Lately I’ve been using inland brand natural Pla. It prints so nice and I find that it adheres to the print bed really well. My go to filament brand used to be Amolen but some of these cheaper filaments have gotten so good in recent years.
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Yeah, “cheap” filament is largely good quality now, and only the unbranded Chinese-made stuff is actually “cheap.”
I also really like Inland (Microcenter) because they use good manufacturers. Esun makes their PLA/+ and Polymaker manufacturers their ASA. I will also buy directly from both of those companies because of my exposure to them via Microcenter’s house brand.
I’m also a big fan of Atomic Filament and Overture and Prusament. Atomic and Prusament can be pricey, but man are they some of the very best I’ve used.
I second Micro Center’s house brand, it’s been really reliable in my Ender 3.
I hate that I’m 5 hours from the nearest Microcenter. At least they ship some items.
I didn’t know that they worked with polymaker for their ASA. I knew that Esun is their PLA/+ manufacturer though. I do miss those esun masterspools since they have switched to the cardboard spools. I’m glad that the spooless filament refills are still available. So far I’ve heard great things about atomic and I’ll have to give them a try. I also like overture a lot for their PLA and their PETG.
The Inland ASA is listed as Inland PolyLite ASA, and PolyLite is a PolyMaker trademark. I read this text on their site like 30 times before I made the connection.
Stay away from Esun’s matte PLA. It is almost impossible to get it to adhere to a PEI sheet, and it STINKS while printing. I love their PLA+, so I was quite disappointed with the matte.
Overture’s matte is great though, and not smelly.
I use three regularly: Polyterra PLA for low cost filaments, Polylite PLA Pro for my fastest prints or prints needing a little strength, and Polylite ASA for anything functional, for outdoors, or for high temp. The ASA surprised me with how easy it’s been to print. I’ve printed with 3DBestX ASA I think, and it’s OK, but not nearly as easy as the Polylite ASA. I bought a roll of ApolloX ASA recently but haven’t tried it yet.
If I need PETG, ESUN PETG prints the easiest, I’ve found. Not as easy as ASA (I have a heated chamber), but it’s the least aggravating PETG. ESUN PLA+ prints great, but is a bit more shiny than the Polylite PLA Pro, so it’s a personal preference. The ESUN PLA+ has slightly higher temperatures and I’ve had one print failure recently from poor layer adhesion when I was pushing it as hard as I could with print speed.
For my Monoprice mini select with a V6 hot end, I use whatever PLA is on sale. Right now Amazon Basics silk PLA, and two rolls of elegoo PLA. I rarely print high demand parts with the Monoprice. Right now it’s only printing 18650 holders for a cell balancer I’m building.
Hatchbox has been my primary brand in the 5 years I’ve been printing - I’ve had great success with their PLA, ABS, and PETG.
PolyTerra Matte
Polymaker polyterra. I especially love their army blue and black filament. They print nice and matte, and the colors print almost identical between their different colors. I always thought polymaker was a more expensive brand, but polyterra hits that 20usd/kg for pla price point that hatchbox and other budget filaments used to dominate
I like the polyterra line too. My favorites are the cotton white and sapphire. I’ll have to give the army blue a try sometime. I’ve tried a spool of their polycarbonate and it was nice though difficult just due to the nature of polycarbonate. I also used to think polymaker was expensive brand but I’m so glad it’s affordable.
Just went from azurefilm to polimaker politerra recently and its amazing
The muted red polyterra feels like terra cotta a little. The matte additive is really dense, so parts feel heavier than other parts (polyterra PLA and PETG are the two densest non-filled filaments I’ve used). Whatever the additive is, it also increases the strain to failure by a lot, so it’s less brittle.
My only complaint about polyterra is that it is not as good at layer adhesion as the regular PLA/PLA+. I can’t push my printer to the limit on speed without getting a part that wants to separate at the layers, so I have to slow the print speed and slow the fan down, and I usually print a little warmer.
I’m finishing up my first Polyterra PLA+ print right now. It has less of the additive so it’s advertised as a satin finish more than a matte finish.
For what it’s worth, I just bought my first 3kg roll of filament for a big project, and I chose polyterra PLA in black.
I usually print Polyterra PLA at 210C but I had some issues with it lifting off the glass bed on my Enders. I never tried printing it below 205C and I have yet to try it on my Neptune 3 max so maybe the lifting issue won’t be a big deal with the PEI sheet bed. It does kind of feel like a terracotta texture which makes me want to try that red out now.
I wonder if I tried printing it at even lower temperatures if I would also get the delamination issue like you had.
It’s been a while since I bought from Polymaker and I don’t remember seeing that satin finish PLA+ line before but I’m definitely going to look into it. I also saw they are now offering dual color Polyterra matte filaments which is super cool.
I love prusament filaments but with shipping and duties I don’t keep them stocked. I’m not sure who supplies it but I’ve had solid results out of spool3d.ca abs and petg filament, also really like Canada Filament’s carbon capture PETG, stocking up on more of that and the carbon capture pla. Had really nice results out of Worday ABS as well.
I switched to Atomic over 4 years ago and it’s the only brand I buy now. I don’t like wasting plastic and I know Atomic will print perfectly for me. If there’s an issue, it was my printer’s fault.
@thecitywelivein Atomic CF-PETg is absolutely amazing. And they even have some color choices for their CF filaments which I have yet se see elsewhere.
Wow I didn’t know there was a carbon fiber petg on the market yet. I have yet to try any cf filaments yet but I think they are pretty neat.
@PukeNukem They’re great, especially Atomic’s ones.
Warning! Do not use a standard brass nozzle or it will wear out after a single spool. Use a hardened steel nozzle (the black ones, not stainless steel, chrome looking ones)
@thecitywelivein I’ve been wanting to give atomic a try but I just can’t decide which color to get. They have some really neat colors and I love the atom design on their spools.
eSun PLA+. It’s easy to print, looks great, and is decently strong for most uses.
I have Hatchbox PLA in most colors and it works fine for me. If I want to make something more rugged I use eSun PLA+. I also have a couple spools of Tecsonar multicolor PLA filament and those prints always come out looking great!
I switched to Printed Solid Jessie filaments after my previous bread and butter supplier, 3D Solutech, went out of business. Jessie is been good so far for a relatively low price. I hope they continue to expand their color lineup because they’re still missing a lot of shades I used previously. I’m still searching for a secondary brand to fill those gaps.
They named a filament after me?
Most of my PLA is Printed Solid Jesse. It’s $20/kg filament that prints like $30/kg filament.
Getting most of my filament from DasFilament because they are a local (German) company and offer masterspool refills. They “only” sell PLA, PETG and TPU, but so far I haven’t messed with other types yet, so that’s OK.
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That’s weird, esun has been my go to easy to use pla+. You could have your temps of by 30c and itl still complete fine.
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That’s true, but it’s on sale pretty regularly to 3kg for 50 where I live. Stil waiting for my kingroon 10kg for €100 shipment to come in.
My custom blend of SLA-resin has a matt surface with dark metallic color. Also, my most hated filament as it requires a deep clean between prints. FDM? FormFutura SBC: Gave me headaches but that’s noticeably higher transmission compared to other “transparent” filaments.
Matte resins definitely print nicer in my experience. I haven’t tried too many SLA resin bands I mostly just stick to Siraya Tech fast resin because it’s low odor. When you blend your resin do you put it in a new bottle every time or do you reuse bottles?
Reuse the bottle of the base resin. It’s mixed from base epoxy resin with additives and pigments. The issue in particular is caused by the pigments and with no good solution as everything you can do is slowing down the process. A printer that circulates it without dead spots could fix it but you might run into issues where it “sticks” to the FEP making it worse. An upside-down SLA printer could resolve the issues but they are rare and expensive. After all there probably was a reason why you can’t buy it. You can do more stupid mixtures/washing/curing for example an soft-touch surface with a hard resin but they all fail in some regard making them not feasible (that particular had just awful mechanical properties. Worse than expected.).
I’ve had a lot of luck with eSun.
