CHEAP 3D Printing Filament: The honest TRUTH
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มิ.ย. 2024
- Get great results every time by following my free Design and Print Checklist: smallbatchfactory.com/design-...
This video is about my experiences with many different filament brands like SunLu, Jayo, Geetech, Eryone, Amzon Basics, Extrudr, DasFilament, Material4Print and YourDroid. I also talk about nozzle clogging and if cheap filament is dangerous for your printer. All shown models are either printed on my Prusa Mk3s or FYSETC Voron 0.2.
My equipment: kit.co/SmallBatchFactory (Affiliate Links) - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Get great results every time by following my free Design and Print Checklist: smallbatchfactory.com/design-and-print-checklist
The truth behind filaments is that if you buy the on pallets they cost between 6-8$ per kilo and biggest cost is qa,labor,shipping and merchandise. If i buy 22 tons it will cost me arround 3-6k $. And this is for brands with certificate and all the sds data. There is no difference is the material is carbot, glass filled etc.. . It’s cheaper to use high quality resin when you extrude filaments as it is reliable and when biggest cost is labor and etc. failed roll cost more than difference between cheap and good resin.
This is the first of your videos I've come across and I have to say I agree with your assessment overall. Using cheaper filament is perfectly fine these days as the vast majority of it is coming from the same few factories. SUNLU, eSUN, and Polymaker are likely the biggest filament companies in China at this point and they all produce a quality product. If you purchase from a generic brand these days there's a high probability it's just a rebranded spool from one of the three companies above. The only negative of purchasing rebranded spools is the potential of receiving old/wet filament. They generally don't put production dates anywhere on the spools and they can sit in a damp warehouse for ages before you receive them.
I have great results with Sunlu and love their ABS-Like resin. PolyMaker is a fantastic filament too.
Nice to hear, I happen to have ordered 3 bottles of that resin around Christmas. Haven't tried it though. Creality water soluble sadly often cracks at some point.
Polymaker is indeed great, I use their PolyLite Polycarbonate and it prints really well for such an advanced material.
I love Sunlu PLA +, If you buy it in sale you pay 13€ per Kilo, LOVE IT
I mostly agree with your assessment with the exception of one manufacturer: OWL-Filament. I bought a spool of their PETG and it had random thick blobs (>2mm) that get stuck on the heat break and thus cause a clog. Other than that, I've printed a ton of 9 bucks/kg filament just fine.
Regarding cardboard spools and the Bambulab: You can re-wind a cardboard spool onto an empty plastic one, there are even 3d-printable machines to help with that.
There are surely some horrible exceptions out there which I luckily never used. In rare cases you'll probably also encounter brand name material with manufacturing defects.
Someone else commented you can just print an adapter for the spools to use them in the AMS. If that rally works that sounds like the easiest fix.
This is far from the first time I hear exactly that complaint about Owl, so I am going to treat that as a 'where there is smoke, there is a fire' kind of thing. But yeah, never had issues with cheap or expensive or inbetween filament. Any issues I experienced fall into the 'I likely messed up myself' category. Some are easier to tune or are just closer to the values you normally print at than others. 🤷♂️ Good video!
That has been my experience with all PETGs, regardless of brands. Usually clears up after those starter layers because at least in my case its based on the squish, but can stick around at times.
@Mawyman2316 I recently had that issue in my Voron 2.4 and tackled it by reducing the flow in the first layer to 35%. I set it in the Slicer as custom layer change GCODE. Alternatively I could've set the Z distance higher for the first layer.
Wow, fantastic job on your video script, production, filming, editing, and overall education/entertainment! Clearly you put in a lot of time to these videos. It helps to see an expert verify that even cheap filament can do a good job! Please keep these great videos coming!
I really appreciate to hear that! Making this video basically consumed my whole weekend. There's definitely more to come though.
@@SmallBatchFactory I totally get it. I don't think very many people understand just how much time it takes to do a video as good as yours!
Thank you for this. I run a cheap Chinesium printer upgraded with the cheapest parts I could get (minus the SKR 3 and TMC2209's) and I feed it almost exclusively "no-name" filament that I find for $10 or less on Amazon sales. Some of the higher quality filament produces _noticeably_ cleaner looking parts, but since everything I do is functional, I don't care. (Notable exception: Tianse orange PLA, literally shatters under the strain of its own winding.)
I had a few roll of Ender PLA shattering as well after a while. But never while printing, only when it was in my MMU filament buffer for a while.
I just found your channel.
Unfortunately, I am surrounded by makers who focus on figurines, cosplay, and fidget toys.
Your focus on making practical prints is just what I was looking for. In particular, what you don't need, such as worrying about "brand name" filament.
Have you any advice on dehydrators and storage for hygroscopic filaments?
You're welcome to stay!
For dehydration I use a Sunlu filament dryer that I got for 20 bucks. Formerly I just used our regular oven, but that's probably no good idea long term. I'd go for a specific printing dryer since you can even print directly out of them.
For storage I use IKEA 365+ boxes (don't know if they're available in the US). I filled them partially with silica perls. For Nylon and PC I modified one with pneumatic tubes and boxes for the silica. It can be seen briefly at 6:44. They keep the moisture out pretty good. Recently printed a PC part after over a year and everything was fine.
I'm on my last roll of no name PLA that costed 8euro/kg that I bought in bulk in 2018. No issues if I keep moisture away from it.
Your comment about strong cheap ASA fumes stands out to me. I don't want to get cancer from 3D printing, and I don't want to make risk worse by saving $10 on a roll of plastic. I'll stick with brand names.
Don't forget that even expensive ABS releases a lot of fumes. My little Voron smells like the equivalent of a smokers car for example. Be sure to properly ventilate your printing room and keep it out of the living area. This is even true for PLA, although it's not as severe.
Yes, ABS is the worst filament. ASA is better in every way. However both are known carcinogens and PLA isn't, so the risk from fumes is not the same. imo breathing Styrene is like smoking cigarettes.
@JamieBainbridge oh it definitely is. I lasered some Polystyrene plates yesterday, it smells horrible. With the right equipment it's not hazardous, but it's still not great.
PLA isn't as harmful but also shouldn't be treated as totally harmless either.
thanks for the helpful video i was thinking to use a bit cheaper filament and this really helped
😀
I really like sunlu PETG and ABS. Printed a lot of KGs and am really happy.
Just finished another roll Sunlu ABS an hour ago. Prints really nice if you got your settings dialed in.
I almost always buy cheap filament, except when I find something that looks really nice and I have a particular project in mind. IIID max is my go to choice.
This is me to a T. No one comes close to beating IIIDMax on their prices, especially their 10/20/30 roll bundle prices with a discount code on top. I've had a handle of issues with their rolls, mostly nozzle clogs due to foreign particles/inconsistent diameter. But a few issues amongst hundreds of spools means they are few and far between.
And don't forget that even an expensive brand doesn't mean you never get a clog.
One of the big things about the cardboard spools is that they usually have a resin mixed with the cardboard and make them unrecyclable anyways. In many ways plastic spools can be more reusable and recyclable then cardboard depending on the materials used
The biggest benefit that you get from cardboard is cost efficiency and most manufacturing companies have just collected higher profits rather then passing it to us in reduced product cost
That's certainly possible. There are also companies that buy empty plastic spools for a small reward. At least where I live plastic gets burned for electricity, so no recycling happening here.
I used to buy only atomic filament; excellent printing, colors and quality. However, I recently have been trying some of the other, budget brands like esun, sunlu and jayo, and honestly they all perform similarly. So more oftne than not now, I'm shopping for deals.
Great content btw, subscribed!
Thanks! That's the thing, expensive filament mostly lost it's edge.
I think the differences between filaments show up more when you need precise tolerances, specific finishes, better abrasion resistance, greater heat tolerance, or the best layer adhesion. I have had both PLA+ and PLA Pro from Inland for example, and the + stomps the Pro in pretty much every respect including ease of printing. I suspect the + is much closer to an engineering grade of PLA, while the Pro is bottom dollar PLA and I'm not sure why it would be considered better than any normal PLA. The + is simply better in every respect, especially temperature resistance and layer adhesion. I ran both filaments through a lot of tests to find ideal printing settings. Both at their best, there is a very clear winner. Anyways, I generally agree with your video. I'm just saying smaller specific differences can vary from brand to brand, by product line, and even by color. I've even had great success with the cheapest TPU, just to put that out there. Who knows the brand Longer? Well, they exist!
I suspect PLA+ to contain additives. That would also explain why it is way less brittle. For me it's a different category albeit the names are pretty similar.
Of course there are differences, it's just negligible for most everyday uses. If it's a critical part I also use the good stuff. I've printed a display holder out of Polymaker Polycarbonate because I definitely don't want that thing to drop my display for example.
@@SmallBatchFactory Yep, I think you're pretty spot on!
These are great videos, please keep making videos like these! I’m sure you’ll blow up soon
Thanks! I hope you're right :-)
I feel that moving up to a 0.6mm steel nozzle helps when using a variety of filaments brands.
It certainly makes Nozzle clogging harder. But since I use a CHT Nozzle the internal holes are smaller anyway.
I only print big items. 0.8mm nozzle and looking to go bigger.
I printed a few things with a 1.8mm (no typo) Nozzle. Not very detailed but did the job at hand.
I ordered a bunch of Kingroon PLA filament a couple of times, dirt cheap at $5.50/kg
It seems to have an odor when printing, as well as extra (Glycol?) that make the prints rather soft, greasy, and a little too flexible on the bed at 60c. seems to prefer a cold bed, the heat tolerance is quite a bit lower than most PLA I've printed.
That sounds like a very odd PLA. Who knows whatever they blended into the mix...
I use gst3d Pla+ without spool. Last time i payed 8,49 euro ex tax per spool. I bought 14kg 🙂. The quality is very good, sometimes the vacuum packaging is leaking due to shipping(easy fix when they arrive). They print very clean and are very strong.
That's also a very good variant. I totally forgot to mention the Master Spool in the video for which DasFilament sells spool-less filament that I use wherever I can. They're above 20€ per kg though.
Well, I used to do that too, but over the years got tired of clogs, blobs on cheap petg, crumbly PLA. For now I stick with Prusament and Protopasta. Saves me the time to troubleshoot.
What brands or sources did you use? Never had any issues, not even on a 5 day print with no name PLA on my CR-10
Crumbly PLA and blobs on PETG prints sounds like the filament got exposed to moisture
Exactly my thought
@@SmallBatchFactory Sunlu, hobbyking (not premium), Tianse, 3DSolutech, Sunlu, Echen, Esun PLA 3.00mm.
I've noticed that cheap filament goes brittle faster from absorbing moisture. I suspect the more expensive brands have more additives to slow this down and that leaves me unsure how smaller printed parts will fair over time. After all, in the end the part has the same plastic as the roll and if it gets brittle on the roll it's going to get brittle in the part as well.
I notice this because of my workflow. I have less issues with jams when I leave filament in the nozzle after printing and then pull it out during the warm-up the next time I print. Heat, pull it out, shove the new filament in with a quick manual purge, and it starts printing. Yeah, structural parts... don't really care about the looks.
So, I just cut the filament near the entrance to the bowden extruder, leaving the rest. When pulling that out, if it's been a week or so, the cheap filament almost always crumbles into sections and I have to pause the printer, pull the bowden tube out of the nozzle and shove the bits out of the tube with new filament. Not a big deal, certainly not enough to make me pay more for filament, but it does leave me wondering about the long-term strength of the printed parts.
Now that you mention it, I remember having that with Ender PLA. The printed parts themselves turned out flawless, but the filament unspooled in my MMUs filament buffer regularly broke after a while.
So far I never had any parts fail because of fatigue. I don't have any long term comparisons though.
Interesting, I have the same experience with some old, cheap, whitlabel filament. It is wound on 50mm core spools with an annoyingly small 40mm inner diameter but 1.5 times the width of any normal spool holder. Once unwound and stretched, it reliably breaks after 1-2 hours, sometimes shattering in multiple pieces. The printed parts however are equally strong as every other new, branded filament. And also older prints are still holding up fine. My best guess is that melting the filament will restructer the polymer and relieve it from any stress from pulling and spooling during manufacturing.
@@highcooley I had assumed moisture rather than stress. So, I'm running a test. I've just pulled 2 sections off the roll (stored in a bag with desiccant), straightened them, and put one in another bag with some desiccant while the other is just sitting in the open. I'll see how they compare over the next few days.
I do think it's moisture, considering I've had the end of a roll go brittle after I didn't bother pulling it off (maybe 20 wraps or so). And, drying it did seem to soften it back up. Though, that too could just have been relieving stress. Anyway, not a hard test and we shall see... at least with the filament in question I have.
@@highcooley Test results so far... are confusing. I took 2 lengths of filament, straightened them out(ish), put one in a bag with some desiccant and the other out in the air. Neither are crumbling after 6 days. Went to print, the filament on the roll, in a bag with desiccant, had the end crumble but the rest was fine. Just the end, the part I had fed through the holes to keep it from unwinding, that crumbled but the rest was normal. And, as expected, the filament in the bowden tube crumbled as usual. Not either end, just in the middle.
So, yeah... I'm confused. It's not moisture. I still don't think it's stress because I bent the lengths I pulled off for testing, even been bending the ends a bit for testing the first couple days. Why inside the tube? Why just the filament pulled away from the roll and fed through the spool holes for keeping? Why not the filament I pulled off the roll?
Just having one of those days where I thought I knew what was going on... but it just 'aint so. I mean, it's not a big deal... but it's starting to bug me.
Anyway, I significantly bent the length of filament sitting out in the open. Didn't shatter/crumble at all. As flexible as it came off the roll. But, it's now been bent about as hard as it would have going through the spindle keeper holes. Nothing to do but keep going until I figure it out.
@@4Fixerdave Argh, I know that feeling too well. But this behaviour is very bizarre indeed. On my side on the bowden printer, it ususally snaps between roll and extruder and multiple times in the bowden tube. But on the direct drive, it always snaps twice and curls up into its wound shape, once between roll and filament runout sensor and once between sensor and right before entering the short tube of the extruder.
I decided to stop worrying and print the three old rolls of this filament into gridfinity boxes asap on the direct drive for easier removal of snapped filament.
Great info - it’s like all the questions I’ve been googling like mad to try to get coherent answers all wrapped up into a super concise breakdown.
Even your humor is spot on - cheers!
Thank you! Isn't it funny, the more free information we have out there the harder it gets to find something truly concise. And a bit of fun helps with learning :-)
Do you still have a link to the really cool marble layout in the video at 2:34?
Sure, it's made by SunLu. The link should work globally, let me know if it doesn't.
amzn.to/3SNJ8hE
@@SmallBatchFactory thank you for this! I actually was referring to the marble run model, its so neat! Thank you!
Oh, I see. Here you go:
www.thingiverse.com/thing:1385312
@@SmallBatchFactory thank you kindly!
wieder mal tolles video mach weiter so!
Danke! Freut mich, dass es dir gefällt.
I totally agree when it comes to more advanced filament like CF-Nylon and CF-ASA I struggled for ages trying to get cheap ones to print untill I decided to spring for a more expensive CF-Nylon and it just printed so much better 👍 but I've used all sorts of PLA with no issues and actually one of the cheapest PETG i bought prints amazing so I exclusively use that brand now for PETG, great video dude looking forward to the next one ✌️.
Absolutely, the cheap ASA I showed has a Nylon sybling from the same vendor. Very nasty to print. If you use the recommended settings everything just delaminates instantly. You have to go around 25 degrees over the max temp, but then it's really sturdy, although still a nightmare to print.
Thank you very much! Holidays are busy, but the new year will definitely bring more videos.
i use mostly geetec PLA with my ender 3 pro with direct drive, but on other stuff like TPU u bought the cheapest and fastest i can get i had no issues. i think all use the same base material and for filament diameter consistency there are more or less all the same. metal parts in the filament i had one time but this came from my brass extruder gear. it worked for 6 month with one missing tooth and then it split in half.
i print only PLA and TPU for my projects. i building rc fpv racing planes. i use the PLA for every part the TPU for the flexible connections of the control surfaces and for the inner parts as inertial damper to protect the electronics for hard turns, vibrations and impact. i build fast, lightweight, maneuverable planes in a single wing design with winglet on the nose and a contaminating props at the back with a hollow shaft and two independent bldc motors. if i turn to hard rotor blades bending and coliding with each other and lipo batteries delaminating internal, motor barrings overheating. i love flying this fast planes but if you over done it something will break and you crash. the frame alone is only 20€ and 30h of printing and constructing worth but the internals over 300€ so i try to protect them as much i could. but unfortunately 90% of the electronics is dead after an impact with 150 to 240kmh.
building a strong but lightweight structure with good flight characteristic is not easy but fun ^^
Oh yes definitely! Id love to get into Drone racing but I have too many hobbies already. For now I'm sticking with Lift off in my Steam Deck.
At least you can replace the frame cheaply. Those parts are expensive enough if you have to buy them. Why don't you use ABS? PLA is the heaviest of the common materials, ABS the lightest.
@@SmallBatchFactory TPU is heavy too. the reason why i use PLA, is my machine and slicer is calibrated for PLA and TPU prints with the exact same settings like PLA. i know PLA is heavy and ridged but the ABS can flex more. all parts getting coated in resin for better airflow. felx is something i dont want, it is unpredictable if you going fast. a bit to much and you loose lift, ither from flaking of the resin skin or twisting the whole structure. you wont feel anything of this while turning unles it is too late. another thing is temperature i dont care about temperature, the motors with gear set and two hollow axle are in a aluminum chasing all temperature gets with vents and fin stack dissipated. for the most part this section survives and it is far the expensive one part of the plane. the whole engine section is more then 400€ worth and i build my planes around them.
this section survives 4 to 6 crashes. if it is done the gears and motors mostly undamaged. i build this section out of one single aluminum block this is time consuming and costly
i have a company in my town who can make such complex parts. this thing is strong but lightweight. they make me 5 of them for 300€ and they can make me another gear set.
i have tried to build this section with my printer wit other materials but they fail to fast mostly from stress and overheating.
i flew in the past fpv with quad copter and tri copter but planes are more fun. i dont fly competitive not for money or something. for the most part i fly with friends or alone through the woods and have fun. another simpler plane i build is a big heavy solar glider with a open center frame and a camera that can tilt 360° in all axis in a gyro frame and is controlled with a gyroscope sicked to my googles. my race panes can do this to but only 90° on two axis. this big thing looks like a spacecraft but it can fly over 10h if sunny without sun only 20min. sometimes i fly around and look around and lost the time completely. starting in the summer at 8am and be up in the air until the sun goes down. the radio has a range of 5km and a picture with 400x300 in analog mode have a range of about 2 km but it never cuts out it slowly fades away in noise. i use a big costome antenna with signal enhancer for the video. the signal is not perfect at 500m and degrades further you go and at 2km it is almost only noise and you can barely see whats around you.
but it is fun and you can get lost in it and feels normal after a while^^
i build my planes that way and it works for me and i have fun ^^ if something goes not as planed dont care and do it again. nothing is perfect and sometimes you need time, so take it and do it and have fun. ^^
Sounds like a really fun hobby! I guess temperatures are no issue anyway at those speeds. Analog transmission is absolutely superior in that case, having it fade out slowly has a lot of advantages.
@@SmallBatchFactory temperature is a issue because the insulation property s of hollow structural plastic parts. the aluminum part goes up to 50°C under load the most energy in it is from the motor coils. the rest of the electronics getting pretty hot too but not that dangerous also the inner part is tpu because of inertia dampening and vibration compensation. so it is protecting the hull. for the communication, yea i had to learn that the hard way. i lost signal in flight and it never came back it it was that far away i could not see it and crashed it. i found the plane weeks after the crash based on my memories where i was.
i know some would say digital has more channels and is precise but only if you compare it with the old tech from the 80s and 90s, yes it is cheaper and more capable but only if you stay 700m around you and signal enhancing is way harder.
i flew that way and yea lesson learned. for the racers it is fine going digital because aou stay near the ground and can see it always if the video cuts out.
i use for my solar glider only shielded cables. the antennas are split in 3 sections and are on all corners placed with a shielded background. also i use two independent radios for control the plane i case one dies. the video feed is also send by two systems and i have one telemetry feed i send back over 2G(edge) GSM network.
this thing is packed with electronics i dont know how much it will cost to build a new one but is really expensive. but every thing is analog except for the telemetry it is send over the internet and can also be seen live in the video feed.
i love that thing but i need my spandex catapult to send it in the air. carry that thing around is not so nice but the plane is heavy and has so little power it cant start on its own also it uses the older counterrotating prop system made of wood with big 40cm rotors and no pitch control it cant handle much power. but it works and it was the first plane i build with this system.
Sounds really cool! Redundancy is everything, people seem to forget that. But that's also why we buy more than one printer
Jayo is owned by Sunlu i believe. I have used JAYO as a budget friendly brand of PETG and PLA for a while and have no real complaints (tho their Silk silver PLA has clogged a nozzle, not sure if it was the filament or the cheap nozzle)
That's what I expected. They probably all work together one way or another.
Danke 👍
Consistency of colours between batches may be still a thing only a higher priced brand may guarantee you. Rarely matters for hobby projects, but if you sell to a customer and one batch of parts differs in colour to another this may be a problem. Never done that, just heard it.
According to Slant3D that's a problem with any manufacturer if you use large quantities. But we're talking about tonnes here. As you said, for hobbyists and technical parts it doesn't really matter. You'll probably find color differences in a lot of products if you look inside and have enough to do a comparison.
i use cheap filament all the time even samples that are 5m 10m 20m and they are ABS. even used filament that is 8 years old and still good all depends on the source of the virgin material where it's made, conditions to many factors to begin with. ABS has the best flow just prints so smooth compared to other filaments
Yes definitely, I always loved the surface texture of printed ABS. It also has very low moisture absorption so no need to keep it dry.
Don't know the prices in Germany, but cheapest PETG here in the UK is made... In the UK! The cheapest PLA is made in EU. I don't use Sunlu etc because they are much more expensive here. Even Amazon Basics is more expensive.
That's pretty good! Cheapest German manufacturer I know of is around 20€ per kg of PLA. PETG is around 25€. Amazon Basics isn't as cheap as it used to be though. Sunlu etc. ship from somewhere in the EU, probably from a country that makes import cheap and easy. I guess there's at least one advantage to Brexit.
I’m bit a fan of the cardboard spools, because of how much they vary on outer Diameter, and how often they arrive with damage to the outer edges. If they could have a very consistent outer diameter and find a way to ship them that protects the edges from damage I would gladly switch to being a fan
Since I usually order them in bulk they arrive in a larger carton and usually without damage. Why do you worry about the outer diameter? I use a printed spool roller that takes pretty much any diameter, even the large 2.5kg spools.
@@SmallBatchFactory all but one of my printers have the type of spool holder that roll on the outer edge. I tried printing custom rings to snap on the rolls, but I gave up on printing new sets after 15 sets of slightly varying sizes.
I just need to bite the bullet and print holders that roll on the inner diameter. Those never get damaged. Still I think they need a little more edge protection in smaller shipments.
Exactly the same results for me
I constantly print the cheapest PETG trash amazon has. Sometimes I can get it for $10, but 11 and 12 is more common. I NEVER EVER spend more than 15/KG. I don't even know what premium filament would be like. I just use a dryer for 6 hours before I print.
I've got a few spools from Extrudr and the results look astonishingly perfect. That being said it's just a minor improvement overall. A bit like having your car polished to a mirror finish, it looks great but that's about it.
@@SmallBatchFactory It just isn't that hard to make good PETG. All of the materials and machinery already exist on the open market and have long ago been perfected. There's no reason to believe at this point that one brand of translucent blue PETG would be better than any other. Chances are they come from the same dozen or so manufacturers in China anyway.
@thespacecowboy420 that's true. If a guy like CNC Kitchen can make decent filament at home it can't be that difficult for a factory.
Ich bin sehr Zufrieden mit 9€ PETG von Jayo und hatte nie Probleme, eine 30€ Rolle XPETG von Extruder und die Layer Haltung ist gefühlt nicht vorhanden, die Teile schälen sich gefühlt schon beim Anschauen 😅 (vielleicht habe ich auch eine schlechte Charge erwischt)
Vielleicht muss es heißer gedruckt werden. Ich hab ne Rolle billigstes Nylon das ich locker 25 grad über Angabe drucken muss. Dann ist es richtig stark. Mit Herstellerangabe kannst du wirklich die einzelnen Schichten abziehen...
Interesting
I've been using JAYOs PETG filament for a while now and I'm still impressed on how well it prints despite the cheap pricetag.
Though it's true that the cardboard spools don't work with Bambu's AMS. I've printed a couple of 'spool rings' to make them compatible again.
Sehr gutes Video:)
If those rings are all it takes to make them compatible that's pretty neat and simple.
Dankeschön!
I print with the cheapest filament in EU at the moment, printed more than 50kgs. I print with a p1p at 0.08 to 0.12, when i show pictures of my prints people ask what resin i use. So yeah i agree, "shitty" filament brands caught up to the expensive ones.
Definitely! I printed a whole cosplay helmet for a client out of white label PLA and he was really stoked about the result. It was even on my cheapest machine, since the CR-10 was the only one big enough back then.
difference shows in non pla filaments. for pla dont waste money, go for the 10€ sunlu spools. for example the cheap abs filaments cant even take 80°C, or suffer massive layer adhesion issues. abs+ from esun is brittle as glass but looks cool by beeing super matte. my favorite for now is pla meta, dirt cheap, prints with 600mm/s easily and is undestructible. i really mean it, you wont be able to break a flowtest wall by hand.
Haven't had bad experience with cheap ABS so far but I didn't test all of them.
3 spools (minimum order quantity) of PLA meta arrived yesterday. Let's see how it behaves :-)
I definitely had really really bad abs spool. It advertises as low warping abs, prints@230. Whatever they mixed to abs, the print temperature wasn’t consistent. It works with 230 for awhile and underextrude. If I increase temp to 260 it prints well a bit again then it clogs cause heatcreep. Diameter isn’t consistent that it gets stuck in extruder. I really try to finish the spool, had this one spool for like a year. Tried 3 diff tier printers, I just couldn’t had to throw it away. So does it not warp? I think it warps worse than regular ABS 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Haha, that definitely can happen! I have cheap Nylon which delaminates instantly at the recommended temperature. Need to go 25c above, then it's really strong. But I never managed to print larger than a small gear. I needed a brim twice as large as the initial object.
@@SmallBatchFactory Maybe you could try a print bed made from Pertinax (phenolic paper). Imho great for Nylon and also for ABS. Just don't use the same bed for ABS and for Nylon. After printing ABS on Pertinax, Nylon doesn't want to stick there anymore ...
@Toni_Toaster I heard of those and always wanted to try them. Issue is most print beds today are meant for magnetic sheets, which they aren't. I'd need to do it the old fashioned way with clamps, like on my CR-10
Cheap ABS certainly smells much worse and I assume would be more harmful, so better get ventilation if you are using cheap filaments. eSun and Numaker are the cheapest brands I can recommend.
Yes. Good ventilation is very important even with the most expensive ABS. I recently opened my Voron after not printing for a while and it still smells horrible.
@@SmallBatchFactoryif you print enough abs/Asa/petg in an transparant enclosure you can actually get a thin sticky film to form on the inside of your panels.
Active carbon filters are cheap so id definitely add one to any enclosed build.
@twanheijkoop6753 you're definitely right, I already have a visible layer on my panels. I already have all the parts I would need for a filter, but with the aluminium print bed holder that FYSETC added the regular Nevermore filter doesn't fit. I need to come up with a design of my own.
You probably already know but JAYO, Sunlu and Eryone are the same company.
I think I even mentioned somewhere that I suspect that :-)
im the 69th person to give that like button a solid infill
NICE!
The cheap filaments smell much more strongly, my sunlu pla smells much more than esun ones
That seems to be a common theme. Although it doesn't apply to every cheap filament.
Continuously used Hatchbox PLA out of the boxes no problems. Got some Overture PLA because it was $15. It printed like absolute dog-shit. Constant clogs, terrible quality, etc... Returned.
There's always exceptions to the rule. Never had any issues with clogging though
@@SmallBatchFactory At least for smaller nozzles (the default I use is 0.3mm, but I also had issues as I moved up to and including 0.6mm), the Overture PLA and Nylon (I had also used some of this that I dried VERY well) filaments don't work too well. However if someone generally prints in larger nozzle sizes like 0.8mm or 1.0mm, the Overture filaments would probably be fine. At least for Overture, it just wasn't usable for my needs, but not necessarily for others.
@tjpprojects7192 never tried that brand. I have a no name spool of Nylon that needs to be printed way hotter than stated on the spool. Apart from being hard to print it is pretty strong after that.
Even with the cheap CHT nozzles I use everything was fine in terms of clogging. Don't know if I just got lucky there.