PLA suppliers in UK

Where should I buy PLA??
Getting to the point where i'm running low on PLA!
Very tempting to buy off RS again, but it is VERY expensive...
Found some UK suppliers on amazon, not very hard to find. but all are lacking on reviews...
What sort of things should i look for?
Is it a bad idea to go for one of these amazon suppliers or doesnt it matter too much??


[www.amazon.co.uk]

[www.amazon.co.uk]


I thought i saw a similar thread on this topic, but searching teh forum I can't find it again

I use [www.ebay.co.uk] and so do some others on this forum. I have also seen [3dfilaprint.com] recommended, but I haven't tried them.

It's important that the filament is supplied in a vaccuum sealed bag with a sachet of desiccant inside. One Amazon UK supplier I tried (not one of the ones you linked to) supplied it in an unsealed bag.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2014 07:18AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

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dc42
.... I have also seen [3dfilaprint.com] recommended, but I haven't tried them.

I have and can highly recommend that supplier, every thing was perfect!

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It's important that the filament is supplied in a vaccuum sealed bag with a sachet of desiccant inside

It was, and with extra plastic bags included for archiving after opening

Erik

The RepRap wiki has a big list of suppliers: [www.reprap.org]
We have used Faberdashery, Ultimachine and currently use Filamentprint. None of them are the cheapest, but good quality and consistency. You tend to get what you pay for...

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2014 08:01AM by droftarts.

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droftarts
...You tend to get what you pay for...

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

Great advice!

..btw, how much did you pay for those SD-cards?

Erik

LOL Erik

Ray

I bought a few reels from plastic2print.com, and I am very happy with both the quality, and the service/advise

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ormerod168

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droftarts
...You tend to get what you pay for...

Great advice!
..btw, how much did you pay for those SD-cards?

Erik

We pay double for the Kingston cards what we were paying for the old ones, but as it has cut the problems to virtually zero, it's worth every penny. The old ones met with a fiery demise, and good riddance. The only problems I get now are from you reminding me!

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

I use [3dfilaprint.co.uk] They have a good selection of different materials (not only PLA and ABS) and I have found no problem with the quality or packaging, and delivery is fast. I see they have just got a large range of colours of NinjaFlex and reduced its price considerably. I have a need coming up soon to mount some PCB's in a high vibration environment, and having recently had some success with a 10m sample of the stuff, I may use it to make box-liners with integrated vibration isolation mount points. Easier to drop a one-piece liner or mat into a housing than to fit individual rubber grommets.

Dave
(#106)

I dare you to print those in "Flamingo" Dave I just got a delivery from 3dfilaprint and can also vouch for the quality of packing and delivery speed.

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RS Components Reprap Ormerod No. 481

Looks lovely, dahling ... :-)

I'll probably have to stay with boring black though.

Dave
(#106)

I have no connection with this seller and cannot comment on quality.

[www.ebay.co.uk]

£12.99 for a 1kg Reel, selling out fast! cheapest I've seen and definitely worth a punt i reckon.

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Limited Edition Red RS Ormerod 1 #144 of 200 - RRP 1.09fw
iamburnys Ormerod Upgrades Github
Follow me on ThingiVerse My Designs

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iamburny
I have no connection with this seller and cannot comment on quality.

[www.ebay.co.uk]

£12.99 for a 1kg Reel, selling out fast! cheapest I've seen and definitely worth a punt i reckon.

We'll soon find out, just ordered some! (PLA & ABS)

Mike

I bought and used a 1 Kg reel of PLA 1.75mm from eBay, latest-bidde,r Galactic Warehouse Ltd. It arrived in a sealed bag with a desiccant enclosed and on a good quality reel. The size and consistency is excellent.
I have now bought a further 5 reels which are of the same quality and I have used some from each reel. My Omerod likes it, and the prints are excellent with no problems.
They are not quite the cheapest at £18.99 with free postage, but still a 5th of the RS price. Why did I choose them? because there is a full address (near me) and telephone given and you can collect if you want to.

Thanks iamburny, I'm up for it and just ordered too. Will be a few kilos for recycling if it turns out dud!

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Steve - RS Ormerod - 7th Feb 2014
"... the clouds looked as if they had heard about snow and were considering the idea." - (Terry Prachett, The Light Fantastic)

went with 3Dfilaprint in the end, couldn't be happier;
fast delivery
decent price
nicely packaged (even came with free spare bags to put the reels in when not in use)
& just done a print which came out great.

thanks all

Ah welll!

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Polymath
Thanks iamburny, I'm up for it and just ordered too. Will be a few kilos for recycling if it turns out dud!

The've cancelled the order and refunded the cost. Thought it was too good to be true - and it was! (Slightly suspicious that they were testing the market and didn't have the filament anyway, or is that just me being cynical?)

Steve

@Polymath
I guess they have simply run out.
I ordered a reel soon after Matt's post, and quite a few of the colours had already run out.
I selected Green PLA; it arrived quickly, and have finally got round to trying it yesterday. Results are good.
Greg

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Ormerod #17

has anyone tried this stuff?!
[3dfilaprint.com]

No, but I just sent off for some!
Thanks for giving the link
Greg

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Ormerod #17

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88Zombies
has anyone tried this stuff?!
[3dfilaprint.com]

No, but nylon is definitely a material I plan on trying.

Dave
(#106)

ordered some myslef the other day, couldn't resist at that price. cheaper as chips.

I’ve just completed some experimentation with Taulman3D Bridge Nylon as a 10M sample length from 3D Filaprint.

First thing to say is that the dimensional qualities of the sample were atrocious. 52 samples down the length gave a mean of 1.8064mm but the outliers were 1.97 through to 1.70 I had to discard the first 50cm as it was too big to pass through the bowden tube. This extreme variability has probably given rise to the blobs and twigs that I ended up with on the prints.
All trials were of Ormerod gears on a glass bed coated with gorilla glue (PVA). Despite dire warnings I went from raft (disaster, stopped after a few minutes and binned), narrow (0.25mm) brim, and finally no special measures as I found the adhesion to be brilliant, needing some effort with a sharp knife even when cold to remove the prints from the bed.
Played with temperatures, but found that extrusion at 220^oC didn’t bond. First layer 240^o over a 70^o bed, remainder at 235 over 65 gave a set (set 1) that while tough didn’t bond all of the early layers properly. These also had a small brim and it proved really awkward to fettle off. Decided to crank up the wick and ran layer 1 at 250/75 and rest at 240/70. This made set 2, as you can see somewhat furry, and still beset by occasional explosive blobs (mix of diameter variations and entrapped moisture?). The finished articles are however not too bad, and are as tough as they come, (can be bent with effort)!. These will get some running and I’ll see how good nylon gears can be.
The big plus is that, provided they get the stuff dimensionally right, it will only be about twice the cost of PLA but all of the printer settings, except temperature, remain the same, and these temperatures are not particularly extreme.
Pictured: set 1, s1a, s1b, s1c, and then set2, s2a,s2b,s2c and finally both sets 1 at the back 2 at the front.
Quietly positive experience I think – possibly some more tuning to do (hotter bed, cooler hot end) when I can get some more, but I won’t be accepting bulk (at Circa £20 per lb. weight) unless the dimensions get a whole bunch better.
Steve

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Steve - RS Ormerod - 7th Feb 2014
"... the clouds looked as if they had heard about snow and were considering the idea." - (Terry Prachett, The Light Fantastic)

Good work, Steve! We keep meaning to ask Taulman for some samples...

Ian
RepRapPro tech support

Great stuff Polymath. wanted to print some bridge over the weekend but had no idea where to start with temperatures.

Hows the strength? half tempted to save my samples until i need to print something indestructible..

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2014 06:04AM by 88Zombies.

Happy to help Ian.

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88Zombies
Hows the strength? half tempted to save my samples until i need to print something indestructible.

The big gear (Ormerod Filament drive) will bend under severe hand pressure. It goes back flat afterwards, no permanent deformation. It feels as strong as any engineering nylon, and I don't think you'd ever 'break' it without deliberately cutting it. Friction effect might raise its temperature enough to cause damage I suppose, and obviously heat above the 'glass' point would permit distortion. Even at 250 it doesn't smell too badly, although the balance of ambient stability against safety ventilation while printing is always a concern.

My next target use is to make some replacement connectors for stunt Kite tubes (originals broke during high speed encounter with the ground, which stupidly failed to get out of the way!), I think this material will survive loads of punishment.

HTH

Steve

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Steve - RS Ormerod - 7th Feb 2014
"... the clouds looked as if they had heard about snow and were considering the idea." - (Terry Prachett, The Light Fantastic)

I finally got around to trying the "Bridge" filament. No joy at all I'm afraid - so far I've not been able to complete a first layer. At my normal extrusion rates the extruder is continually skipping. I tried increasing the temperature (to a max of 290 deg) but still the same. I figured that the nylon is probably far more viscous than ABS and so needed a slow extrusion rate - so I slowed it right down. Even with the nozzle in the air however there is still the occasional skipping at 100mm/min. When trying to print (I set the XY speed to 20mm/s so it would extrude very slowly), the skips become more frequent (probably due to the increased backpressure on the nozzle). Pretty soon the filament stops feeding at all, and cannot even be helped by pushing by hand - though it feeds backwards OK. After removing the filament I see that it has bunched up and formed a nodule at the place where it stopped feeding, and that nodule is too big to pass through the hobbed bolt. I'm not sure what to try next with this. I have more samples of "bridge" and also samples of other nylon filament, and so I might give them a go. I've just replaced the "bridge" filament with my normal ABS and the Ormerod is happily printing the same part I tried to print with the "bridge", so it doesn't appear to be caused by any problems that developed with the printer. I am using the modified extruder block that feeds the filament through a PTFE sleeve on the inlet, and the feed is very smooth with no catching. I only replaced the extruder block yesterday with that new design, and so I know that all the parts are clean and run smoothly. It is possibly due to the "bridge" filament having poor size control, causing slippage when the hobbed part gets to a wider bit of filament, and this is exacerbated by the nature of the nylon, which forms a nodule when pushed too hard.

Dave
(#106)

I found that the oversized sections of the "bridge" filament are jamming in the nozzle end of the Bowden cable. I trimmed a couple of mm off that end of the Bowden tube and re-fitted it a few weeks ago, and it is possible that it needs re-drilling to open up the mm or so where it was newly squashed when screwing in. I'll give that a go later when I disassemble the hotend.

Dave
(#106)

Hi Dave,

Sounds very like the dodgy dimensions problem. As I said there was some of the sample that I first had that was so big it simply wouldn't pass through the bowden tube. Hope you can find some that's a bit smaller somewhere in the length you have. I now have an additional sample and so will be ablle to extend my testing soon. More pressing PLA job comes first though, so it'll be a few days (maybe Easter weekend).

Hope you crack it soon.
Steve

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Steve - RS Ormerod - 7th Feb 2014
"... the clouds looked as if they had heard about snow and were considering the idea." - (Terry Prachett, The Light Fantastic)

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Polymath
Hi Dave,

Sounds very like the dodgy dimensions problem. As I said there was some of the sample that I first had that was so big it simply wouldn't pass through the bowden tube. Hope you can find some that's a bit smaller somewhere in the length you have. I now have an additional sample and so will be ablle to extend my testing soon. More pressing PLA job comes first though, so it'll be a few days (maybe Easter weekend).

Hope you crack it soon.
Steve

Well not too soon, because yesterday I completed the build and assembly of my own openscad designed 3D printed quadcopter and gave it a successful indoor test - can't wait to try it outdoors. So hopefully this Easter is going to be spent playing with that, and the nylon trial is on the back-burner for a week or so I'm afraid. (Unless I find a real need for a nylon part at work so I can play with it on company time).

Final all-up weight of the quadcopter ended up at a tad under 1.4Kg, and the battery lasted 15 minutes of continuous indoor hovering per charge, though there is probably at least another 3 minutes in reserve after the low-voltage alarm sounds. It survived a fast collision with the ceiling and an 8-foot drop to a hard floor completely unscathed, so it seems to be acceptably tough. I have however already got several improvements planned, and will no doubt be taking the Ormerod home and begin printing a Mk II in the evenings or if the weather is unsuitable for test flying. I parametised almost everything in Openscad, so most tweaks and changes are quick & simple.

In case you're wondering - I'm not entering my second childhood - it's just that I haven't grown out of my first one yet.

Dave
(#106)