It seems like every day a presidential candidate is declaring that they will make America great again. But what does that really mean? What really made America great? Well, one of the things that made America great was hemp. That’s right, hemp, the much maligned cousin of marijuana. According to the North American Industrial Hemp Council (NAIHC), both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp. Benjamin Franklin used hemp in one of his mills, and Jefferson even drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper. It doesn’t get more American than that.
Hemp was used to create everything from paper to rope to sails and clothing to fuel, and has been used as a construction material. 3D printing innovators have been experimenting with producing hemp filament. As previously reported, the Italian company Kanesis has been experimenting with a hemp bioplastic filament, as has Brooklyn-based Matter Lab. Today there’s some great news for hemp aficionados: 3Dom has just announced their newest offering, a hemp filament called Entwined.
3Dom has made some news lately with their Wound Up coffee filament and Buzzed beer filament. Like their previous bioplastic offerings, Entwined was created through a partnership with c2renew. 3Dom’s new hemp-based filament has some unique properties. It doesn’t contain dyes, it’s naturally brown and shows an interesting variation of hues. It prints like standard PLA and doesn’t require a heated bed for printing. Any 3D printer capable of printing in PLA should be able to print Entwined. 3Dom recommends printing between 180° and 210° C, or typically 10° cooler than you normally print PLA. If you want to use a heated bed, it should be set at 45° C.
Entwined is available in 1Kg spools in both 1.75mm and 3mm diameters. Sample sizes are also available. The hemp filament comes on Eco-Spools, a 100% bio-based plastic spool that is also eco-friendly and biodegradable. All in all, a very sustainable alternative to traditional 3D printing materials. In fact, hemp is a much better alternatively to the typical corn-based PLA for the ecologically minded. Corn is an agricultural product that requires fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides. Hemp on the other hand is a hardy product that does not require that kind of care in its cultivation and grows more densely than corn, so it requires less land to farm.
3Dom is not finished releasing eco friendly materials: they plan on releasing a biomass filament soon. I’ll be on the lookout for that. For now I’m very happy to experiment with their hemp-based filament, and I’m sure a lot of other designers will be, too.
Below is a video on Entwined hemp filament:
Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter
Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.
You May Also Like
Further Understanding of 3D Printing Design at ADDITIV Design World
ADDITIV is back once again! This time, the virtual platform for additive manufacturing will be holding the first-ever edition of ADDITIV Design World on May 23rd from 9:00 AM –...
3D Printer Maker EVO-tech Reborn as NEVO3D — Once More With Feeling
EVO-tech was a 3D printing service and original equipment manufacturer established in 2013 and based in Schörfling am Attersee, Austria. The company produced high-quality material extrusion systems featuring linear bearings,...
3D Systems Brings 3D Printed PEEK Cranial Implant to the U.S. with FDA Clearance
For more than 10 years, 3D Systems (NYSE:DDD) has worked hand-in-hand with surgeons to plan over 150,000 patient-specific cases, and develop more than two million instruments and implants from its...
CDFAM Returns to Berlin for Second Annual Symposium
The second CDFAM Computational Design Symposium is scheduled for May 7-8, 2024, in Berlin, and will convene leading experts in computational design across all scales. Building upon the first event...