UK PLA – Changeover Spools

(1 customer review)

£12.49£14.99

  • Made in the UK: reduced transportation, fair wage supply chain and British engineering
  • Eco Friendly: supports our #ZeroWaste commitment
  • Unique: no two changeover spools are the same
  • Recyclable Cardboard Spool
  • Easy to Print, PLA benefits from low temperature & great layer adhesion

Changeover spools are created in the transition from one production colour to the next. Generally, there are three types of changeover spool: colour to colour, colour to natural and ‘almost’ colour. The ‘almost’ colours are mostly the same as production spools, some virtually indistinguishable, but others may taper off colour density either at the start or end of the spool.

The materials in this section are what many manufacturers blend back up to make their so-called recycled blend, we believe in the most environmentally friendly options, so would rather offer changeover spools in their perfectly usable form, at a discount.

Description

Let’s start with the WHY. Changeover spools, can not only look cool (AND be completely unique), but they help us with our commitment to #ZeroWaste. Put simply, a changeover spool is created when we switch from one colour to the next. This changeover takes around 2-3kg of filament, so depending on the exact point at which the colour runs out, you end up with either a roll that tapers off in colour, completely changes to a different colour or ‘almost’ looks as good as a production unit.

Different manufacturers and filament brands make different choices when it comes to changeover spools, for example:

  1. Individually itemise each changeover spool and charge a premium for their ‘uniqueness’
  2. Discard ?
  3. Use up in-house for development or print service
  4. Chop back up and make into new filament with a homogenised colour, then market as recycled ?
  5. Sell for a discounted rate

For 3DTomorrow, we give our changeover spools an extra eco-boost and re-use products that may otherwise have gone straight to waste. For example, our changeover spools (stock permitting) are on re-used spools from our own in house production or spool return program, they’ve also allowed us to use up development cardboard boxes, development stock spools and even resealable vacuum bags that didn’t quite hit the mark for our production spools. It’s no secret we’re quite a new brand, because of this, we’ve had to do a lot of research and development. R&D can be a very wasteful process, but thanks in part to our approach to changeover spools, we’re on the road to using up everything made in our development stage.

We also like to take the approach of selling for a discounted rate, while broadly categorising the different styles of changeover spool we offer. This categorisation allows users to choose a changeover spool that contains at least some of the different ranges we offer (UK PLA / Astro / Silk / Geo / BioPro). This choice is our compromise to filament samples, as although we choose not to offer these, we do understand some people like to test before they commit to a full roll.

Due to the different densities in the extruder during a changeover, these spools have a wider diameter tolerance (+/- 0.1mm) compared to our production grade (+/- 0.05mm).

The categorisation for our changeover spools is as follows:

  • Standard – The filament will transition between two colours (or natural), from our UK PLA colour range.
  • ‘Almost’ – Filament that is mostly similar to the production colour.
  • With Astro – At least one side of the transition will be from the Astro PLA colour range.
  • With Geo – At least one side of the transition will be from the Geo PLA colour range.
  • With Silk – At least one side of the transition will be from the Silk PLA colour range.
  • With BioPro – At least one side of the transition will be from the BioPro filament range.
  • With Wood – At least one side of the transition will be from the Wood PLA filament range.
  • MasterCore refill – Supplied in our refill format. Filament from our UK PLA range, either an ‘Almost’ or ‘Changeover’.

So I hope you’ll agree, all in all, Changeover spools are too good to waste!

UK PLA – Changeover Spools

Additional information

Weight 1300 g
Dimensions 215 × 205 × 75 mm

1 review for UK PLA – Changeover Spools

    stuart bradley
    January 29, 2022
    Wow, this PLA looks a bit different from the few others I've bought, but wow. I don't think I need to go anywhere else for filament, oh and it also arrived quicker than a reel of 3dqf that i ordered 3 days earlier.
    Reply from 3DTomorrow:
    Thanks for the review Stuart, much appreciated, glad you liked your changeover roll
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