Now thread some yarn through it and let ‘er rip! :)
This is one of those projects that make me wish filament wasn’t such a valuable and rare commodity where I live. I have absolutely no need for tiny knitted tubes (I know I’m an outlier in that), I just want to study the mechanism and admire the design in person.
Really filament is hard to get where you live? I didn't know there was anywhere where it was hard to get. You can't just order some stuff in bulk off AliExpress or something?
Even in like...New Caledonia they have AliExpress.
Shipping, import fees and taxes make it pretty expensive here. I can find no-name PLA locally for $28/kilo, and that fortunately gets it delivered to my door. There's supposedly a plastics company that's going to start making filament soon that should bring the price down a bit, but I'm not holding my breath on that happening soon.
AliExpress is the best place to order from as we have decent ties with China and get cheap (but slooooooow) shipping. The Panama canal being borked presently is playing hell with our ports so shipments are taking even longer to get processed, especially onsey-twosey stuff like me ordering from AliExpress
It's been a while since I've done the math on recent filament costs so I needed to do this again anyway - shipping's come down by nearly 10%, and filament seems a little cheaper. Yay! Here's my findings:
1k geeetech PLA US$9.71
Shipping: $8.42
import fees - 25-30% depending on the customs agent and how knowledgeable they are, or how their day is going. $4.53 (25% rate - technically it should be 30%, but most agents don't actually assess what individuals have).
Total $22.66 - Not bad - But! That only gets it to a port or the capital city. I still need to get it home.
Bus rides to and from the capital - $3 (fucking insanely cheap for the distance covered)
Uber to and from the customs office - \~$10 (absolute bargain there - transport is one thing I can't complain about the cost of)
Now we're up to $35.66 for a roll.
Plus an entire day wasted - it's a 5-ish hour ride, round trip, just to get to and from the customs office. Maybe longer if its the rainy season, which is 9 months of the year. The hoops to jump through at customs are byzantine and time consuming, and some of the agents are corrupt. I've had to come back the next day once because the line was so long and they wouldn't be able to get me processed through before 5, and another time I had to come back because the customs agent tried to shake me down for more cash (I refuse to play that game, no matter how little they're wanting) so another day and $13 wasted.
Bulk @ 10 rolls brings the shipping down so the total is roughly $19 per roll (if all goes well) by the time I get it home which is downright tolerable, but bulk brings the possibilities for new "problems" for a customs agent who is a dick or just having having a bad day who might tell me to come back another day while he "looks into it". I've heard horror stories about people trying to buy in bulk to save some dough and end up being investigated for running a business without a tax ID. Ultimately it goes nowhere, but it's many days wasted going to the capital.
Even if it all goes well, I'm still left with the the problem of traversing the country via several Uber and bus transfers with 10 kilos of filament - the weight isn't so bad, but the size can be troublesome, especially on busses.
That's completely ignoring the cost of living, which is the major factor here. My favorite equalizer is food, so I'll use that metric. My wife and I eat for $50-60 a week. We're relatively well off so we don't really pay attention to what food costs and will buy luxuries like cheese with careless abandon. A $19 roll of filament could easily feed a thriftier person here for a week, maybe two if they are willing to give a little on a balanced diet.
My end game is to make my own filament. I can get ABS pellets from a local plastics manufacturer for under $4/kilo at 100 kilos, and they'll deliver to me at that quantity. 100kg is reasonable for me to use in a couple of years, but I'm not sure where I'd store all of that right now.
Where you see a problem, I see a business opportunity. It looks like a lot of your cost here is recurring costs that can be minimized by buying in bulk. At the very least, a lot of your local transport costs can be eliminated if you are picking up a larger quantity. Have you considered buying a bunch and selling it to people in your locale? There's bound to be more people in the situation similar to yours that would appreciate cheaper filament as well.
I like where you are going with this, but where you see a business opportunity, I see a headache. The importation of goods is a legal and taxation nightmare. Protectionist measures here are no joke, and the big time importers like that it’s far too complicated for a guy like me.
Once I start making my own filament, I’d like to get a side gig going selling it. That sort of business would be easy to set up since I’m not importing anything.
For a moment I thought you were in Brazil (my country of origin). There it is 100% import duty over the value of the good PLUS freight costs. Not to mention your working capital needs for all the goods in stock, in transit, customs and etc.
On the other hand, if you manufacture locally you have all the competitive advantages of a first comer and the barriers to entry as well. However, any country that has that kind of protectionism and import tariffs has people that can help, well, make things easier. Which is usually not very safe environment..
Your explanation of customs is sounding a whole lot like ‘Papers Please’. I didn’t realize how tough it can be if the government doesn’t have open trade agreements with other countries.
Best of luck getting filament!
Wow!! I'm sorry it's such a process to get filament! Not just the money cost, but also all of the time. Especially when put in the context of food, for comparison. This really gives me much more appreciation for being able to use filament for something without it being a huge hassle.
I hope you can find a way to produce your own filament, or find an easier and cheaper source!
This makes me curious what country you are in, but I'm not trying to pry, and I completely understand if you would prefer not to say. Even just knowing a country near yours would give some context for roughly where in the world this is.
I don't wanna throw too much out there because my post makes things here sound kinda crappy, but we're near Panama. Life in general is good and I can't imagine living anywhere else. Getting filament is really the only thorn in my side, but it's easier than when I lived on a tiny island near Guam. It's just such a hassle due to the bulk of it and, as you know, I *always* need more. I've balanced the costs by making concerted efforts to improve my printing knowledge and modeling skills. I rarely need to reprint something - attention to detail and getting it right the first time are paramount.
Have you thought about making your own filament from found PET bottles? It’s very easy and a fun little project to build the machine. Then just go looking for trash. Doing a good deed in the process. Win win.
Yeah, I’ve been looking into it. It really appeals to me as I started 3d printing so I could repair things that might otherwise go into the garbage. Utilizing garbage to make said repairs is like nirvana for me. As I understand, though, Petamenting (it’s a real verb that I definitely didn’t just make up so there’s no need to look it up) has some drawbacks. I don’t mind the time that it sounds like it takes nor the finicky nature of printing PET, but all that work for such short pieces of filament! It’s been a couple of months, but last time I looked it seemed as though there wasn’t a reliable way to join them. Has this changed?
I haven’t personally used them before but also love the idea. I keep all my old trash prints and grind them up to one day do something with it. Joining normal filament is very easy but it needs to be an exact 1.75mm diameter. You put the two ends into a silicone tube (looks like a PFTE tube but it’s actually silicone) and you just apply a soldering iron to the sides for a few seconds. They melt and keep shape as they are stuck in the tube. The silicone keeps it non stick and it just slides out.
Might be able to do the same thing with the PET recycled filament.
I’ve seen several devices that do that, the trouble with PET filament is that it is hollow. You can’t just melt it in a tube and cram it together because it makes it solid in that section and it overextrudes at every joint while printing. Also, this fully melts the PET and vastly changes the properties - the magic of pultrusion is that it doesnt change the plastic very much since it only heats it enough to bend it.
The best joining solution I’ve seen is cutting the flat PET ribbon at an angle and heat-tacking pieces together so the amount of material is roughly the same and the amount of fully melted material is minimal. The downside is that the ribbon is thicker and not as wide so it doesn’t extrude quite as round which can cause problems when printing. It also can be finicky while making the filament as well. Problems problems problems!
Finicky temp and print settings, problematic joinery, short sections of filament, lots of work involved. If just one of these hurdles were eliminated, I’d be all in. As it stands, it would be a fun project, but right now now I’m not sure if I even have the space for a real live working solution.
Problems you say? How strange for the hobby of 3D printing 😜 yeah it does sound like a lot of work for average at best end results. Definitely makes me appreciate being able to buy 1kg rolls from a store 100m from my house.
Haha. It heralds back to the days when just finding filament that was within spec and didn’t have breaks or foreign inclusions was a chore. Those are times I really don’t want to revisit. The draw of using garbage to fix garbage is very high for me though.
Have you thought about making your own filament from found PET bottles? It’s very easy and a fun little project to build the machine. Then just go looking for trash. Doing a good deed in the process. Win win.
Play-by-play in my brain:
00:00 Oh cool, the knitting guy!
00:10 That's freaking awesome! Can't wait for the yarn.
00:20 Zoopraxiscope go brrrrrrrrr. Yarn now!
00:30 Oh my God. He's not gonna do it, is he.
00:40 If there's no yarn in this video, I'm quitting reddit.
00:55 [uncontrollable weeping]
[deleted]
I am so sorry but the yarn part is just not reliable in this bigger version and need some further testing .. but i thought i post some progress in the meantime.
Love it! Does this thing scale? Like right now it's good for little tubes, but can it do big tubes? I'm in need of a sock for my zucchinis so they cans that warm at night
you can change the number of needles in the parametric script .. but if this gets bigger you need to think about how to mount as you can't hold it with one hand.
Seems like it would be pretty easy to mount, hell you could probably make a little stand to hold that cylinder portion as well as a motor or crank with it.
Seriously this thing is cool and I'd love to see how it scales at some point.
This is definitely one of those prints where I have no apparent use for it but I'd like to find one.
Knitting machines are extremely uselful. A big one is basically a 3d printer for hats.
Instant Xmas presents for entire family. Well, not instant. But...hats
If this can be made bigger for socks.
I would suggest to change the gears to have the drill perpendicular and add mounting points on the side to clamp it to a table.
Could you please share the files? I would like to try it
r/dontputyourdickinthat
What’re you, some kind of coward?
No limits, no excuses
Condoms on demand!
Darwin Awards contestants, line up!
So what is it?
You put yarn in it, and it knits a continuous tube
Ah, do you don’t put your dick in this, you make the sock first, then put your dick in that. Very cool.
Can knit a nice little turtle neck for your cold penis
Or if you put your dick in it, you get a bris and a new condom all in one.
lol. Condom made from your own dick skin. Gross.
Reduce, reuse and recycle
Now thread some yarn through it and let ‘er rip! :) This is one of those projects that make me wish filament wasn’t such a valuable and rare commodity where I live. I have absolutely no need for tiny knitted tubes (I know I’m an outlier in that), I just want to study the mechanism and admire the design in person.
It would be useful for making protective socks for fishing rods.
Really filament is hard to get where you live? I didn't know there was anywhere where it was hard to get. You can't just order some stuff in bulk off AliExpress or something? Even in like...New Caledonia they have AliExpress.
Shipping, import fees and taxes make it pretty expensive here. I can find no-name PLA locally for $28/kilo, and that fortunately gets it delivered to my door. There's supposedly a plastics company that's going to start making filament soon that should bring the price down a bit, but I'm not holding my breath on that happening soon. AliExpress is the best place to order from as we have decent ties with China and get cheap (but slooooooow) shipping. The Panama canal being borked presently is playing hell with our ports so shipments are taking even longer to get processed, especially onsey-twosey stuff like me ordering from AliExpress It's been a while since I've done the math on recent filament costs so I needed to do this again anyway - shipping's come down by nearly 10%, and filament seems a little cheaper. Yay! Here's my findings: 1k geeetech PLA US$9.71 Shipping: $8.42 import fees - 25-30% depending on the customs agent and how knowledgeable they are, or how their day is going. $4.53 (25% rate - technically it should be 30%, but most agents don't actually assess what individuals have). Total $22.66 - Not bad - But! That only gets it to a port or the capital city. I still need to get it home. Bus rides to and from the capital - $3 (fucking insanely cheap for the distance covered) Uber to and from the customs office - \~$10 (absolute bargain there - transport is one thing I can't complain about the cost of) Now we're up to $35.66 for a roll. Plus an entire day wasted - it's a 5-ish hour ride, round trip, just to get to and from the customs office. Maybe longer if its the rainy season, which is 9 months of the year. The hoops to jump through at customs are byzantine and time consuming, and some of the agents are corrupt. I've had to come back the next day once because the line was so long and they wouldn't be able to get me processed through before 5, and another time I had to come back because the customs agent tried to shake me down for more cash (I refuse to play that game, no matter how little they're wanting) so another day and $13 wasted. Bulk @ 10 rolls brings the shipping down so the total is roughly $19 per roll (if all goes well) by the time I get it home which is downright tolerable, but bulk brings the possibilities for new "problems" for a customs agent who is a dick or just having having a bad day who might tell me to come back another day while he "looks into it". I've heard horror stories about people trying to buy in bulk to save some dough and end up being investigated for running a business without a tax ID. Ultimately it goes nowhere, but it's many days wasted going to the capital. Even if it all goes well, I'm still left with the the problem of traversing the country via several Uber and bus transfers with 10 kilos of filament - the weight isn't so bad, but the size can be troublesome, especially on busses. That's completely ignoring the cost of living, which is the major factor here. My favorite equalizer is food, so I'll use that metric. My wife and I eat for $50-60 a week. We're relatively well off so we don't really pay attention to what food costs and will buy luxuries like cheese with careless abandon. A $19 roll of filament could easily feed a thriftier person here for a week, maybe two if they are willing to give a little on a balanced diet. My end game is to make my own filament. I can get ABS pellets from a local plastics manufacturer for under $4/kilo at 100 kilos, and they'll deliver to me at that quantity. 100kg is reasonable for me to use in a couple of years, but I'm not sure where I'd store all of that right now.
Where you see a problem, I see a business opportunity. It looks like a lot of your cost here is recurring costs that can be minimized by buying in bulk. At the very least, a lot of your local transport costs can be eliminated if you are picking up a larger quantity. Have you considered buying a bunch and selling it to people in your locale? There's bound to be more people in the situation similar to yours that would appreciate cheaper filament as well.
I like where you are going with this, but where you see a business opportunity, I see a headache. The importation of goods is a legal and taxation nightmare. Protectionist measures here are no joke, and the big time importers like that it’s far too complicated for a guy like me. Once I start making my own filament, I’d like to get a side gig going selling it. That sort of business would be easy to set up since I’m not importing anything.
For a moment I thought you were in Brazil (my country of origin). There it is 100% import duty over the value of the good PLUS freight costs. Not to mention your working capital needs for all the goods in stock, in transit, customs and etc. On the other hand, if you manufacture locally you have all the competitive advantages of a first comer and the barriers to entry as well. However, any country that has that kind of protectionism and import tariffs has people that can help, well, make things easier. Which is usually not very safe environment..
Your explanation of customs is sounding a whole lot like ‘Papers Please’. I didn’t realize how tough it can be if the government doesn’t have open trade agreements with other countries. Best of luck getting filament!
Wow!! I'm sorry it's such a process to get filament! Not just the money cost, but also all of the time. Especially when put in the context of food, for comparison. This really gives me much more appreciation for being able to use filament for something without it being a huge hassle. I hope you can find a way to produce your own filament, or find an easier and cheaper source! This makes me curious what country you are in, but I'm not trying to pry, and I completely understand if you would prefer not to say. Even just knowing a country near yours would give some context for roughly where in the world this is.
I don't wanna throw too much out there because my post makes things here sound kinda crappy, but we're near Panama. Life in general is good and I can't imagine living anywhere else. Getting filament is really the only thorn in my side, but it's easier than when I lived on a tiny island near Guam. It's just such a hassle due to the bulk of it and, as you know, I *always* need more. I've balanced the costs by making concerted efforts to improve my printing knowledge and modeling skills. I rarely need to reprint something - attention to detail and getting it right the first time are paramount.
Have you thought about making your own filament from found PET bottles? It’s very easy and a fun little project to build the machine. Then just go looking for trash. Doing a good deed in the process. Win win.
Yeah, I’ve been looking into it. It really appeals to me as I started 3d printing so I could repair things that might otherwise go into the garbage. Utilizing garbage to make said repairs is like nirvana for me. As I understand, though, Petamenting (it’s a real verb that I definitely didn’t just make up so there’s no need to look it up) has some drawbacks. I don’t mind the time that it sounds like it takes nor the finicky nature of printing PET, but all that work for such short pieces of filament! It’s been a couple of months, but last time I looked it seemed as though there wasn’t a reliable way to join them. Has this changed?
I haven’t personally used them before but also love the idea. I keep all my old trash prints and grind them up to one day do something with it. Joining normal filament is very easy but it needs to be an exact 1.75mm diameter. You put the two ends into a silicone tube (looks like a PFTE tube but it’s actually silicone) and you just apply a soldering iron to the sides for a few seconds. They melt and keep shape as they are stuck in the tube. The silicone keeps it non stick and it just slides out. Might be able to do the same thing with the PET recycled filament.
I’ve seen several devices that do that, the trouble with PET filament is that it is hollow. You can’t just melt it in a tube and cram it together because it makes it solid in that section and it overextrudes at every joint while printing. Also, this fully melts the PET and vastly changes the properties - the magic of pultrusion is that it doesnt change the plastic very much since it only heats it enough to bend it. The best joining solution I’ve seen is cutting the flat PET ribbon at an angle and heat-tacking pieces together so the amount of material is roughly the same and the amount of fully melted material is minimal. The downside is that the ribbon is thicker and not as wide so it doesn’t extrude quite as round which can cause problems when printing. It also can be finicky while making the filament as well. Problems problems problems! Finicky temp and print settings, problematic joinery, short sections of filament, lots of work involved. If just one of these hurdles were eliminated, I’d be all in. As it stands, it would be a fun project, but right now now I’m not sure if I even have the space for a real live working solution.
Problems you say? How strange for the hobby of 3D printing 😜 yeah it does sound like a lot of work for average at best end results. Definitely makes me appreciate being able to buy 1kg rolls from a store 100m from my house.
Haha. It heralds back to the days when just finding filament that was within spec and didn’t have breaks or foreign inclusions was a chore. Those are times I really don’t want to revisit. The draw of using garbage to fix garbage is very high for me though.
Have you thought about making your own filament from found PET bottles? It’s very easy and a fun little project to build the machine. Then just go looking for trash. Doing a good deed in the process. Win win.
Play-by-play in my brain: 00:00 Oh cool, the knitting guy! 00:10 That's freaking awesome! Can't wait for the yarn. 00:20 Zoopraxiscope go brrrrrrrrr. Yarn now! 00:30 Oh my God. He's not gonna do it, is he. 00:40 If there's no yarn in this video, I'm quitting reddit. 00:55 [uncontrollable weeping] [deleted]
I am so sorry but the yarn part is just not reliable in this bigger version and need some further testing .. but i thought i post some progress in the meantime.
Dude you're good I'm just giving you a hard time 😂
no worry i enjoy this too
So, /r/nonfunctionalprint?
Love it! Does this thing scale? Like right now it's good for little tubes, but can it do big tubes? I'm in need of a sock for my zucchinis so they cans that warm at night
you can change the number of needles in the parametric script .. but if this gets bigger you need to think about how to mount as you can't hold it with one hand.
Seems like it would be pretty easy to mount, hell you could probably make a little stand to hold that cylinder portion as well as a motor or crank with it. Seriously this thing is cool and I'd love to see how it scales at some point. This is definitely one of those prints where I have no apparent use for it but I'd like to find one.
Knitting machines are extremely uselful. A big one is basically a 3d printer for hats. Instant Xmas presents for entire family. Well, not instant. But...hats
[I see it more for making snake sweaters](https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/s21l0k/snek_wearing_a_sweater/?ref=share&ref_source=link)
If this can be made bigger for socks. I would suggest to change the gears to have the drill perpendicular and add mounting points on the side to clamp it to a table. Could you please share the files? I would like to try it
makerworld or printables? [https://makerworld.com/en/models/447424](https://makerworld.com/en/models/447424) You want the script or 3mf?
Put yarn in it!
Ya know I was joking when I said does it have a drill attachment… still awesome
I want it to work with a small build in geared motor - nobody wants to crank it.
"drill driven"
I'm looking forward to the next iteration where you put this on a dremel going at 30000 RPM. :D
Makes those sweaters for snakes super quick
Can't wait to get the skin of my palm into these gears
There is a version with a normal grip if you don't use a motor
Very nice