The cost of the filament is about $30 to $50 per kg. In practice, I've found that a spool lasts me for about 2 or 3 months with vigorous printing. Otherwise, it lasts me about 6 months with less frequent printing.
There are people making machines that recycle the plastic to make your own filament. This means that you can buy ABS pellets for much cheaper and roll your own. Search for the Filabot or the Lyman Extruder.
I'm not as familiar with the filament industry as I should be, but I do know that the quality of your filament makes a big difference in the quality of your prints. Because 3D printers are open systems, there's no feedback as to how much plastic is actually extruded. 3D printers depend on the filament to have a consistent diameter in order to make good prints. Because the layer heights are so small, and a change in diameter is a squared change in area cross-section of the filament, any slight changes to the diameter will affect the amount extruded, and hence the quality of your prints. So quality control probably adds to the cost of the plastics, but with good reason.
So far, the 3D printing community hasn't succumbed to lock-in of printing material like the inkjet printers. All the material is interchangeable between printers
There are people making machines that recycle the plastic to make your own filament. This means that you can buy ABS pellets for much cheaper and roll your own. Search for the Filabot or the Lyman Extruder.
I'm not as familiar with the filament industry as I should be, but I do know that the quality of your filament makes a big difference in the quality of your prints. Because 3D printers are open systems, there's no feedback as to how much plastic is actually extruded. 3D printers depend on the filament to have a consistent diameter in order to make good prints. Because the layer heights are so small, and a change in diameter is a squared change in area cross-section of the filament, any slight changes to the diameter will affect the amount extruded, and hence the quality of your prints. So quality control probably adds to the cost of the plastics, but with good reason.
So far, the 3D printing community hasn't succumbed to lock-in of printing material like the inkjet printers. All the material is interchangeable between printers