MRRF 17: LulzBot And IC3D Release Line Of Open Source Filament

In the 3D-printing world, filament is the unsung hero. Everybody loves to talk about printersrails, hot ends, fancy
toolheads, and the occasional “why is my first layer auditioning for a potato chip commercial?” But none of that
matters if the plastic feeding your machine is inconsistent, mysterious, or made from a “trust me, bro” recipe.

That’s why the announcement at MRRF 2017 (Midwest RepRap Festivalaka “Woodstock, but for stepper motors”)
landed like a well-tuned Z-probe: LulzBot and IC3D said they were releasing a line of
open source filament. Not “open spool” as in “the bag ripped in transit,” but open source as in
sharing the behind-the-scenes manufacturing details that usually live in trade-secret land.

If you’ve ever blamed a print failure on “bad filament” (and then quietly discovered your nozzle was clogged with the
fossilized remains of a bronze-fill experiment from two months ago), you’ll appreciate why this matters. Open source
filament isn’t just a feel-good headlineit’s a step toward transparency, repeatability, and a more truly open tool
chain in desktop manufacturing.

What MRRF 17 Represents (And Why Announcements There Hit Different)

A festival built by makers, for makers

MRRF isn’t a glossy trade show where everything is behind velvet ropes. It’s a community-heavy event where people
bring wild prototypes, experimental printers, and enough printed parts to build a small, slightly judgmental robot
village. It’s also a place where open hardware culture feels normalnot niche. That’s important, because “open source
filament” only makes sense in a culture that already believes openness is a feature, not a liability.

When the crowd is your R&D department

At MRRF, the audience isn’t passive. It’s a swarm of curious builders who will ask detailed questions like:
“What resin grade is this?” “How tight is your diameter tolerance?” and “If I print this at 0.8 mm extrusion width,
will it still behave, or will it turn into sadness?” Launching something as ambitious as open source filament in that
environment is basically choosing to ship your idea directly into the hands of people who love to test boundaries
and document everything.

The Big Idea: “Open Source Filament” Sounds SimpleUntil You Define It

Filament is a product and a process

A spool of filament looks simple: plastic wound around a reel, labeled with a material name and a temperature range
broad enough to include both “works great” and “why is it smoking?” But filament quality is less about the label and
more about everything that happened before the spool existed:

• Which base resin was used (and what grade)
• Which additives were included (impact modifiers, colorants, stabilizers)
• How the material was dried and handled (hygroscopic plastics love humidity like printers love failing at 2 a.m.)
• Extrusion temperatures, screw speed, puller speed, and cooling control
• How diameter and ovality were monitored and corrected in real time
• How the filament was wound, stored, and packaged

Most manufacturers treat a lot of this as proprietary. And to be fair: consistent extrusion at scale is hard. It’s
not just “melt plastic, make noodle.” It’s “melt plastic, make a noodle with extremely consistent geometry,
properties, and behavior across thousands of meters, while reality tries to ruin your day.”

So what does “open” mean here?

In this context, open source filament is about publishing documentation that describes how the filament is made
including process parameters, material information, and supporting details that help others understand, evaluate,
and potentially reproduce the results.

That doesn’t necessarily mean every machine in the factory becomes open hardware overnight. It means the knowledge
behind the filament stops being a black box. Think of it like open source software: you may not own the same laptop
as the maintainer, but you can still read the code, understand the logic, and build something compatible.

What LulzBot And IC3D Announced at MRRF 17

The headline was straightforward: LulzBot and IC3D announced the creation of an open source filament line. The promise,
however, was bigger than a marketing slogan. IC3D said it would release manufacturing informationdata, suppliers, and
techniquesso the process behind their filament could be understood instead of guessed.

The practical message was reassuring: if you were already using IC3D filament, you shouldn’t expect the material to
suddenly change just because documentation is being released. Openness was positioned as additivemore transparency,
not a different product.

Why LulzBot’s involvement matters

LulzBot’s brand identity has long been tied to open hardware values. In the printer world, that often looks like
published designs, open documentation, and a philosophy that users should be able to understand and modify what they
own. Filament, though, has historically been the weak link in a fully open ecosystem: you can have open-source software,
open printer hardware, and still feed it a mystery material extruded by a process no one is allowed to talk about.

This MRRF 17 collaboration was an attempt to close that gapmaking the “stuff” that becomes your printed object part
of the open conversation.

Certification: Turning “Open” Into Something Verifiable

Why certification matters (and why it’s not just a badge)

In open hardware, vague claims don’t age well. People want specifics: What’s open? Under which license? Where’s the
documentation? How do I find it next year when the press release is buried under twelve browser tabs and a half-finished
Benchy?

That’s where Open Source Hardware certification comes in. Instead of “we’re open-ish,” certification pushes a company
to publish documentation and identify licensing in a structured way.

ABS first: a workhorse material that benefits from predictability

Open source filament discussions often started with ABS because it’s widely used for durable partsand also because it’s
notoriously sensitive to printing conditions. ABS behaves differently depending on resin blend, additives, moisture,
and processing history. If you know the underlying recipe and the manufacturing controls, you can better predict warping,
layer adhesion, and shrinkage.

For functional printsrobot mounts, jigs, brackets, enclosurespredictability is everything. The more you can remove
variables, the less time you spend diagnosing whether your failure came from temperature, airflow, resin blend, or
that one drafty window that turns your printer enclosure into a sad wind tunnel.

Why “Open Source Filament” Is Actually Useful (Not Just Philosophical)

1) Better troubleshooting

When filament is a black box, troubleshooting becomes superstition. You adjust temperature like you’re tuning a guitar
by ear in a hurricane. But if you know the material grade, additives, and recommended processing approach, your troubleshooting
becomes engineering again:

• Stringing? You can assess whether the blend tends to ooze and adjust retraction and temperature accordingly.
• Layer separation? You can evaluate whether the formulation expects higher chamber temps or more aggressive bonding conditions.
• Dimensional drift? You can compare known shrink behavior to your geometry and compensation settings.

2) Repeatability across machines and shops

If you’re printing one-off figurines, variability is annoying. If you’re printing functional parts for a team, a classroom,
a lab, or a small business, variability is expensive. Open documentation makes it easier for different users to get similar
resultseven on different printersbecause the material’s behavior is less mysterious.

3) Research and education get a “known input”

Labs studying print strength, emissions, or long-term durability need consistent inputs. If filament composition and
processing conditions are unknown, comparing results across studies gets messy fast. Open source filament documentation
helps researchers treat filament like a defined material rather than an unknown blend.

4) It raises the bar for the whole market

Not every manufacturer will publish their process, but an open source option creates a benchmark. When one supplier shows
what “transparent” can look like, customers start asking better questions everywhere else. Even if competitors don’t go
fully open, they may improve disclosure and quality metrics just to keep up with expectations.

What Openness Doesn’t Automatically Solve

Publishing documentation doesn’t magically create a filament factory

Open source doesn’t mean “easy.” High-quality filament extrusion depends on equipment, process control, testing, and
experience. Documentation can teach, but it can’t replace a carefully tuned production line.

Supply chains change

Even if you publish suppliers and materials, supply chains evolve. Resin availability changes. Colorants get updated.
Equipment gets replaced. A real open documentation effort has to be maintained, not just posted once and forgotten.

Safety and compliance still matter

Filament manufacturing and printing involve heat, fumes, and material handling considerations. Openness should improve
safety (better information leads to better decisions), but it doesn’t replace good ventilation, sensible temperature
limits, and basic lab/shop hygiene.

The Ripple Effect: What Happened After MRRF 17

The MRRF 2017 announcement helped push the idea that filament could be part of an open ecosystem, not just an off-the-shelf
consumable. Over time, certified open source filament expanded beyond the first material, showing that the concept wasn’t
a one-time publicity stuntit was a repeatable model.

Even if most of the industry stays closed, the existence of a certified, documented option matters. It’s proof that
“open” can apply to manufacturing inputs, not only to printers and software.

How To Spot Meaningful “Open” Filament (Without Falling for Buzzwords)

If a brand claims openness, here’s what to look forbecause “open” should be something you can verify, not something you
have to believe on faith:

• Public documentation that describes materials, process controls, and quality checks in concrete terms
• Clear licensing for the documentation so you know what you’re allowed to do with it
• Third-party certification (when available) that makes it easier to confirm the claim
• Evidence of maintenance (updates, revisions, and ongoing transparency)
• Consistency metrics like diameter tolerance and ovality, plus how they’re measured

Bonus tip: if the only “open” detail you can find is a temperature range and a marketing photo of a happy spool, you’re
probably looking at “open” the same way a jar of peanut butter is “open” after you remove the lidtechnically true, but
not the vibe you were hoping for.

of Community-Style Experiences Related to MRRF 17

If you ask people what MRRF feels like, you’ll rarely get a neat answer like “a 3D printing conference.” You’ll get stories.
The drive into Goshen has that road-trip energyequal parts excitement and caffeinebecause you know you’re heading toward
a place where “normal” means someone hauling a custom delta printer like it’s perfectly reasonable luggage.

The first experience most attendees describe is sensory: the background chorus of stepper motors, the constant motion of
print heads, and the oddly comforting smell of warm plastic that says “progress” (or “somebody needs to turn down their
hot end,” depending on how spicy the odor gets). You wander past tables covered in printed upgrades, experimental hot ends,
and the kind of bracket you didn’t know existed until you suddenly need twelve.

Then you hit the conversationsthe real MRRF currency. Someone will show you a part and casually say, “Yeah, I redesigned
the mount and posted the files last night,” like that’s a normal way to spend an evening. Another person explains a
troubleshooting trick that saves you a month of frustration, and you immediately realize you should have been buying them
lunch this whole time.

This is the environment where the LulzBot and IC3D open source filament news lands in a very specific way. People don’t
just hear “new product.” They hear, “Wait… are they really going to share how it’s made?” Because most makers have had
that moment where filament behaves like a moody cat: yesterday it was perfect, today it refuses to cooperate, and you’re
not sure if it’s you or the material or the universe. The idea that a manufacturer might publish the underlying details
feels like someone turning on the lights in a room you’ve been navigating by starlight.

A common “MRRF experience” is the booth-side debatefriendly, intense, and full of practical questions. People imagine
what they would do with transparent filament data: tune profiles more accurately, compare batches, run better experiments,
or even teach students with a material that has a documented story. Some attendees joke that the most open filament is the
half-used spool they forgot to seal… but the humor doesn’t hide the seriousness of the idea. If filament becomes more
knowable, everyone gets better at printing.

By the end of the day, the experience becomes a blend of inspiration and exhaustion: your phone is full of photos of clever
mechanisms, your backpack has a small pile of parts you swear you’ll organize later, and your brain is buzzing with the sense
that open hardware isn’t just a philosophyit’s a social network made of real people, real documentation, and real solutions.
The open source filament announcement fits that spirit perfectly: it’s one more piece of the toolchain that says, “You don’t
have to guess. You can learn. You can improve. And you can share what you find.”

Conclusion: Openness You Can Print

MRRF 17 wasn’t just about another filament product launch. It was about pushing openness into a part of 3D printing that
usually hides behind proprietary curtains. By pairing LulzBot’s open-hardware identity with IC3D’s willingness to publish
manufacturing details, the industry got a concrete example of what “transparent materials” can look like.

For makers, the value is practical: better troubleshooting, more repeatable printing, and a stronger foundation for
education and research. For the industry, the value is cultural: it proves that openness can extend beyond printers and
software and into the consumables that literally become your objects.

And honestly? Anything that reduces the amount of time we spend arguing with our printers is a public service.