Cheap Filament.... The bottom fell out the market?

To be honest the last 6 months have been interesting. I went from buying filament for ~22USD a kilo on ebay to buying it locally from microcenter from 15-17USD depending on the sale. I had good luck with cheap filament. Its not the highest quality stuff around, but very workable.

So far.

1 - 1 kilo of chinese natural abs - still have about 300G left of this, its brittle but once extruded its exceptionally strong. ~19bux shipped.
2 - 1 kilo of chinese black filament - finished it all. Exceptionaly high quality, easy to print and ranged from 1.73-1.78mm ~22bux shipped.
3 - 1 Kilo of tonner plastics natural from microcenter - not a bad filament. Still a bit brittle, but it seems all natural abs is a bit more brittle? ~16bux
4 - 1 kilo of tonner plastics black from microcenter - not bad either, same as the other black. ~16bux
5 - 1 kilo of microcenter brand black. Its very well sealed and air tight. Seems to be of good quality. ~ 15bux or so.

Anyone have experience with the cheaper filaments? I only use ABS, so the black roll of tonner plastics PLA is sitting collecting dust.

My main question is what are people paying for their plastics? Is it really worth paying 2-3 times the price for brand stuff? And what exactly is brand stuff?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2014 06:07PM by jaguarking11.

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Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Is it really worth paying 2-3 times the price for brand stuff?

No, but I will always buy from whomever provides consistent quality. If that happens to be 2-3 times higher then so be it, if it were a China dealer then OK.

But, I make money with my printer and I never want to have issues with bad filament. I had enough of that when I started out and one decent sized seller cost me a $100 hotend with their crap filament and a week of no production.

I grabbed a ton of rolls from microcenter, they often sell the toner plastics randomly for 14.99 without advertising it on their website. Not getting any issues so far with it (knock on wood). IMO the quality stuff is UltiMachine plastic, have always been a huge fan, but you just cant beat the price of the microcenter filament.

Just picked up 2 rolls of toner plastics and 1 roll of inland (chinese boxed and sealed) from microcenter. Hoping the Inland gives good results cause it was regularly priced at $14.99.

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HUGE 3D PRINTER PARTS SALE!!!

Filament prices are going down because of the colapse in commodity prices and over supply in the market place.

I bought Makerbot PLA filament for my first two rolls(didn't know any better) at .5lb for 25 bucks each. I have since started buying Frys Shaxon PLA and ABS at 25 bucks for 1kg and I will say I have less issues and better print quality with the Frys stuff then that junk Makerbot sells. I cannot speak for the other name brand filament makers but this is my opinion about shaxon vs makerbot so take it as you want.

Wow I didn't know they sold filaments at microcenter. I only ever go there when I have an emergency and need something immediately. I don't like them because of all the rebate crap they do. Anyways, I always thought $20 for 1k from US Chinese resellers was a good deal so I'll have to drop by microcenter and stock up on some rolls. Do they carry colorful rolls?

To be honest. A kilo of ABS in pellet form is 4-5bux retail. You add in ~1$ in processing if that in large quantities. These guys were making murderous profits on filament. Its only plastic after all. With that being said.

So far even the cheapest stuff never gave me too much trouble. I have never lost a hot end to bad filament, I nearly lost one due to user error. (Waiting on the print bed to heat up to 100C while the hot end went to 230c at a fraction of the time causing the ABS in the head to turn into charcoal ~10minute difference)

I have to admit, that when the filament is very good (My second order chinese stuff) it was a pleasure to work with. No clogs and no pains in setup. One thing I always do however is to use my calipers to measure every 15cm for 2-3 meters and average the size and two I always print a 1 hour test piece before doing a very long print. I am also experimenting with ever increasing nozzle sizes and that lends to lean less on filament quality than a fine .3mm nozzle would.

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Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Quote
nubby
Wow I didn't know they sold filaments at microcenter. I only ever go there when I have an emergency and need something immediately. I don't like them because of all the rebate crap they do. Anyways, I always thought $20 for 1k from US Chinese resellers was a good deal so I'll have to drop by microcenter and stock up on some rolls. Do they carry colorful rolls?

They carry a variety of stuff. Tone plastics is on sale for 15-16bux a roll, or the inland super Chinese stuff is nearly always for 15bux a roll. I like the toner plastics rolls more though as the bore on the wheel is much larger. Although at this point I have a bunch of empty rolls that I have no idea what to do with them. Perhaps shred them and make more filament.....

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Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Quote
tmorris9
Is it really worth paying 2-3 times the price for brand stuff?

No, but I will always buy from whomever provides consistent quality. If that happens to be 2-3 times higher then so be it, if it were a China dealer then OK.

But, I make money with my printer and I never want to have issues with bad filament. I had enough of that when I started out and one decent sized seller cost me a $100 hotend with their crap filament and a week of no production.

One further thing to add to this thread. What kind of business do you run? Curiosity at its best here. If you want to keep it to yourself its fine.

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Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Find out they sell filament makes me more annoyed now that the Microcenter up in the bay area got shut down and replaced with a Walmart grocery store

I've bought $50 Makerbot filament, $19 Chinese filament, and extruded my own filament. Can't say there's much of a difference. Plastic is plastic. I chuckle when when people claim there hot ends are destroyed by bad filament. It's kind of a myth I think. Unless it had sand in it or something, it's highly unlikely. It's like the wolf-turkey or the samsquanch.

it's not a myth...

I've yet to see proof of contaminated filament rendering a quality hot end useless. $100 hot ends shouldn't be destroyed so easily. Unless you bought it from Joe P.

It doesn't necessarily render hot ends useless, but rather clog a hot end which can be a pain to unclog. Ive had clogs a couple times with poor filament myself, but nothing that wasn't fixable