Potential sourcing ABS from China

Hey guys, nophead in particular,

we've been looking for ABS sources in the IRC channel, and we've located a source that sells ABS filament for $1.20/lb, in huge (read: 100kg - 20 000kg) quantities. This would probably be a good potential supplier for the RRRF.

The most important part though is that we test the filament before making any commitments. Now, it should be standard practice to request engineering samples before buying 1000kg orders or whatever, so I believe we should be able to get a hold of a small amount relatively easily. The company that produces it is here: [wallbosen.en.alibaba.com]

Would anyone with a working reprap be able to test this out? Nophead, your name came up when we asked for thorough testing. Interested?

Matt

Yes I can try some for you if you want. The main problems with filament are variations is diameter and roundness. That may not be apparent with a small sample. Do they have a stated tolerance?

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

There isn't a tolerance specified on the website. Do you want to send them a message? They're usually online late evening, EST.

Not really, that would be the early hours GMT.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Got news back!

Hello Matthew,
The ABS welding rods we can supply as follows:
ABS Welding Rods
General size:
Round, double round (2-3.5mm)
Triangle (4x4x5,4x4x6,5x5x7mm)
Flat rectangle (2x8mm)
Or any others sections
according to customers' requirement.
Any length, any color
****The tolerance of 3mm round rod is 2.9mm to 3.1mm.****
The FOB price is USD3.09 per kg.

Hope I can help you.

Best Regards,

Jerry

Tianjin Wallbosen Industrial Co., Ltd
8-1101 Fuxingmen Jiayuan, Dagu South Road, Hexi district, Tianjin City, China 300220
Tel/Fax: 86-22-88212258
Mobile: 86-13752155549
MSN: aspringice@hotmail.com
Skype: wallbosen
Alibaba Trademanager: cn200138323
Yahoo Messenger: twofour@yahoo.cn

Nophead, if those tolerances are acceptable, would you like to contact Jerry directly and request an engineering sample?

P.S. send him a message from the link I posted originally. He doesn't answer instant messages anyways =P.

Thanks,
Matt

This is very interesting. I'd suspected that the Chinese would be the first to recognise that plastic welding rod was a commodity and price it accordingly. This ought to pretty much roll up any American competitors.

---

-------------------------------------------------------

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

2.9 to 3.1 seems as good as anything I can get in the UK. I have asked them for a sample.

I expect the shipping will be a killer unless we buy it by the container.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

This may be something better suited for the RRRF or something similar across the atlantic.

Their minimum order is 50kg anyways, so I don't think it would be realistic for one person to buy.

Matt

talcite Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Their minimum order is 50kg anyways, so I don't
> think it would be realistic for one person to
> buy.
>
At those prices? VERY realistic, depending on the shipping costs.

---

-------------------------------------------------------

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

What kind of volume would 50 or 100 kg be?

From what I've read, it would be between ~US$500-US$1500 for 100kg for shipment to the USA. For 100kg or over, by ship may be cheaper. You can go to something like UPS [wwwapps.ups.com] to get a quick idea. I got quoted 3,632.83 CNY (i.e. 531.100 USD) for 100 kg Shanghai to some random Zip code in NY (10005) but that's presuming volumetric weight doesn't apply, neglecting packaging costs and weight and for an airport to airport service. They do offer pickup from door, delivery to door and customs brokerage but no idea on the price. But I'd say add at least $250 to that price. It's obviously going to depend on what you're delivering to since delivering 100 kg to a 10th storey apartment is different from delivering 100 kg to a warehouse. There may also be customs cost as well.

But let's say if it's US$900 for everythign else with US$265 for 100 kg (if it's US$1.20/lb) thats US$1165 for 100 kg or US$11.65/kg or ~ US$5.3/lb all up (i.e. remember to compare to the total price including shipping you pay locally not just the cost of the product bearing in mind you'd probably get better prices if you buy 100 kg anyway). I don't know what people are paying at the moment but it should give some idea.

You'd probably get a better price for shipping if you shop around of course. Unfortunately shipping in bulk from China to USA is not that cheap (the reverse I believe is very cheap) which ironically AFAIK is the opposite of postage rates :-P

P.S. Not surprisingly, there's a lot of talk on the internet, particularly alibaba about this.
P.P.S. It is also worth asking the supplier if they have a regular company they use and if so how much it cost's.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2009 01:54PM by Nil Einne.

I got a reply, to ship 50Kg to the UK by courier would be about 978USD.

That would make it $22 per kilogram. In contrast I bought 10 lbs from New Image Plastics for $7.95 per lbs plus $50 to ship 10 lbs from US to UK. So it cost $129.5 for 4.53Kg i.e. $28.6 / kg.

Given that 50Kg is too much for an individual, unless you have room to store a small crate, by the time it was divided up and re-shipped it would not be any cheaper. I think it would only make sense to ship a half container load by sea but possibly that would be too much for even the likes of the RRRF and BfB.

The reason it is cheap to ship to China is that there are a lot of empty containers going back. Hence the West's huge trade deficit and the reason all the money has gone East.

Samples are free but I would have to pay for shipping.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2009 04:50PM by nophead.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Yeah, the shipping's pretty steep. I'm thinking we're going to need to buy in large quantities if we want to get something reason. **Courier should definitely be out of the question.** I think we'd be looking for something more like a freight forwarder. For a shipment by ocean, it usually costs about <$1000 for a pallet. I don't know what it would be to ship something from china to europe. Lead times are also usually pretty long, but we're not exactly running out of ABS here either, so there shouldn't be a rush.

I have no idea what the density of ABS is, nor the packing density of the ABS. A pallet should be able to hold about 1000kg though, so the cost becomes pretty insignificant(assuming we can fit it all onto a pallet).

Do you think the RRRF/BfB has space for a pallet?

Also, Nophead, you can ask them to airmail a small sample by EMS. They aren't great shippers, but they're cheap. Anything under a couple pounds only costs a couple dollars I believe.

Matt

Most plastics except the teflons are about the density of water.

---

-------------------------------------------------------

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Forrest, didn't you just ordered a 50kg spool?
What's it's dimension (that way we could estimate how many of these would fit on a palett.
I doubt that anybody wants to have a bigger spool than that laying around since it's no fun to lift a bigger spool of filament from the palett at all

'sid

sid Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Forrest, didn't you just ordered a 50kg spool?
> What's it's dimension (that way we could estimate
> how many of these would fit on a palett.
>
I ordered 20 lbs of ABS and Jim was kind enough to put it on a spool which ordinarily handles, I am told, 50 lbs. I have no idea whether this spool represents some sort of industry standard or whether it is just something that Jim finds convenient.



The spool stands 15 inches high and is 14 inches in diameter. The spool volume is 14 inches high and the centre void is 8 inches in diameter. That lets you have right at 1450 in^3 for filament (roughly 23800cm^3) if you don't let the filament bulge beyond the rim of the spool. Now my 20 lbs fills right at 1.75 inches of the spool about 750 in^3 (roughly 12300 cm^3). Now looking on my plastics datasheet you get 0.037 lbs/in^2 which means that if there were no voids between filaments you'd have 27.75 lbs of ABS on the spool. Now I have 20, which means that the voids ratio for 3 mm filament is about 28%. A theoretical very tight void ratio would be a bit under 22%.

Now at that sort of voids ratio you could wind about 38 lbs of ABS on this spool without having it bulge over the rim of the spool. You'd obviously have to let it bulge to get 50 lbs on it, which means that you couldn't stack them rim-to-rim on a palett.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2009 11:56AM by Forrest Higgs.

---

-------------------------------------------------------

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Ups, that wasn't even close *gg* sorry

nevertheless a good point to start assuming 15x15od inches for around 40lbs
a (euro)palett is 120 x 80 cm so around six spools per layer. Assuming 3 layers (roughly 120x120x80 cm)
that'd be 18 spools so 720lbs or around 360kg.
Not too much material per palett I'd say

'sid

Hmm I see. Nophead, would you be able to double check to see how much of it fits onto a pallet?

If we're really desperate, RRRF could rent one of those self-rental lockers to store a container of the ABS. Its not like its going to rot or anything. They could mark it up a bit to cover the extra cost.

Price becomes an issue at that point though, and investing that much capital might not be an option.

Matt

talcite Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Price becomes an issue at that point though, and
> investing that much capital might not be an
> option.
>
I think sinking that much capital into ABS when we don't even know that we want to go with ABS is a really BAD idea.

---

-------------------------------------------------------

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

From the Send from China online calculator:
[www.sendfromchina.com]

I got a price of 3230.67 Yuan / 6.7667 Yuan/USD * 1.0525 (China Service Tax) = 502 ~ 500 USD to ship 100 kg. With Nil Einne's rough estimate of another 370 $ in extra costs, that comes to roughly 870 USD. With the 260 USD for 100 kg, the total price is 1130 USD, or 11.3 USD/kg.

According to an old China travel guide:
[www.hansrossel.com]
China sea post : to send a packet by the Chinese sea post from Kunming to Europe costs around 170 Yuan for 1 kilo plus 5 Yuan per extra kilo, the sending time is 2 months.

For a one hundred kilo package that would be 665 Yuan / 6.7667 Yuan/USD = 98 ~ 100 USD, 1 USD / kg. With the above 3.7 USD / kg shipping and handling & 2.6 USD / kg for the material, total cost would be about 7.3 USD / kg.

Enrique Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> For a one hundred kilo package that would be 665
> Yuan / 6.7667 Yuan/USD = 98 ~ 100 USD, 1 USD / kg.
> With the above 3.7 USD / kg shipping and handling
> & 2.6 USD / kg for the material, total cost would
> be about 7.3 USD / kg.
>
Or $3.30/lb (delivered?)

Right now, we're paying $7.95/lb from the factory + $1.25/lb for delivery in the US. Mind, I expect the factory price of ABS to drop back to ~$5.40/lb like it was before the current oil spike within the next few months.

The numbers look good on the China ABS if the quality is right. That, of course, awaits Nopheads assessment.

---

-------------------------------------------------------

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison