New production line, more inventory, and the return of ReFuel

I just wanted to give you all a little bit of an update on how things have been progressing since the 3D-Fuel brand has gone independent again. Here are the main points, with the full video and transcript below.

• We have purchased a new (to us) production line and it’s on its way to Fargo!
• More inventory warehousing and order fulfillment will be from Fargo starting next week
• ReFuel will be the first products produced on the new Fargo production line
• Sign up to the waitlist to be one of the first to know when it’s back in stock
• Standard PLA+ Refuel
• Tough Pro PLA+ ReFuel
• Pro PETG ReFuel
• 4kg spools will move to in stock for Midnight Black or special order only for other not-in-stock colors for the time being as we focus on 1kg spools
• More inspection of spools at time of shipment out of Fargo
• We can’t inspect spools that are being fulfilled from Amazon’s warehouse, so that’s why we’re working to fulfill a higher percentage of orders from Fargo
• We will inspect for spools for non-AMS compliant spool types and create a sub-SKU for them in the next 1-2 weeks
• We know that the following items are most likely to still be on non-AMS compliant spools, as a large production run was made last fall before we switched spool types.
• Tough Pro PLA+ - Midnight Black
• Tough Pro PLA+ - Charcoal Gray
• Tough Pro PLA+ - Snow White
• Tough Pro PLA+ - Iron Red
• Standard PLA+ - Midnight Black
• Standard PLA+ - Industrial Gray
• The customer survey is now closed - thank you to all who took the time to submit your feedback!
• Potential customer/community program to develop material profiles for a wider range of 3D printers
• More content creation
• We’re looking to partner with content creators to sponsor with filament and affiliate programs
• If you’re interested, please reach out to us
• Loyalty Program
• Some survey respondents requested that we add one. We already have one, and if you’ve bought from us in the last nine months, you likely have points already!
• New materials
• We have some new materials in the works and expect to be able to launch them in approximately two months.
• We’re attending 3D Printopia in September!
• What other shows should we be exhibiting at?
• Our focus is on shows where our end-user customers will be. Not necessarily the big, industry events.

A lot's been happening. There have just been a lot of moving parts - a lot of them happening in Fargo. So, just kind of some big updates: we have decided to go ahead and purchase a production line to bring to Fargo!

This is a little bit earlier than we were anticipating doing this. Up to this point, as part of the ending of the license agreement we're under obligation to purchase the inventory that's already been manufactured, so there's just been a lot of warehousing and order fulfillment that's been moving to the Fargo facility. That's still going to be continuing. Expect to see more inventory becoming available in the Fargo facility.

We were working with some toll producers in the US to continue to make the 3D-Fuel brand filament using our formulations, using our packaging, doing all of that so that we can keep the inventory in stock to make sure that things are ready for you when you need them. 

But we had an opportunity come up from someone who needed to sell their production line. So last week I met with them, I inspected the production line, we fired it up and made sure everything was working okay. It's currently on its way to Fargo right now! 

it's expected to be delivered this Thursday morning. There's some electrical work that we're going to need to do but once we get that up and running the first order of business is going to be using that production line to create ReFuel.

ReFuel is our post-industrial scrap that then is pelletized.  So spools that were out of spec, they were color transitions that also weren't consistent with diameter and sometimes just the very start or stop of a production run before the diameter really got dialed in. So that is filament that has been re-extruded. The color is going to be all over the map. Sometimes it's kind of a purplish muddy brown, other times it's a red, really just depends on what we were running on those days.

So ReFuel is going to be coming back! It kind of depends on when we get the electrical up and running and then just testing, making sure that the line is working well in our Fargo facility. But my hope is that by the middle of September we'll have some ReFuel in stock that you can be buying. I know it's very popular with a lot of people out there. 

The other thing is that we are still having some of our inventory fulfilled from Amazon's warehouse. You may have noticed if you placed an order with us that you'll have some product that is shipping from Fargo and some product that is probably even being delivered by an Amazon delivery vehicle.

That is because we have that much of our inventory at the Amazon FBA Warehouse so we use that for fulfilling many of our Amazon orders and then we're also using that inventory to fulfill orders that come in through our website in case it's something that we don't have in stock in the Fargo facility. 

We're working on having more and more of our orders being fulfilled entirely from the Fargo facility but there may just be some delays on getting that done. So, unfortunately, some of those items are going to ship a little bit more slowly until we have that back in our facility so we can have more control over that. We're working towards it - this is just kind of part of the transition.

I appreciate everyone's patience on this. Similarly, 4 kg spools - we just really won't be able to take new orders for those unless it's going to be a special order. I know at one point we said, “Hey, you can place this order. It will be available on back order and it enters the production queue.”

Right now, until we get the 1 kg production really locked down and we are really feeling good about keeping that inventory in stock, then we'll be able to go ahead and start doing 4 kg spools.

We'll likely just do 4 kg spools in things like Midnight Black because that's the material that moves the most, by far. The others, just they're too unpredictable. So a lot of those will still be special order. We have a way to make them, it just ends up being a long lead time. Right now, realistically, it's four to six weeks.

One of the other things that I wanted to talk about is how we're doing our order fulfillment. So one of the things that I'm doing with all of the inventory that was manufactured through Nexa3D and through Essentium, now that it's in our warehouse we're going through and inspecting all of the spools making sure that they have a good vacuum seal.

If it's very obvious that they've lost a vacuum seal we're going to go ahead, reseal those, put a new packet of desiccant in there, also make sure to blow any of the dust off to make sure that when you're getting the spool of filament it's in as good of condition as possible.

These are still our 3D-Fuel formulations, so you don't have to worry about that but we’re just making sure that what you're getting is in as good of a quality as possible. Now, we're not able to do that with the inventory that's at Amazon's warehouse. Again that's just another balancing act that we're working through. Along with that is we're working to make sure that as many of the spools that we have going out as possible are produced on AMS compatible spools.

We have been manufacturing the 3D-Fuel on AMS compatible spools since October of last year but, prior to that, there were a couple of colors that had been produced in quite large quantities that were on non-AMS compatible spools. I know some of those colors, especially in the Tough PLA are Midnight Black, Snow White, Industrial Gray, and Iron Red. So, if you're ordering any of those four colors, there's a good chance it's going to be on a non-AMS compliant spool at least until we're able to turn that inventory over which is something that we are working to do. 

So, I'm just working through that. I'm also working on a way to identify which spools those are so that maybe we can run a sale on the non-AMS compliant spools but, until I have that figured out, I just don't know what we're going to be doing with that. I don't know what our counts are for those spools. It's, as you can imagine, going through a lot of this inventory, it's going to take some time. We're not going to be able to do all of it overnight so just working through all of that. 

Another item is that we have now closed the survey. So, if you filled out that survey that we sent out via email or you came across it on the website, thank you so much for taking the time to answer those questions. We really want to make sure that we're doing this right and some of the big takeaways from this survey, and we may do a deeper dive at some point in the future, but this first point, not really a big surprise, 98.5% of you responded that you use 1.75 mm diameter filament. We always knew it was high, that just reinforces that and then 6.5% are using 2.85 mm diameter filament.

You'll notice that adds up to more than 100%. That's because some people are using multiple brands of printers, multiple diameters. So just kind of an interesting insight there.

The top three 3D printer brands that you are using: Creality, Bambu Lab, Prusa, in that order. Then there's a ton that make up the rest. I'll probably end up doing a deeper dive on that later on. One of the things that I see that people have been asking for is better material profiles for each printer. That's something that we would love to do but we don't have the bandwidth or all of the hardware inhouse to be able to test print profiles for every material, every brand, every variant of that.

But what we're going to do is put together a program where, in exchange for free filament, we'd like you, the experts that are that are using this material on a daily basis, to help us get to the best print profile possible for the different materials. Kind of have this be a collaborative effort.  

I'm still working on how to set that up, but I think that that's going to be the best way to do this. So if you have a printer and you're using it hundreds or thousands of hours and you have that much experience under your belt you're going to know that hardware. You're going to really know what works well for it. We'd love to have 3D-Fuel materials get tested on that so we have a good profile for you and for others.

Along with that, we want to start creating more content. I've talked with multiple people, some of you set up those 15-minute calls with me.  I really appreciate that - it was great to get to talk to so many of you. One big thing is you feel that 3D-Fuel really just isn't out there enough as a brand. We absolutely agree.

We're working on how to be addressing that but we want to be doing more collaborations with content creators. If that is you and you're a content creator, please reach out. We already have a system in place so that we can handle those types of things. We have an affiliate program set up so we can get you a discount code. If you're creating content you can share it with your followers. You can be getting a commission on those sales that you generate. We just really want to be getting out there as much as we can and we need your help to do that and we want to make sure we're giving you something in return for that help.

Similarly, even if you're not a content creator but you're taking pictures of your prints, if you're using 3D-Fuel materials, the best thing you can be doing is tagging us in them so that we can reshare them. We're really trying to get our social channels built back up and get them so that there's content on at least a semi-consistent basis.

One big piece of feedback was that people want to see more printed parts in the various colors that we have. We offer 40 colors in Standard PLA+, 40 colors in Tough Pro PLA+ and 25 colors in the Pro PCTG, and we're planning to add more colors on top of that. You guys want to see what the printed parts look like.

Of course lighting conditions are going to be different, print settings are going to make a difference in that - with faster printers you can have more of a matte finish, slower printers and/or hotter temperatures you're going to have more of a glossy finish, but still. We want to 

start getting more of that information out there so that it's more clear to you what your prints are going to look like if you buy 3D-Fuel materials and print with them.

We also are are just trying to figure out how to compensate people for doing that too. It's likely going to be in loyalty points through our loyalty program. That's something that I guess not everyone was aware of that we had. There were a few people that asked if we could have a loyalty program! We actually do have a loyalty program set up where you earn points for every dollar that you spend and then you can exchange those points for store credit so you can use it for future purchases.

At the end of the day, it acts like another 3% discount on your material purchases. I think those are the biggest items. I'm going to try and do these updates, maybe not on a weekly basis but, for this first little bit, there's going to be a lot going on so I'm going to be kept pretty busy getting that production line up and running, getting the ReFuel back in stock, and making 

sure that we're getting as much inventory in our Fargo facility as possible so that you have a more consistent ordering experience.

One last thing is when I was asking what people are looking for for additional materials, you guys provided some really good responses. So we have a pretty clear direction on where we're going to be going with that and my goal is by the end of September, we'll start releasing some of 

those of those materials that you requested, ReFuel aside. We're hoping to be having the ReFuel back in stock by the middle of this month but if you want to be notified right away when that is back in stock, make sure to go to that product page and add yourself to the wait list. Once that product is back in stock, the wait list automatically emails out everyone that's on the wait list and then, what we've seen in the past with ReFuel, it kind of turns into a first come, first serve. 

ReFuel can tend to sell really quickly - we also have people that are buying hundreds of spools of refuel at a time. We're going to try and build up an inventory so that when we've listed it as back in stock we don't have one person or two people that end up taking all of that inventory and then making it that no one else is able to buy it even though they just received the email notification. 

So we're working on that but if you guys have any other pieces of feedback, please please reach out. Let me know what we can do better. If there's something that you think you wanted to add to the survey or you didn't get a chance to fill the survey out, again, just leave a comment or send me an email directly. 

If you email sales@3Dfuel.com, then it enters our ticketing system. It makes sure that the email doesn't get lost. It can get routed to me if you want to talk directly to me just mention that this message is for John and then we'll be able to go from there. We're excited to be back in Fargo!

Right now you're seeing my my personal apartment. It's certainly not some of the workshops you see on YouTube but it's something small and then I end up going into the shop and that's where the production facility is. I think a lot of these videos are going to be filmed from here, from my apartment simply because it's quieter. 

Although I say that, but you probably heard the landlord vacuuming the hallway outside so hopefully that didn't make it too difficult to understand. 

Thank you for watching, thank you for supporting 3D-Fuel! I really appreciate it, my team appreciates it, and I hope to talk to you soon.

I just remembered one more thing - we are going to be going to the event 3D Printopia that used to be called the East Coast Rep Rap Fest or ERRF for short. I believe this is the year that they rebranded. We've been there before I think two other times but now that I have control of the brand back, we're going to be going to a lot more of those kinds of events that we can meet with you in person and just talk more 3D printing.

So again, thank you, and we'll talk soon.