Making Filament Was NOT IN THE PLAN with Polar Filament!! - Making Awesome 198

Making Awesome - 3D Printing, Inventing, Making, Small Business

Aug 13, 2024•2 hr 57 min

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Episode description

This week we are joined by Mitch of Polar Filament. A filament manufacturer that did not actually intend to start making filament, but they make some awesome materials right here in the USA! Based in Troy, Michigan, near Detroit, Polar has an interesting history surrounded by industrial manufacturing and realizing that if they wanted the PERFECT tolerances and to be able to control filament, they had to do it themselves!

Some about Mitch and Polar:

Mitch is a Software Engineer from Michigan Tech. He worked at TI Automotive, Epic, and Kuka Robotics and then co-founded Polar Filament along with two friends.

Mitch works on the R&D side of things, which is mostly PLC programming, database/software design for the filament analytics, and experimenting with new materials.

Polar Filament is a brand name for the filament manufactured by Douglas Innovation. In addition to Polar Filament, Douglas Innovation also does white-label manufacturing for other filament brands.

Polar Filament was born out of necessity because it was too challenging to get reliable and consistent filament that didn't take months to arrive.

Production is rooted in the automotive industry, so most of the quality standards are dictated by the strict requirements of the big automotive manufacturers.

The most important parts of producing reliable filament is to measure everything. "Good Filament" shouldn't be subjective, but measured and quantifiable.

Measuring and logging manufacturing metrics are what allow consistent results every time. Every single spool leaves a footprint, and the manufacturing data can be looked up.

Recently, the focus of Polar Filament has started shifting into new materials (like PHA and Nylon) as well as novelty filaments (like color-changing, sparkly, and silk).

Visit them here: https://polarfilament.com/

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