What are reasonable expectations for filament quality

[RonvanP]

I was wondering what are reasonable expectations when you order hygroscopic filament such as PA (Nylon). Right now, I found Bambu and QIDI to be good and about (12 hrs) of drying is needed for high quality and to me more important dimensionally accurate prints.

On the other hand, I got some rolls (6) of PAHT-CF from ESUN and that stuff is absolutely rubbish. On paper this stuff is(was) really the strongest, but I was unable to tune my X1C to this filament, large variations (K anywhere from 0.012 to 0.487) and flow ratios from 0.671 to 0.935) between rolls and even within the same roll ( after printing away trash), I repeat calibration and the results are totally different. I tried drying for 48 hrs straight and printing directly from the dryer and in the middle of a 6.5 hr job, it starts to over extrude for 2 or 3 layers…

I waisted 500+ USD plus about 3500 USD of my time on crappy filament and was unable to deliver on my promises that are based on filament manufacturers posted numbers…

What can be done in the filament industry to set some standards of quality that manufacturers have to adhere to…

[Olias]

Great topic!!!

To the question

“What are reasonable expectations…”

I would say that your post has highlighted important things to you and that’s what you should use as your yard stick and please, don’t let any marketing BS or opinion sway you otherwise. If you value low moisture content on receipt out of the bag, then that should guide you. If you value strength, then that too becomes your yard stick. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

I’ll give an example. I recently posted a reply on recommendations on Elegoo PETG. Now this is a well respected brand that for me, turned out to be the worst performing filament I have ever used to date. Not by a little but by a lot.

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So what’s reasonable?

Summary

It would depend on what criteria you’re measuring. So let’s say speed is your most important thing. Then max flowrate would be a factor that’s important to you. With Bambu filament advertising 23mm³ for standard PLA, you might use that as a “reasonable” baseline. For me, Elegoo PLA couldn’t get out of the basement with barely 11mm³. Note, I have had filaments that max out at 26mm³ but with the cost of a little stringiness that I don’t mind for my use-case which is usually parts production not artistic pieces. So is it reasonable for me to expect non-stringy performance at 26mm³ flow? Probably not.

Now let’s take PETG. For transparent PETG, I tried Sunlu and I wanted optical clarity, it bombed major-league in that what I got was a cloudy mess, yet it printed fast and produced a strong part. Was I being unreasonable in expecting transparent to be transparent? Again, that might have been the case except I found a no-name vendor who produced truly transparent PETG at 1/3 less cost than the name brand Sunlu. So in this case, I feel that the lower cost MFG set my expectation and I was therefore not being unreasonable in calling Sunlu garbage.

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Industry Standards???

Summary

On your last question, what can be done to set standards? My fear is that so long as this remains a Chinese dominated industry, there won’t be any attempt to standardize. Let’s take the term PLA+ which in my mind is the biggest scam-sucker-born-every-minute term for the unenlightened consumer who chases “brand names”. Can anyone, and I mean anyone define what the plus actually means? I can say this, I have experimented with many of these so-called PLA+ brands and it’s all BS.

Use Amazon’s return policy. I return about 10% of my spools.

I keep a running log of all the filament makers I buy. It’s kind of a competitive sport to see where I can get the best deal. When they rip me off, I sent the sh*t back. If each of us returned the losers, it would make their costs go through the roof and Amazon would take notice.

They recently started posting at the bottom of many products the following:

The more of us who return the bad items, the more bad apples will get flagged. Or that is until they bribe Amazon to take down these tags.

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Having said all that, this is the main reason why I may come across so jaundiced when it comes to this industry. There isn’t anyone holding these guys accountable. Even the brand names like Sunlu and Elegoo and Polymaker aren’t doing anything other than printing claims without backing them up with laboratory science to prove what they say. This is especially evident if you take a pair of calipers and actually measure the so called 1.75mm ±0.02 claims. I call BS, I’ve measure many of these filaments and found them to be oval in many cases and they go right back in the box and back to Amazon.

Here’s one example that I sent back to Amazon from Fremover, both black and red. I mean if you can’t even hold your own on a temp tower? Really??? I reached out to them directly with these photos and heard crickets.

Then let’s check out this gem that clogged my nozzle. Can anyone say that this 1.75mm is actually even close to 1.75mm ±0.03? They at least wrote back to me offering a refund but I already returned to Amazon.

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Ok Rant over. LOL

[RonvanP]

Olias, great write up! To a large extend I agree with you. We need to hold filament suppliers accountable, but send boxes back that they can then resell is maybe not enough to make them chance their ways. I believe some filament suppliers use their customers as a QA/QC system and build returns in their business models.

Given the industry growth and adaptation of additive manufacturing, I believe the printer manufacturers need to get involved, and come up with a compatibility/rating program where they (and possibly some select users) structurally test filament makes and types and allow structured feedback from users to their tested filaments. All this on a dedicated filament website (.org). this allows a filament user to see a filament QA/QC rating based both on printer manufacturer testing and user feedback…

One thing is for sure, the fudge-factor BS of “you must not have dried it proparly and your temp settings were wrong, etc” need to stop. Trust me, I know how to operate a 3D printer!

We are spending way more money and time on filaments than we do on printers and in general terms, printers are mostly quite good. Even my Bambu printer cannot print some of the ■■■■ filament I got from eSUN.

It is the bad actors making bad filament that are a the Achilles heel of the 3D printing industry!

[Olias]

I’m in full agreement with all your points.

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I would clarify one point I made in that when I return a spool to Amazon, the outer carton is by no way resalable. Amazon’s policy is to require one to include the return barcode inside the box. So in complying with their policy, all I do is ensure that that barcode is “taped securely” using packing tape. In order to peel that off, they must destroy the outer box. Also, I do not return it in the bag since it has already been opened.

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One thing I will state, I have it easy. I have within my area, over six different return options for Amazon returns within a few minutes drive. Since I live in what’s defined as a “Rural Delivery” zone by the USPS, I have to believe anyone living in a more developed area would have even more options. So anyone stating that going through the trouble of returning as being “a chore too much” would be a copout in my view. This plays exactly into what the sellers are counting on, that being complacency and laziness of people to make the effort. I would submit that the effort to return is less than going to one’s grocery store.

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Printer maker involvement

Summary

On the subject of the manufacturers getting involved. I’ve been working in the sales, marketing, distribution and manufacturing in the tech sector. For over 40 years, I’ve witnessed the accountability quotient in the industry and consumer rights decline.

I’ll take a page out of the HP/Epson printer playbook. Unless a manufacturer gets involved in the resale of consumables(That’s where 99% of the profit lies for inkjet and laser printers BTW), there is no profit in the manufacturers taking an interest once the product warranty has expired. How do I know this? Because we counted on this when I made such products and we had a very sophisticated and thorough financial formulas to measure our quarterly warranty exposure. By tacking serial number Point of Sales, we were able to determine, to an almost dollar amount, exactly what we might have to pay out in warranty costs. So if we weren’t in the consumables side of the business, it was in our best interest to see the product fail in order to force the user into an upgrade. This is a formula the Epson proved to be very adept at with their inkjet technology.

I’m afraid that as of now, FDM is still too Niche to attract attention by consumers, regulators or for that matter, the technical journalists, for anyone to actually give this filament problem any attention. So until this becomes more mainstream, I’m afraid that this issue of filament misrepresentation and chicanery will go on. Therefore it’s up to us on these public forums to call out such behavior. It’s also why I advocate for using Amazon and their liberal returns policy to exact some form of penalty on the worst case abusers in this industry.

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We have more power to affect change than we know

Summary

If you are so interested, here is a link to a Louis Rossman video “Amazon Dangerous Fuses”. Advance to time index 27:47 for his important message about the broken Amazon marketplace.

I follow Rossman, he is a right-to-repair consumer’s rights advocate. In this video he shows a more sinister and dangerous side of mislabeled and defective product. However, substitute any of Rossman’s comments about dangerous products for filament and the mislabeling issues, fake reviews and false advertising are identical. Rossman advocates what I advocated for quite some time, that is, return all products one may be dissatisfied with, make it expensive for the seller and do this even if the product is under $5.