 

It's a huge bonanza, because extracting that heat from there stops it getting into underground waterways and changing the ecosystems around the buildings, and saves some energy from other sources needing to be generated to heat those 14.6k houses. Well worth spending Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg's time and expertise on.

Except it isn't. 

It's fossil-fueled cars that generate the heat. Unless there's something Mr Noethen knows that we don't, and in case he hasn't gotten the memo: WE'RE TRYING TO TAKE ICEVs OFF THE ROADS AND OUT OF THE PARKING GARAGES. THERE'S A TIME LIMIT ON THIS. 

What precisely is the point of this project in light of that? They may be able to extract heat energy for another five - ten years but then - either way - the heat stops. Either replaced by EVs, or replaced by a dead silence... 

The Crux Of It

People seem to have huge blindspots. Noethen seems to ignore the fact that in a few years the rising number of EVs will reduce all that waste heat, and instead may even require heating those same garages. ICEVs (Internal Combustion Engined Vehicle(s)) produce a lot of waste heat - it's one of the reasons that fossil fuels should have been left in the ground, the sheer amount of waste involved at every stage. 

EV's on the other hand don't generate much "waste heat" so a parking garage full of EVs won't produce enough heat to make the project worthwhile. And given that the other push is to have less private vehicle ownership and more public transport, there might be only a quarter of the number of cars in those spaces, anyway. 

So why are we contemplating wasting research and development efforts on this when it'll be obsolete before it's perfected? A more cynical person than myself might mention job security but I'm just mentioning that this project is a POS. Anyone working on it will be working in a bullshit job. 

Last Thoughts

Mr Noethen would be better off studying ways to make public transport more efficient and clean. It's the way things are going - have to go - will be forced to go - whether we want it or not. The FFC (Fossil Fuel Cartel as I refer to them as) will continue to raise prices as demand for FF dwindles, making driving an increasingly unaffordable option for many. Us, for example. We've already cut down to the bare minimum travel we can justify, rare shopping trips, even fewer medical trips, and staying at home for more than at any time before. It's not going to get cheaper to drive our car, nor easier to justify driving more. That era is behind us. 

People who ignore the Big Picture in pursuit of trivial and short-lived projects like this are wasting the resources of the entire planet for a brainfart. It should almost be criminalised.

And for people like my wife and myself, public transport is pretty much out because no one wears masks any more and we're both extremely at risk as proven by our one experience with the virus. We've both always masked up when out, but even that is only useful if using N95 respirators and we can't afford that, or else simple surgical masks but only if everyone's wearing them, and so we've, as mentioned, cut right down. We combine shopping at specialist stores with medical trips, visits to opp shops with the normal shopping trip, and otherwise, we just stay home and live from the pantry and freezer. 

Don't worry, pretty soon the world situation will bring most people to the same pass and with us or without us the world'll heal from fossil fuel, lead, PFAS, and warming climate. 

Last Last Thought

Lastly, as the article points out, heat pump technology is already well established. Why reinvent the wheel? Why muck around with this at all? Will the heat pumps be re-usable? And if so, will they be re-used once their (hopefully short)  period they will be of use before the ICEV extinction? 

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