Curious anyone try printing with actual fishing line yet in a 3d printer? (i’ve seen some using weed wacker trim line, but realized fishing line could be an alternative filament source, not sure if its too small of diameter, temp to high, or if they have different material additives like fibers and such (if it’s the same material just fiber “form” to reinforce should be able to melt all the same)…
I’ve thought about weed eater string before but not fishing line, I’m sure if you get a thicker/higher Tess it might work.
Try pushing a 3 inch length of weed wacker string into the palm of your hand, than try the same with fishing line.
The fishing line isn’t stiff enough for the current methods for feeding spooled plastic.
Personally, I don’t think fishing line is very economical. The price per weight is pretty high.
Figure out how to feed the fishing line, and you may be on to something though.
You would just need a tighter more compact setup to hold the feedstock(fishing line) so it won’t bunch up in the extruder. And hotend with a smaller bore.
and probably switch from a toothed gear to a rubber pinch roller.
Maybe need to go to a different tech all together - like a hot air nozzle and a separate filament feed. – think TIG welding
You get that plastic all hot and melty & sticky and I just don’t see how you are going to push it.
Same concept as the filament we use today just need higher tolerances in places, pinch roller would work, you need a smaller diameter feed hole in the extruder to hug the fishing line, and the hot end would have to be fairly snug fit as well. It should essentially create the same pressure to feed.
Backpressure is a function of the input filament diameter vs the nozzle diameter.
So we can make a very low backpressure system by having the nozzle the same size, or nearly so of the filament.
This would take advantage of the small filament size.
now that we have some of the issues of this design somewhat under the scope. How viable would this be? in terms of printing quality, price per spool, and printing time per spool?
would it even be a viable option over the current feedstock?
Like I said in the first post, I don’t think it’s very viable cost wise. A spool of fishing line is what, $5 or more? This is for a very small spool.
I could see using it for very small parts as this would take advantage of the small diameter.
True, sorry bout that. I’m with ya I think for smaller more intricate parts it would be good. Like you said that probably about it.
I was thinking more about using fishing line as more of an alternate source if needed and/or possible various different material possibilities too rather than just “size” wise.
I guess I am focusing on the sizing as the primary difficulty with this material. I’ve not researched it’s end-product characteristics or even any toxicity during printing.
Once the material handling is figured out, we can use just about any material that can be drawn out that fine. Like Nylon. Or maybe switch to copper wire and use resistive heating to print metal directly or a home-brew EDM.
ooooo now there is an idea 
but i bet clogs would be a bitch to clean with solidified metal
Metal selection could help there. The orfaces would be small enough that a little bit of chemistry could help out. Just use a nozzle material where the metal you are extruding acts as an anode and galvanic reaction the clog away.