Fila-Mint, Inc.
About
Fila-Mint, Inc. offers high-quality, tight tolerance filament in short run sizes, and custom grades to manufactures of consumer and engineering grade FDM printers to enable them to provide outstanding service to their clients.
Location
Fila-Mint, Inc. is located in Chesterland, Ohio, just east of Cleveland.
Our Process
The equipment that we use was highly specialized to manufacture very tight-tolerance medical tubing. It has been updated to meet the specific demands of extruding thermoplastics for 3D printers.
Extrusion
Plastic extrusion is a high-volume manufacturing process in which raw plastic is melted and formed into a continuous profile, in our case a rod or filament. The raw pellets are usually dried to a specific dew point to assure that there is no moisture in them for a specific period of time at which point they are introduced into the extruder which gradually compresses and melts the pellets until it comes out of the die (similar to a nozzle on a printer) that has been machined using an EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) that produces a superior finish and tolerance. The melted plastic is cooled as it is pulled through the production line before it is wound.
Winding
One of the most often overlooked areas of 3D printer filament manufacturing is the winding. Winding in itself is almost an art. A lot of the commercially available equipment for winding is intended for other products such as wire, tubing, fiber-optics, fishing line, and string trimmers. Although they are very similar to 3D printer filament the filament has some unique traits about it that makes it more difficult to coil consistently. We have focused a lot of our time and resources to overcoming this so that you will have a smooth and tangle free filament.
Quality
During the extrusion process the filament goes through a multi-axis laser scanner which measures the outside diameter and ovality of the filament to confirm that it is up to our high standards of +/-0.003”(0.07mm) of our target of 0.0689” (1.75mm). The scanner is calibrated monthly by trained personnel.
During winding, the filament goes through a second laser scanner to once again confirm diameter as well as check for flaws and shrinkage.
During winding, the filament goes through a second laser scanner to once again confirm diameter as well as check for flaws and shrinkage.
Final Packaging
After the filament has been wound on to a spool, a package of desiccant is added to it and then it is then sealed with a medical grade vacuum sealer.
Our Team
Brian
He has been involved in the extrusion and converting industry for five years. He has designed, built and programmed industry specific machines. His interest in 3D modeling with Solidworks caused him to take great interest in the additive manufacturing industry.
