Ultimachine ABS Alternative ?

Hello everyone,

I need help finding an alternative for 3mm Black ABS plastic from Ultimachine. I have been using them as my sole supplier for a long time and all of my parts are dependent on the mechanical properties of their plastic. The problem is that they are constantly out of stock, and I can't risk running out of plastic. I have tried numerous times to find another supplier but each time the plastic has been absolute crap. Very weak, bad tolerances, bad color, etc.

Can someone please give me as much information as possible about the Ultimachine ABS plastic? Is it from Village Plastics? Or does Ultimachine extrude it themselves? What ABS resin is it?

The best situation here is to find another supplier that sells the same plastic so I can avoid dealing with Ultimachine's inconsistent inventory.

Thanks for any help you can give me, sorry if this isn't necessarily posted in the right forum.

If you need that much contact Village. I talked to them prior to 3DS buying them and it didn't make sense for me to buy from them as the price break isn't too much from retail until I started to buy 48kg. The minimum order for 1 kg reels was 12 in a single color. Trying to run manufacturing quantities from retail stock can lead to supply chain issues and if you are using that much you're not getting the best price. It's my understanding that Ultibots sells material sourced from Village as well. Makerbot used to but now that they are Stratasys that may have changed being that Stratasys controls thier own material channel.

Lulzbot is very good black, I use both Ultimachine and Lulzbot and they seem to be the same.

Protoparadigm or newimageplastics. Newimageplastics only sells in 10lb spool minimums though.

Is it the same exact plastic? That's the key here. Can anyone confirm whether or not Ultimachine uses village? Or do they manufacture it themselves?

I don't know for certain, but I think Ultimachine uses Village Plastic. That is what we (LulzBot) use as well for black ABS.

If we introduce more plastics, like another ABS black from Esun or Prusa or another manufacturer, it will have a new part number and name, so you'll be able to use the exact same plastic as before and tell it apart from the new stuff.

-Jeff

Jebba, your black ABS 5 lbs coils are out of stock and your 1 kg black ABS spools are also out of stock. Any idea when they will be back in? (Too Funny... as it is how this post got started in the first place, Ultimachine is periodically out of stock in their black ABS.)

Also, are you going to stock spooled 5 lb filament? I buy filament unspooled when I have to, but prefer to have it spooled, especially when it is in 5lb coils.

Both Ultimachine and Lulzbot get the plastic from the same supplier, now 3D Systems AKA Village Plastics.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/04/2014 09:18PM by Beekeeper.

We got a lot of plastic in. It was all 1kg reels. Black wasn't on that order, unfortunately. So we have a lot more stock, but not in black. We will be getting more in stock in 1kg. We will likely stock the 5lb in black, red, and natural too. Sorry we're out of stock.

-Jeff

Just like a wantraprenuer. Taking Ohio products and selling them at a mark up. Tisk tisk tisk Jeffy.

The Lulzbot ABS seems to print really well and seems to hold up well over time from what I have seen. I think their neutral ABS is probably about my favorite printing medium in terms of ease of use and layer consistancy, followed by the generic green I seem to use for everything else.

Thx Jebba.

@OP, You should be thankful anyone would consider buying from anywhere in Ohio, since your name contains "Ohio" and you spend most of your posts pissing on everyone. It wrongfully gives a bad name to everyone in Ohio, and the US for that matter. The ABS plastic that Village Plastics use originates from China anyway, not Ohio. It's Chi Mei 947 ABS, and it is reprocessed into filament in Ohio, but the resin comes on a boat from Mainland China. The PLA resin is from Nebraska, through a distributor in Missouri, but it doesn't originate from Ohio either.

@ piercet, Yeah, I've found that for ABS, their Natural, Orange, Blue, Black, Green, and Yellow seem to print the best. The Silver(s) & Glow-in-the-darks are the most hydroscopic and start to expand a bit when printing, so they don't produce as good a results, more blobs. Ironically, Orange PLA is the worst PLA printing color for me, very gummy stuff in comparison, and it needs a higher print temp by about 20°C.

Technically speaking, all the carbon in existence comes from exploding supernovas. If you ask me, we should stop buying plastic from supernovas of different galaxies to fight the growing intergalactic trade deficit.