Christmas Advent 3D Printing #Day 14 Advice for using and selecting generic no-brand filaments

December advent calendar - modular Christmas tree

3D Printing advice #Day 14

For the background and introduction - Day #1 Post click here

Last time - Days #12 & 13 were printed in a variety of Proto-Pasta filament, including matte fiber HTPLA, cinnamon, pine, and the almost religious experience of *glitterflake*

Christmas Advent 2017 Download on Thingiverse here - designed by Tom Van den Bon @geekc0der With some help for each day by the South African Makers team.

The original advent calendar from 2012 is on Thingiverse - designed by Peter Leppik.

It's Day #14 already, wow, this month is going so fast.

Day 14 gift is designed by Tom Van den Bon - It's a Lego block.

 Day 14 LEGO block - printed in generic-unknown 'no-brand' PLA.

The point of today is to talk about generic 'no-brand' 3D printing materials (filaments). Some are good, some are bad, some totally waste your time, your money and can even damage your printer.

It was the LEGO brick (LEGO's for USA) that made me think about generic materials. This is because in the early days of desktop 3D printing, many manufacturers stated 'it uses the same type of plastic found in LEGO bricks (ABS)'. But in reality the ABS used in LEGO is drastically different (and superior) to what's being used for most 3D printing filaments.

I also decided to print it in generic PLA, just to make the point that you can't really tell what plastic is being used, by looking.

I'll try to describe some of the things I have worked out about no-brand filaments over the years. Hopefully it may just help you, if you decide to buy from a supplier that offers no actual information or evidence, about where the filament is from or who has manufactured it.

General advice - 

One of the most important factors of any 3D printing material is a correct and consistent dimension of the filament. Look for a round (not oval) shape, consistent +/-0.1mm diameter and a smooth surface.

Note:- Some filaments do have a 'snake-skin' finish, that may be intentional or a sign that it may have been extruded at a very high temperature, fast. That does not necessarily indicate a negative, but it's worth being aware of.

Next, do try to find out what it's made of. Resin types, blend and any additives that may be used. Any good manufacturer will provide this information, most will point to a datasheet and have links to resin suppliers like Natureworks.

Get a sample, and if possible get a sample in 'natural' and also black material.

Most natural (not coloured) filament is usually the most straightforward to test and evaluate.

Black is a good test of quality. It has been known for some manufacturers to take old or incorrect batches of materials and mix them back into black plastic materials (to hide them). So if I really want to test out a filament supplier, I always ask for a black sample or buy a black roll of filament first.

I have had black filament 'shatter' and also have a blue or other colour tint in some rolls and not others from the same supplier.

Also if it smells bad when you print with it, decide if you really want to continue using it.

Look at the spool, you can tell a lot from a spool. For example, Dutch filaments make a lot of materials, and also private-label (white-label) many filaments for companies and manufacturers all around the world. Dutch filaments make some really fantastic materials, so when I see a no-brand / re-brand / white-label material being sold, I try to check the filament spool. I have discovered quite a few that have probably been made by Dutch filaments because of the spool. That alone makes me happy to buy them and try them out. I know it's going to be good quality.

Other manufacturers do this too, but they often also change spool type at the request of the end customer.

If you want to look at one of my blog posts here from way back in 2012, it shows one of the most odd and frustrating experiences I have ever had with filament.

You don't always get what you pay for, but you should at least make some effort to find out exactly what you are buying...

PLA advice - 

Like most plastic materials, many different grades and formulations exist. PLA is no different. and it's  worth knowing a little more about the grades. Just saying PLA, is almost as bad as saying 'ABS' (see ABS advice below).

PLA can be made from corn starch, or other starches, potato for example. Biome3D has a potato based PLA. 

Common older PLA types are often still used for manufacturing 3D printing filament - often 4032D, 4043D, 4044D, 4060D.

You may find that these are world specific, for example it's common for 4032D to be used in China.

Natureworks have now designed 3D850 and 3D870 formulations that are specifically made for 3D printing. You will see come manufacturers using these Resin's but they often have their own names for these rather than state 3D850 etc.

Lots more PLA types exist, PHA and PLLA are also from a similar family / process.

ABS advice - 

ABS, yea. That's a tricky one. ABS is one of those materials that can be mixed in so many different ways and have a lot of quality grades. I have had a few good experiences with 'generic' ABS, but mostly a lot of really bad ones.

As I have said before, I don't like using ABS, and some spools I have had in the past only strengthen that view. Some ABS materials can become very brittle over time, especially in sunlight. Some printed parts have almost crumbled when touched into fragments after 18 months in a window. They can tend to fade in sunlight, and become yellowed.

I have seen 1Kg spools of generic ABS for around £4.50 with free UK delivery. Raw ABS resin pellets can be around $3-4 per Kg so that's an amazing deal... if it's any good. Some are okay, many are not.

The only ABS I really buy now is Easy ABS from Prusa and various types of PCABS (Proto-Pasta / E3D and other quality suppliers).

Buyer beware! when selecting 'ABS'

Nylon advice -

I don't buy 'generic' Nylon it's usually not worth doing. It can be very hit and miss. Honestly stick to branded and well controlled materials from manufacturers like Taulman3D.

PET advice - 

PET, PETG and PETT can be amazingly strong and useful 3D printing materials. Often they can print well and give some unique optical properties. They can also warp like mad, take chunks out of your build plate and be hell to tune or have 'odd' print setting requirements.

I really like using ReForm rPET by Formfutura, and I have tried many, many other PET based materials over the years. Here I'm saying to experiment, but don't expect 'PET' to be the same, it's a good material to have as an option for use.

On a related note, we are starting to see many more polyester and co-polymer materials coming onto the market. Prices are lowering making it more accessible for everyone to use strong and reasonably easy to print PET type materials.

Day 14 'generic' LEGO brick in an emerald Polyalchemy Elixir Emerald City Green tree section.

I can cover other generic materials if this sort of advice is useful? if not, let me know.

I'll carry on with all the other great manufacturers, I use on a regular basis anyway.

Join me next time for Day #15 - (The Christmas party was very good indeed, time for bed.)

Thanks for reading.

Rich.

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Jammed Fr!gg!n Nozzle! - #30DoC Days 15...18

An update! - life and frustration with things failing on me temporarily got in the way of 3D printing :), but I did managed to design and print a few more things over the last few days while my main printer was down -

Firstly I had 4 jammed Nozzles in the last 4 days ! That's something that has not happened to me for about 9 months now, really annoying, but at least I worked out what was causing it! - I was not amused... see below for an insight and some questions...

This all started because I wanted to print a few things in Translucent plastic, and the only stuff I had was some old (about 1 year) Chinese PLA from Esun, I had given almost all of it away and stopped using it about 9 months ago when I switched over to use Faberdashery, Orbi-tech/GRRF and Ultimachine PLA's.

It seemed to print well and I made a few things, then I did a test print of a new extruder and it jammed up Solid, ground the hobbed bolt and stripped the filament.

The first two failures, little did I know what was causing it - see below - 

I tested a few things and came to the conclusion my hot end had failed in some way so, I disassembled it and investigated.
An hour later I had cleaned everything and checked all the hot-end parts, and it all looked fine so I re-assembled it.

I switched over to some Black Makerbot PLA and finished my test print, It all worked fine.

Then the new Reprap challenge appeared (Impossible Spheres puzzle - proposed by Richgain) and I thought   I would try the translucent (Esun) Chinese filament again - I printed with Yellow, switched to red and back to yellow and then my nozzle Jammed again.

'Bad' Esun PLA - see details below.

With the nozzle hot and some manual pressure on the drive gear I inserted a 0.45mm drill bit into the nozzle, it immediately allowed PLA to extrude out, I twizzled the drill bit and removed it, the nozzle jammed again straight away. I removed the extruder and disassembled it cleaned out the hot-end and continued on printing.

I had another jam and another clean out, then it jammed again so I switched over to some White PLA and attempted to push out the block, it did not work, and after using the drill bit again and having the same results, flow when the drill was inserted and no flow after removal I concluded that something was inside the nozzle and I was pushing it up with my drill bit, it was flowing back down and blocking when the drill bit was removed.

It was only when I cleaned out the nozzle again with the help of the white PLA I noticed a dark spec in the blocked filament.

I thought it was part of my hobbed bolt's teeth to start with, but after looking at it closly I was starting to think it was a ball bearing...

I checked it under a microscope and - I was right! 

This ball bearing was removed from my hot-end after using some PLA manufactured by Esun PLA.

Since this had happened 4 times and wasted quite a lot of my weekend with cleaning out my hot-end I checked over the last 100m of this filament and I found another 3 ball bearings embedded inside the filament!

The question is how and why are there ball bearings in this filament?

I had ignored bubbled in the filament before this as it's a common fault of low-grade / low-cost filament, I just had not expected to have contaminants also embedded inside. Signs of the bubbles along the filament usually indicated a ball bearing close by.

I had four blocks this time and I found 3 more bearings in the remaining filament, god knows how many more  there could have been in the Black stuff I had struggled with in the past?

So if you have any filament with bubbles you can see, check if it also has any contamination in it.

If you were looking to block a 3D printer hot-end in the most effective way, using a ball bearing bigger than the nozzle size is the best way I can think of, so is this an accident or intentional?


I stopped using the Black Esun PLA last summer after it caused so many blockages and fine stringing with my 0.4mm nozzle, I now wonder if they were also ball bearings or other contaminates, 

Image from Last summer (2011) - the black Esun PLA also shattered on me last summer, I still don't know why.

The moral of the story, you get what you pay for, buy materials from a source where you know who makes it, and watch out what you put in your 3D printer. 3D printing is already hard enough without nozzle blockages to deal with.


I will take my revenge on the last 100m of this Esun PLA, it's going to make a nice piece of PLA scrap Art, not that this nasty PLA deserves any more of my attention... I won't be putting any of this in my 3D printers ever again.

Has anyone else had any experiences like this? am I very unlucky?

Translucent plastic can look really amazing, just watch out where you get it from and what's in it!.

I am still after some high quality translucent PLA, if anyone can suggest a good source.

The only other thing that comes out of this experience, is that if we could find a way to control a bearing in a nozzle you could almost completely stop any ooze in a dual extruder set-up, we were recently discussing how to overcome dual extruder dribble over on the forums, if someone can think of a valve, I can now vouch that a ball bearing makes a perfect blockage and a 0.45mm drill bit acting as the 'pin' releases it.

And now my printer is back up and running I managed a nice print for the RepRap Competition with my Faberdashery PLA -

Slic3r 0.8.3 - 0.3mm layer height, 60mm/sec print speed, 0.5mm nozzle (or so I hope after all the blocking and clearing incidents!).

I feel better now, having vented all that.

I have some Raspberry Pi, a new extruder prototype and some other interesting things waiting to print out, I'll catch up on my missed #30DoC days now.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Rich.