Whats the most you've paid for filament?

...and would you do it again?... Just wondering, Pla for £10(my current choice) or 30 to 50quid a roll, as new filaments start showing up, Cx5 sculptable, FilaOne @$199 per roll I wonder who has paid for any of these higher priced options? At this moment in time I doubt I will ever pay £100+ for a roll, FilaOne may be strong but it doesnt seem very stiff. Maybe there will be the odd occasion where it's needed,

[www.engineering.com]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2016 10:41PM by MechaBits.

If you need the properties of the exotic materials, there is no alternative. PLA has decent wear properties but little temperature resistance. ABS has acceptable temperature resistance for a lot of applications but poor wear properties. Then there's the question of whether you need other specific material properties.

When you consider that filament is bought on a weight basis and used on a volumetric basis, the metal-filled PLAs are priced pretty wildly if you want to polish a directly-printed part to a metallic shine. The flex filaments are quite high and if that degree of flexibility is needed in a printed part, there's not a lot of alternative. Then there are the engineering-grade materials, with higher strength, temperature resistance, wear properties, and environmental and chemical resistance, but if your application requires those properties, it's what you need.

As an example, I had a translucent white PETG mount that adapted my dashcam to a GoPro suction cup (I used PETG because it stuck to my PVA water-soluble support material when ABS wouldn't). One afternoon that I left it installed with the car parked in direct summer afternoon sun, it severely deformed to the point that "melted" wouldn't be an entirely inappropriate description. A redesign to eliminate the need for support material allowed making it from opaque white ABS and I haven't had that problem again.

I've had some temperature-critical and environmental-critical applications for more exotic materials but haven't done too well printing anything more than trivial test pieces with them (and sometimes not even that).

yes of course if it's really needed and there's no other option and perhaps a paid gig requires it, even for preliminary tests to prove you can use certain materials without issue, I have some ABS which was cheaper than the PLA, but not sure when i'll use it, would also like to try Nylon & PETG at some point, but it's going to be some time before I try a 200 dollar roll of anything...but you never know whats around the corner. capitcha's for every post what a pain.

Here is one that is a bit pricey:

[www.3dxtech.com]

^^^^
Carbon fiber filament sounds cool but i bet it wrecks nozzles


I bought some water soluble PVA at $33 for .5kg, works really well as support material.

For my home printer about $30
For the work printer its $205 a roll

... not for FDM printing with plastic, but for laser-fusing - 400 Euros for 10 meters of Wollaston wire, 0.05mm thick silver wire with 0.001mm platinum core

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

ouch! did you waste it or put it to darn good use? at least it wasnt plutonium core.

... this was used for TLD-microsensors - only 10mm per sensor, so only 40 cents for the used piece Wollaston wire - AFAIK they made 120 of this sensors per week and were bound for 5 years until next negotiation.

I had to develop and build the manufacturing+handling process and the assembly stage for this ... and sourced and designed some other pretty pricey parts and materials too, which were readily paid by the client - as this was much cheaper, easier and faster, than their own process used for +30 years

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Bought 750grams of PVA Advanced made by Orbi-Tech for £75
It works well though

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Supporting 3D Printers with Parts and Build services.
Printer: Ormerod 2 (528.4) Duel extruder set-up with Aluminium X-Rib, RRPro Firmware v1.11-ch (2016-04-08)

Well I havent a clue about TLD except top level domain, but micro sensors making a lot of money i'm thinking fruit machines & pinballs anti tamper/tilt devices...but PVA is that similar to the glue...sounds expensive for something you throw away, or even worse dissolve, have you tried the excelevan at almost a quarter of the price, I'm quite happy with the stuff i've tried(their microphones are pretty good too). I had some black 1.75 at £8 people seemed to be moaning about the quality of black filament, I started with it so know no different, I managed results I was happy with, but i've been forced to try out other colors as black was nowhere to be found, so I tried some blue, and based on something that was said in another thread, about specular highlights I thought perhaps the issue with black is it shows up more, magnifying any minor distortions, so after trying the blue and getting what seem to be better looking prints, despite the crazy colour, I wonder if the black really is worse, or if its just an optical difference in the light scattering of the lighter material, I also changed from a .3 to .5 nozzle, for more speed but also to test out the theory of getting a smoother looking print, and so far so good, loving the results even though layer heights are higher everything seems much smoother, and well bonded strong parts, I'm finding it hard to justify moving to abs, nylon or other....though I suppose if I want to design thinner parts the other products help.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2016 04:29PM by MechaBits.

Quote
MechaBits
but PVA is that similar to the glue...sounds expensive for something you throw away, or even worse dissolve, have you tried the excelevan at almost a quarter of the price

PVA is great for support material in places that you wouldn't otherwise be able to remove, the price is worth it imho because you use so little compared to the main material

Yeah its amazing how fine the support structures are, not sure i'll be using any, any time soon, getting far too much enjoyment designing parts for printing without support, but if I ever get around to using it I'll be trying the cheaper stuff first.

I Might stretch to £40 for a roll of CF filament especially one than can be used at lower temps with no heatbed.
[www.bioprintingsystems.com]
though I'm not liking this image

this ones ok


but if there is one a little cheaper that somone's tried let me know.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2016 08:53PM by MechaBits.

Lower cost graphine filament
[www.3ders.org]

New Verbatim Filament looks interesting...lets hope it's not too expensive, cant rememer the last time I used a verbatum disc...not burned a dvd in years. [www.3ders.org]