Canadian Supplier of PLA

How much Interest is there in a Canadian PLA filament supplier?

After paying almost as much for shipping/duty as for the filament a few times now I see a need for a Canadian supplier to save time and money.

I have found two companies local to myself capable of manufacturing filament from PLA resin [www.natureworksllc.com] and now need to find out how much demand exists before going much further.

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Since no one has responded does this mean people want to pay more for filament? If so instead of offering a cheaper alternative I could offer HIGHER prices.

If you do want a CHEAPER supplier PLEASE speak up, I am not asking for money. I just want to know how many people are currently paying way to much to get their filament. The resin mentioned is the same resin as Ultimachine uses and the extrusions will be done by a major welding filament manufacturer to guarantee quality.

I can also get ABS filament (easier) to be sold along side the PLA if enough interest exists.

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Hey Brad,

I'll be interested in the PLA, Im sick of buying from the US and paying the price for shipping if we are able to get a local that can offer the same things.

As for ABS, i have some ABS coming in for personal use from a manufacture if anyone wants to give it a try and give me some reviews before my heated bed is up, so anyone interested let me know, i will have about 2-3 small test bunches for those willing to test the quality.

Do you have a rough price range for the PLA? i think that might interest some people if they know the prices, with that said im guessing it wont be more expensive then $15.00/lb just like the price in the US

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2011 03:03AM by ECSuyu.

Thanks for the reply,

As far as pricing is concerned, I don't want to put a number out there to have people become upset if it does not come in at that price. But less than what we are currently paying, otherwise why waste my time. What I can tell you is that currently it costs $10/lb for natural and $12/lb for colored plus shipping, customs, duty, etc. Right now it costs $50 plus $27 shipping plus $20 for taxes/duty, that's $97 for 5lbs of natural. Or $19.4/lb for natural or $21.4/lb for colored to you your door. The end goal is to save money so it will have to be under the current prices and further saving will come in the form of shipping costs on multiple rolls.

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I too am interested in a Canadian supplier for plastic filament. I suspect it is possible to order ABS from within Canada but I would prefer a one stop shop. If you decided today to go ahead with this, approximately how long would it take before you had product ready for sale?

In your second post you mention Ultimachine. Have you done business with them? If so would you (or anyone else) mind providing feedback as how the transaction went.

spaztik Wrote:
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> I too am interested in a Canadian supplier for
> plastic filament. I suspect it is possible to
> order ABS from within Canada but I would prefer a
> one stop shop. If you decided today to go ahead
> with this, approximately how long would it take
> before you had product ready for sale?

Hard to say, now that I've had the two responses here I will post in a few other Canadian groups to see if anyone else is interested ( unfortunately it will be 500-1000lb order ). With enough interest I would still say a few months just because of the logistics of it all.


> In your second post you mention Ultimachine. Have
> you done business with them? If so would you (or
> anyone else) mind providing feedback as how the
> transaction went.

Yes my Ramps is from them and all of my filament currently is from them. We had a shipping error that they dealt with out of their own pockets which was really nice. I would like them to have all the colors listed even when no stock exists so we can request stock. It would also be nice if they showed when new stock was due to arrive (approx), We ordered filament last week from the limited stock to find out a few days later they had stock on better colors that we would have waited for. But all and all good to deal with.

Thanks for the reply.

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I am from elsewhere in Canada, Manitoba actually. I found this post while searching for feedback on Ultimachine. Still, it would be nice to have a supplier somewhere in Canada.

500 - 1000 lbs is a lot of plastic and a significant investment on your part. I suspect you'll need interest from more than few people to justify it. I figured it would take some time as well. I will likely order some plastic from Ultimachine in the near future (5lbs abs and 5lbs pla). I am just starting out printing and am not sure how quickly I will go through filament. I would definitely prefer to be able to buy filament in Canada and both ABS and PLA from one place would be great.

I look forward to seeing how this develops and when I run out of what I buy from Ultimachine (or if I wind up putting it off) I will check back here.

Definitely interested, even though I already have too much plastic I'll never get through it all.

You can try Chinese supplier, a little far away, but we can do cheaper guarantee quality for we already have resalers world wide.
You can email to me
westyang168@hotmail.com to get our catalogue and plastic data sheet.

I'd be into buying some plastic Sublime! I go through a ton of materials on my CNC already, so I am living in fear of how much the 3d printer is going to cost.

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I'm also interested in some Canadian PLA.

I've got a ton of (MakerBot) 3mm ABS for my Thing-O-Matic and am now building a Prusa that I want to use with 1.75mm PLA - unless someone tells me I'm being silly by going that route. Beyond natural or blue PLA, it's been a pain to track down some other color options that don't cost a fortune to ship here.

What I really want is transparent green but realize that not everyone wants that...at least so it seems from the lack of North American sellers of that variety.

I'm located in Ontario. I'm very interested in a Canadian supplier of PLA.

hi, sublime. i am interested in what your trying to do. let me know how this turn out. bc resident.

Hello everyone, things are still in the works and will have more details soon hopefully.

Brad

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Hey sublime! I am really interested in buying PLA filament from within Canada too (located in Waterloo, ON). Let us know how it goes!

Hello Brad,

I'm new to this scene and looking forward to do a lot. So yes, I would like to buy from Canada if possible, I'm in Montreal, Quebec. Please let me know when we can do business together!

MikE

Interested over Vancouver Island way, just need to get any printer running and my project launched. This could take longer than expected.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2011 09:58PM by TwinGears.

I'd love some Canadian PLA. I'm up for 5 lbs x 3 colo(u)rs. Is this still real?

We are still working on it. There have been some set backs but hopefully early in the new year we will have some more information.

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I buy filament from mixshop in Toronto and the price was cheaper than US mail order.

I will be intested too, from Montreal.

johnbiehler Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm also interested in some Canadian PLA.
>
> I've got a ton of (MakerBot) 3mm ABS for my
> Thing-O-Matic and am now building a Prusa that I
> want to use with 1.75mm PLA - unless someone tells
> me I'm being silly by going that route. Beyond
> natural or blue PLA, it's been a pain to track
> down some other color options that don't cost a
> fortune to ship here.
>
> What I really want is transparent green but
> realize that not everyone wants that...at least so
> it seems from the lack of North American sellers
> of that variety.

once I have a machine
built I will very much so be interested in some

I will buy some (100lb - 1.75mm/3mm) but first I need to see some samples/if it is up to standard etc...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2012 08:38PM by vector.

I ordered some plastic at Christmas time from Ultimachine. I ordered and 320$ worth of 3mm PLA and ABS in a bunch of different colors. They shipped my order right away, it came in quick and they even through in a bunch of random sample coils. I would recommend ordering from them. The only downside was that I'm in Victoria BC, and the shipping and duty were brutal.

Hey Sublime,

If you get a good rate on 3mm PLA or ABS I'm interested. I've paid a brutal amount in shipping and duty. I'm on the island and visit Vancouver often enough that I could pick it up there.

I've been approaching the problem another way, I've been looking into building a tool to extrude my own 3mm plastic. Raw ABS is readily available and cheap plus then you can add whatever color you want to natural ABS and run a bunch of small batches all in unique colors. In theory it's not that hard of a problem to solve, heat the plastic up and push the melted plastic out through a nozzel of the correct diamater under pressure....Hell that's what our 3D printers do already

Anyway I'm hoping to have some proto-types done by late spring, but in the mean time I expect to run low on some colors of ABS and I don't thing raw PLA is as readily available, and suspect it being a solid rather than a polymer it will be more difficult to extrude on my own...

Dan.

Hi Dan,

Currently I put the filament on hold because of the initial cost involved and lack of buyers but I may proceed some time this year as demand is increasing everyday.

On the home extrusion front. Good luck but in my honest opinion I think you are wasting time. Filabot is trying something similar and people are buying into it but there is very little chance it will ever produce usable filament. We NEED a tolerance of +/- 0.1mm along the length which is hard for a commercial machine to produce. Have a read through this blog [haveblue.org] its about someone having filament extruded professionally. The machine is longer than my home.

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i just had mixshop delay my order by 15 days and counting, then i remembered i saw this thread awhile ago. too bad this hasn't gotten anywhere yet... i haven't been printing for over a week cuz' i couldn't get my hands on some PLA filament.

Mixshop doesn't seem to sell PLA plastic anymore. It's not listed on their website.

Did anyone find a Canadian supplier? Or a cheap American alternative?

In Canada, you can check out Voxelfactory.com (in Montreal I believe). I haven't dealt with them personally though.

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Sublime Wrote:
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> We are still working on it. There have been some
> set backs but hopefully early in the new year we
> will have some more information.


Hi sir,

any progress now? we can support you ,sale you PLA materials, as we know the cheap PLA raw materials just available in USA.
we have cheaper source of PLA that make filament good, and good flexible, toughness, good printing, a new formulation different from Natureworks pure PLA.
Minimum order 3tons, we will keep the price that you will have profit after produce filament.