Interesting ... I've been playing around with the idea of having a hopper (mounted above the 3D printer) that fed pellets to the print head and used the same he

Interesting ... I've been playing around with the idea of having a hopper (mounted above the 3D printer) that fed pellets to the print head and used the same heater to extrude the filament right as it was being joined to the work-piece. The two stage process is convenient for existing printers, but wouldn't it be nicer if new printers took pellets as their raw material?