I’d like to buy my first roll of ABS… Any suggestions on brand/vendor? I see lots of mixed reviews on Amazon where people have various issues with material consistency.
Thanks
Nathan
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PolyPrinter brand is reliable.
Inland brand from Micro Center (and now Fry’s) is also recommended.
Keep it in a zip lock bag to keep humidity away.
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Inland Black: meh.
Inland Cyan: good.
Inland Blue: ok.
MG Chemicals Black: good but tangled which resulted in several failed prints. (They did not provide remediation.)
I’m currently using MatterHackers Black. I like it.
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Inland red and yellow blooooows. White is okay, black is okay. Plus one for PolyPrinter brand filament. I haven’t tried Hatchbox ABS but their PLA has been exceptionally good.
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Remember that our PolyPrinters are for ABS only.
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Hatchbox ABS has been very consistent, notably across colors and especially for its price point.
I’ll add another vote for Inland quality being color dependent.
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+1.
But, the yellow (coloring not the actual PLA) appears to dissolve in acetone. That was an unexpected (but small) mess. (I do wonder what material the coloring is.)
I use acetone and a brush to do surface smoothing. I’ve had color bleed with many colors using this technique, and with a couple of brands.
FWIW, I use Inland Gray ABS for most things. The gray makes a neutral background when priming/painting, especially since I use gray sandable auto primer to prime.
Black ABS filament is problematic, especially with cheap filaments. Cheap eBay filament is often reground and reissued plastic, and the black dye covers the fact that many original sources may have been used.
In practice, I find the black plastic’s shine also makes it hard to see the detail. Inland Gray from Microcenter strikes the right price/performance/availability balance for me when making terrain or other things like this Christmas tree-topper I made this year.
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Dr Who?
For a second there I thought you had a picture of the top of my tree…
@michaelb … I’m brand new to 3D printing and looking to purchase my first roll of ABS for the PolyPrinters. I looked at 1kg Hatchbox on Amazon and the specs for temperature dont appear to match printer requirements.
Hatchbox showed:
210C to 240C for Extrusion
55C to 85C for the Bed temp
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You can change some of the temperature settings in the slicer. And unless you have some specific requirement, I would recommend getting Inland. Not the best, but cheap and works well on the Polyprinters.
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Hatchbox ABS is a reasonable choice.
…are essentially useless.
What works is to run experiments. Lots of experiments. Which PolyPrinter has done. They’ve determined that 260C works well with their printers and ABS. That’s where you should start.
Unless you have an actual problem that can be corrected with a lower temperature use the KISSlicer settings provided by PolyPrinter.
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Especially with ABS (there aren’t a ton of different varieties) the given temps aren’t too useful.
Polyprinters print much faster than most other printers, so they up the extrusion temperature to handle the volume of filament extruded. They also print on a hot heated bed, 100C is about the standard bed temp but 110C isn’t far off and will help heat the enclosure which helps in ABS printing.
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Gotcha. Good to know. Thanks
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My only 2 cents, Inland is the only brand I’ve had actually destroy a printer. Their quality control is bad enough I’ve had spools with Overlaps.
If you are printing nearby at all times it’s fine since you can usually catch something like that, but if you run an unattended printer with remote monitoring / power controls like I do I would stay away from it. Alternatively get an extra spool and just do a transfer to check it for overlaps, because the plastic isn’t bad for the price if the spool is wound ok.
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Should 3D Fab build a machine to do this? @Team_3D_Fab
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Don’t know it needs a dedicated jig, it’s easy enough to improvise in the workshop as needed
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I am thinking rewinding a spool is cheap insurance before doing a long print and such a device can also be utilized to clean the filament as well.
The benefit with the PolyPrinters is marginal. Their filament switch works fairly well. If the filament does not come off the spool the switch trips and the printer pauses. A little unwind / rewind usually gets the kink out. Put the filament back in the switch gets the printer going. “Printer not printing” notifications would be far more valuable than a rewinder.
The Rostock extruder slips when the feedrate is too fast. I don’t think it can exert enough force to cause any damage to the printer. I suspect the worst case with it is ground up filament at the driver wheel (a mess easily cleaned with a vacuum) and a failed print.
That would be good.
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