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I saw a 3d printer using plastic pellets instead of filament.
Is this a good idea? Because I never saw anyone doing this.
Seller says "in this way it won't run out of filament" but I have the impression of imprecise extrusions (machine was fitted with a big 0.8mm nozzle)
Pellet printing is usually used in larger printers. You can get much higher flow rates and the pellets are cheaper than filament. That's good when your build volume is measured in cubic meters and you are using many kilograms of plastic in one print.
There are downsides as well. High throughput pellet feeding hot ends are insanely expensive. But there are practical issues as well, retraction can be really tough to dial in.
This was my first question how the hell do you do retraction???
A little vacuum pump, like a carburetor on a motorcycle from the 70's? Hell if I know, but that's my idea.
I mean the same way, retraction isn't pulling the molten filament out of the nozzle in FDM so I'm either filament or peeler based extrusion you just run it in reverse briefly.
Do you need to? If you put a valve on the nozzle, then you can stop flow even more reliably than retraction does