Filament spool and the filament was cutted?

Hello,

I bought some weeks ago some filament on ebay. It was very cheap and maybe this is the problem. My dark blue PLA spool seems to be okay, but the red ABS one is far away from okay. The red is very light and the color is hard to define. Something light violet (Hello Kitty), but with some part of yellow. Okay somehow I can live with that color and I am getting familiar with it. I have to, I am trying to print a new extruder. But that is not the problem.
After roughly 40m or so the manufacturer seemed to have cut the filament and a new filament is beginning. Same color but secured with saran wrap. This saran wrap caused trouble quite long before and besides I am happy that the firmware can pause meanwhile. I think the big spool from the manufacturere ended after 320m and he added the last meters. For him it is practical, for me not. My ormerod had trouble transporting the filament 10 meters or so before the end is coming because of the saran wrap. Besides I am paying for a complete piece of filament. That is my opinion. Or is this the practical treatment if the manufacturers spool ends?

Regards,

Sven

In my opinion, and experience, a spool of filament should be all one piece with no interruptions, cuts, breaks etc... I would definitely complain about any spool like the red one you describe.

A manufacturer will always wind up with an odd amount left over after making filament. But I believe that extra usually gets cut into small samples, and not sold as a partial.

And this manufacturer also offers equipment for welding plastic...
If I imagine that we would order for example cable of 1km and we would get cut length.
Okay this filament was sold with a special price but only because there was a replacement in the production line.

To me it is obvious that a reel of filament should either be continuous or come with a clear indication that that is not the case. How could you leave a printer unattended if the filament might come to an end before it is complete? I expect the same from a ball of string or a spool of wire.

Having said that, while it is true that genuine bargains exist and prices vary a great deal due to factors other than the quality of the product, it is also true that broadly speaking you "get what you pay for", and a product that is sold at a far lower price than normal very often turns out to be such low quality that it is not worth even that lower cost. Even the law recognises that fact, and if you were to take a retailer to court claiming a product was substandard quality or did not last long enough, the court will look at the price you paid to assess whether your expectations were realistic.

Dave

Hello Dave,

there was also a second problem. The first part of the filament got stuck caused by the ceran wrap of the second part. over 5m before end. So the extruder motor skipped the extrusion but I am not sure if a motor (maybe on antother printer) could have been damaged while leaving unattended. As I removed the ceran wrap the new part come off the spool and the longer I printed it got even more worst. The beginning of the new spool bearly got into the fan blades of my power supply.
I am testing now PLA filaments from 3dfilaments.ie. The best printing I ever had. The only disadvantages are that the spools are not vacuum packed and on one spool there was dust. You can whip it easily away (my spool holder is luckily equipped with a cleaning part). This morning I ordered two spools of ABS from Kiloblast. I am very interested in the results. There are generally two opinions: It is totally not working (K8200 printers or E3D heads) or they got really good prints with much less warping and so on. I think it will be comparable with NuNus. I got one spool of ABS and one spool of HIPS (aka PS) from them. The ABS spool was not really good. The windings were really bad so I have to observe and loosen them during printing and sometime the outer diameter was too high so the filament got stuck (but could removed easily). I hope the Kiboplast filament will be better even though the spools and the colors nearly look like the same as NuNus (except for the inner diameter of the spool).
And I have one spool of PLA from Supremery. Even though they offered different colors I think it is a clone from NuNus. But I also got really good results.

Regards,

Sven

The two spools are here. I did not unpack the green one but the color is exactly the same like NuNus. That was what I expected.
I tested the red one. It is much more intensive as the other red ABS but not as much as my PLA spool but not far away. I think this is caused by the material and also by the manufacturer.
The printing results are awesome. There is not much smell and indeed much less warping (but still more than PLA). Unfortunatly I still need Kapton tape to print. It does not stick on glass. PLA and HIPS can stick on glass but you have to level the bed consequentely (auto-leveling or by hand).