With the way our environment currently is, it comes to no surprise that growing industries become more conscious when it comes to wastes. For 3D printing, the beer-based 3D print filament takes things to another level by not only using byproducts but being an innovative idea as well. Tom and Tracy Hazzard talk about this new filament and emphasize why it’s important to support this, even if they’re a competition in the business. They take their stand and explain why cooperation is better than competition in growing the industry’s value.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Buzzed Beer 3D Print Filament and Collaborative Capitalism

3D printers have long advocated how 3D printing is a zero to low waste manufacturing process, and with the development of Buzzed Beer 3D print filament, it has opened the doors to all sorts of recycled filament opportunities. By repurposing the by -products made from the production of beer, this boozy filament makes it fun to “go green” with 3D printing and the perfect example of collaborative capitalism.

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We have a new topic. What are we going to talk about, Tracy?

Collaborative capitalism. Tom and I believe in the process of doing business called collaborative capitalism, which means that you collaborate with those that are doing great things and everybody wins. It’s not a competition, heavy competition, and kill your competition. Competition is good because competition says that there’s a market.

A large portion of our whole career, everything was about competition, hating your competition and trying to beat your competition. We’re trying to hide the unique things you’re doing from your competition so they wouldn’t copy you. A lot of our experience, even over in Asia, supported some of those thoughts in manufacturing things over there. We have seen the light and come to realize that there are a lot of businesspeople and great people on this earth, especially in this country that we’ve come to know, that have helped us see that cooperation beats competition any day.

For that, we’d give a shout-out to our fellow podcaster at Fargo 3D Printing because they have launched a cool product like beer filament, coffee filament and hemp filament. A little bit of that is maybe not the perfect fit for Earth Week but I’m making a stretch here because that sounds too cool.

It is a filament that is made from the byproducts of the beer process. I know at least that much because I saw some information. I don’t know about the hemp or the coffee but they have a large component of these products. It’s made from beer, hemp and coffee. I wonder if the guys who use the hemp stuff hang around the printer too much.

It’s cool that they have worked on an eco-spool. They’re working on bio-based materials, not oil. There are a lot of things that they’re doing there and the video for the beer filament is awesome. You, guys, should go to it. I love their names. They have a fun time and their podcast is fun. There’s no question about it. It’s a little more techy and a little bit different than our speed, which is why we felt there was room for us in the market. We never intended to compete against it. Let’s all participate and have our little area of the market. We’ll help the market grow together and everybody wins in that. It is the way that we believe that’s the best way to work. We think it makes for better earth when we don’t think about each other in that competitive and nasty way. Whenever there’s a good product, I don’t care who makes it. I’m going to give a shout-out to it. We haven’t tried it yet but I totally want to.

This is not a review. We can’t vouch for this. Some of it was out of stock, so we couldn’t get it. The reality is when we looked at the podcast market, the landscape of other 3D printing podcasts, there were a few. That was a good sign because that said, people want to know about this. Podcasting is a great way to reach them. We went out there with the idea to do something a little different that we thought people would enjoy and be wanted to come back and listen to day after day, week after week. The way our audience is growing, that’s true. We have nothing against those guys. They’re definitely more on the high tech or technical end of things and we’re a little bit more on the business and design side of things. I try to get into some tech subjects but there’s room for everybody. I agree with you, this stuff is cool. I want to try it as soon as I can.

I would love to find out if it smells like coffee or beer.

If we can have our office smell like coffee while we’re printing, I’m in.

Beer 3D Print Filament: There are a lot of great people, especially in this country, who will be willing to help you see that cooperation beats competition any day.

The thing is it’s still PLA-based so you can’t print a coffee cup with coffee filament, but we could print a coffee sleeve.

We have designed a coffee sleeve and there’s going to be some news coming up about that soon because this is going to be the first 3D print design of ours, which is going to be available out there for any of you to get. I’m not going to reveal too much. That’s coming up here and we’re letting you know about that.

The first Hazz Design 3D print file available to download.

The file won’t be available initially. It will be eventually but people can get the product for free. They can get the actual printed item and then the file will come later. We’ll make that happen but initially, it’s just the actual printed item.

We can’t do a coffee cup but we could do a coffee sleeve.

The colors of that would go great on your coffee cup. The dark coffee color, that beer color is Java looking.

We should get some of that and that one looks like it’s available. The beer is not so much and the hemp one is not yet either as it looks. They are out of stock but there are some cool things that they’re doing here. They have glass-filled PLA and they have a couple of these ones where they change from one color to another. They go from blue filament to green filament. They give you the mud mix that makes this, but it does look cool. We’ve seen that transition happen and if it’s the right color, it looks good. If they’re transitioning from blue to some other weird color, it looks like dirt.

You could use that for things. You really don’t care what color they are when you’re printing. Do they charge less for that material?

They do charge less for it and that’s a good deal. At the same time, they don’t tell you what color you’re going to get. It’s a grab bag.

I’m having a déjà vu back when we lived in Michigan when I was first designing products out there. I worked with some guys who did some engineering work on fruit loop extruders with a cereal company in Battle Creek, Michigan. They engineered and produced this machine. They make fruit loops. They make red, orange, yellow and purple ones and there was always a transition when they would change colors and the dyes would change. There was a bunch of fruit loops that came out looking like mud. I never forget this when the guys told me what happens to those fruit loops that are that mud color. They would save and package them into fruit loops that were distributed in Canada. The USA market gets FDC dye red and yellow number that gets you the pure colored fruit loops. The Canadians get the transitions. That’s what they used to do.

Our poor Canadian readers, I’m sorry if you grew up on that.

Beer 3D Print Filament: Our mission is to create a value for products and make sure people understand that. It will be cost-effective, economical, and a sustainable business for all parties.

I wonder if somebody like Jon Biller would confirm if they would have fruit loops and be like, “What is this color? Americans don’t understand colors?”

They wonder why it didn’t sell in Canada. Why do moms in Canada do not want to feed their kids fruit loops? Because it looks like dirt. That’s why I thought we should bring this up and mention the cooperative community. I want to be clear about this because we had this happen where we were listening to a speaker and he spoke about how he did this cool thing where he managed to get himself a job coding. He didn’t know how to code yet. He “hired” some coders at another school