Filament availability in the foreseeable future?

Do you think filaments like PLA will continue to be cheaply available for the foreseeable future, say the next 10-15 years? The background to my question is that I was wondering about the relative popularity of filament-based printing vs. other fabrication technologies such as resin-based printing; if filament-based printing is on a decline, then we might expect the availability of filament also to decline. Also, do major filament manufacturers exist outside of China? I'm wondering if our supply of filament depends on China, or if there is a stable international supply of filament.

If China stops exporting(especially to countries that like to rachet up the rhetoric), building a cheap printer(or many other things) could become impossible.

I don't think there's any danger of resin printing replacing FDM for most people. 3D printing hobbyists are among the cheapest people on the planet. Resin printing is expensive, very messy, and stinky. As you scale it up in size, the expense and mess increase exponentially. Most people won't want to bother with it.

There are plenty of plastic makers outside of China.

OTOH, in the US I'd worry more about supply disruptions due to political violence. I predict the shit will soon be hitting the fan, and when it does, you're going to be more worried about getting food and gasoline than printing starwars toys and tugboats.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

You may as well assume it will remain affordable. I doubt it will become prohibitively expensive due to "normal" reasons like resin printing popularity. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, so most likely both markets will continue to grow. If anything happens, it will be due to large scale political/economic/financial disasters, and then everything else will be just as scarce and expensive.

EDIT: Digital Dentist beat me to it Should have checked for other replies before writing since I left the window sitting there for a couple hours.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2021 01:53AM by dekutree64.

... I'm tinkering with "multi-material-FDM-rinting", where I'm using lasers to melt wires (or filament) onto the surface -- here I'm using much thinner filaments (actually 0,3mm thick plastic wires from Nylon, as uses for tooth-brushes or black ABS, as its easier to melt with the blue laserdiodes) or metal wires (then with high-power IR-lasers and wires from 0,01mm on) or any material, the laser can melt ... this depends on wavelength and power - have actually a bunch of lasers/types with wavelengths from 335nm UV to 1070nm NIR and powers up to 270W DC ... and a small RF-CO2-laser with 10Watts of power for the transparent or bright plastics (450nm or 975nm would shine through) and glass wires ...

One pretty good material to replace common plastics is lignin (extracted from wood, when processing it to paper) - behaves/melts like plastic and gives amber-like results

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2021 02:35AM by VDX.

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Raw material is sugar for PLA.

ABS is much cheaper to make, ASU being a little more expensive.

I have noticed a price hike on carbon fiber though. Energy cost. Could be a rise on filaments using that.

I have no data on other polymer types.

Fairly sure Impulsegod is a search engine optimization bot

All their posts link to the same site

... there are some comercial filament users and producers too not only "cheapish" ones

Here - for example - a German based, I'm starting negotiations for another reason: [www.zedex.de]

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]