MakerGear Forum

Sadly last year I found an inexpensive source of ABS and stocked up. I've got about a dozen 1kg paperweights it seems, 50% fail rate on small parts, 100% fail rate on big jobs..they all are too soft or something, every last roll stops feeding randomly like there's a soft spot and the extruder gear just digs in rather than pushing it down. I took sections of every color and they all pretty much did the same, and played with the tension; it was either too much and the ridges would catch downstream and stop it, or not enough grip and it would just spin. As a control, I had a partial roll of Makergear ABS that has been sitting out in the open for over a year and it printed beautifully (minus popping/pits from absorbed moisture). Is there a no questions, this-stuff-rocks and is consistent spool to spool filament out there? Would that be Makergear themselves for ABS/PLA? What about other types like PET-G, etc?

Also, any ideas of what to do with a bunch of filament?

so far i have had good luck with

makergear
push plastic
b3d
esun
toner

all except esun are all made here in the us. push and b3d are the manufacturers and you can buy from them. i have never had a bad roll from any of the ones listed. petg your choice is limited to esun, gizmo dorks, colorfabb. for those i recommend anyway. there are others but i wont recommend them.

Also, any ideas of what to do with a bunch of filament?

WeedWhacker line?

EBay?

Rich wrote:Also, any ideas of what to do with a bunch of filament?

WeedWhacker line?

Print a bunch of bigfoot heads and give 'em to every youngster you know?
If your neighbor is a pain, sneak out at night and put several hundred wraps around his car, sealing it shut?

Come to think of it, I have a rather long spool of Kevlar thread. I could go for "long-distance" soup-can telephone. Anybody know what the record is?
Dale

I wish I could just burn through it! The stuff won't feed. I may have an extruder drive that's wearing out and allowing some slop so I'll hold judgement until I get that straightened out. I have several projects kind of waiting on this, and they are fairly stressed parts, so I wanted to get some high quality, reliable filament anyway.

I wonder if I could just melt it down in some sort of container, and pour solid silicone molds or something? I've actually got some things where that would be appropriate for the construction..

The best answer really is to discard it (PLA) or recycle it (ABS). If you can pelletize it, give the pellets to someone with a Filastruder and they can probably make filament from it again.

Alternately, put a 0.75mm nozzle on your M2 and feed it regardless. A 0.75mm nozzle will feed anything.

insta wrote: Alternately, put a 0.75mm nozzle on your M2 and feed it regardless. A 0.75mm nozzle will feed anything.

Sounds like a great start to a dual extruder setup

Actually while I am thinking about it - it seems pigments affect how the filament prints as well, at least ever so slightly. Has anyone noticed any trends along the lines of pigment vs. printing properties? I've pretty much only used natural PLA until I went on this cheap ABS misadventure, but I have run through a couple rolls of red and black as well..red seemed to give me the most trouble as far as sticking to the bed, for example; but it was also the first roll I printed on the machine so user error is a distinct possibility and I can't put much weight in to that particular observation.

Pigment definitely affects the way filament prints. For example I have to print my white PETG 15 degrees hotter than the magenta otherwise it delaminates. I don't know why the only thing different is the pigment as far as I know.