Filament Supply Houses to buy?

HAve not purchases Filament in a while. Just curious, Where do you purchase your Filaments?

Bambu, Makerworld, PolyMaker, MatterHatters, etc

As far as I know, Makerworld does not sell or produce filament.

I decide what type of filament I need and shop for the best price.

I purchase from Amazon, AliExpress, and Temu online. Urgent needs might require a visit to MicroCenter.

I currently have Overture, Polymaker, Elegoo, Sunlu, Jayo, Eryone, Bambu, Inland, and Ziro on the shelf.

I have no manufacturer loyalty. I find as many differences between colors of the same brand as I do between different brands.

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They kind of do, models can include hardware and filament links to the bambu store in their makerworld page - so it will be Bambu filament.

As for filament choice, for PLA and PETG I find there is very little difference in the 10 euro/kilo category of Chinese filaments and they all work fine.

The worst filament I have ever used is 3DQF Eco PLA from a British company. It printed at a non-standard PLA temperature, and it was very rigid resulting it in springing everywhere and getting tangled if you let go of the end. We stopped seeing that in respectable PLAs some years ago.

The most surprising filament I have ever used was 5 USD/kilo unbranded PLA from Taobao; the surprise was that it actually worked great.

When I need an engineering material or a specific colour I am lot fussier, and will then choose filament based on mechanical properties or appearance, and then could buy it in from anywhere.

A word of advice: do not fall into the trap of brand love. Brands are not your friends. They are very good at making you feel special right up until the moment it is more profitable to treat you like an ATM. Vote with your wallet, not the logo on the box.

On that subject, I wrote a separate post about how filament brands manipulate consumers and manufacture the illusion of superiority:

The side issue here is the end user. A lot of this nonsense is enabled by buyers who refuse to educate themselves, then act shocked when marketing hype does not survive contact with reality. Then they blame the seller, the machine, the filament, or the forum, when their own lack of due diligence was the real problem from the start.

The bottom line is this: do not marry yourself to a brand. Learn calibration. Learn your machine. Learn your materials. Once you do, the mystique disappears very quickly, and so does the fantasy that a $30 spool is somehow operating on a higher plane than a $10 one.

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Two ideas for you…

I use amazon. Their bulk prices are ok ish.. pretty standard. I really like their Sunlu filament refills, but I do not like how some colors only come with a roll… and not just a standalone refill. I live in a kind of rural and kind of urban city, and anything I order through Amazon (PRIME) arrives within about a day.

Recently, I also discovered Hobby Lobby has bulk filament. It is about two or three dollars more expensive than a bulk pack on amazon, but you can get it instantly. I have yet to print with it, as I am finishing a project for a friend at the moment, but it seems to be packaged well, in fact, even better than some of the Amazon based brands.

I am in Australia in a regional town. I use Bambu Lab because that is where I started but recently went into a local store called JayCar, I found that they have a great range of filament from different suppliers. It is nice to be able to pop into a local store and get exactly what you need immediately rather than wait for regional postage which might take several days. They also have prints made with the different types of fancy filament and it is great to physically touch and inspect how the print quality turned out.

I also think supporting local businesses is a great idea for when supply chain issues and fuel shortages start to make a real impact on our daily lives…

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This area changes so quickly its hard to give advice. All filament has increased in quality by such leaps and bounds from 1 decade ago, it’s hard to even put into words. That little +/- 0.02 on everything nowadays is doing so much heavy lifting! Only prusament used to build to that quality :slight_smile:

One thing I will say is that unless you’re buying very premium filament, you should probably expect roll-to-roll color deviation, so a “filament runout” does tend to make your print look a little wonky.

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