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Hi all

Just bought myself a Rostock and while waiting for the kit to show up, I've started looking for some high quality filament. Do you guys have any preferred brand of filament for use with the Rostock v2? I am looking for both PLA and ABS producing a nice surface quality. I am in Denmark, so a European supplier is preferred.

Thanks in advance!

I use a Replicator 2, a Creator X, and I also have a Rostock Max V2.

I get 99% of all my filament from Toy Builder's Lab (They go by the name of "Prototype Supply" on Amazon)

I like it much better than the factory MBI-supplied filament and the filament supplied by the Flash Forge people.

I did get some filament from a Massdrop back in April, but the order delivery was interrupted when they changed warehouses, so I'm not due to receive it for another week...grr...

I hear good things about ColorFabb and some people on Google Groups like the makergeek filament.

Hansen wrote:Hi all

Just bought myself a Rostock and while waiting for the kit to show up, I've started looking for some high quality filament. Do you guys have any preferred brand of filament for use with the Rostock v2? I am looking for both PLA and ABS producing a nice surface quality. I am in Denmark, so a European supplier is preferred.

Thanks in advance!

I have tried alot of filament in my printing career, hands down best? ultimachine, solid consistency, high quality. Not cheap, but never anything but the best. seeme filament is also very good. It may even be ultimachine filament.

I have had good prints with the natural ABS from seemecnc as well as the ABS from makerfarm.

Flateric wrote:I have tried alot of filament in my printing career, hands down best? ultimachine, solid consistency, high quality. Not cheap, but never anything but the best. seeme filament is also very good. It may even be ultimachine filament.

Agreed I now only buy from ultimachine, it's expensive, but I've yet to get a bad roll of anything, and it has by far the most consistent extrusion width of any filament I've measured.
You can get a lot cheaper, but to me dealing with bad filament isn't worth the money saved.

I have been using IC3D ABS filament from Amazon Prime, it has worked very well for me.

nitewatchman

So far I've had the best most consistent results with Octave filament.
(Plus, they're in Northern California, so I usually get it in two days.)

Their ABS filament seems to handle temperature fluctuations really well, with minimal swelling during temp swings.

I've recently been trying out ToyBuilderLabs ABS filament, and their white abs is very very white. It's gorgeous.
However their filament is alot more sensitive to temp fluctuations, so if your temps are varying by +/-5c, it will show up in the print definitely, as it tends to swell more at higher temperatures.

However another habit I've gotten into is to bake any new spool of filament at 170f for 4-8 hours to get rid of any residual moisture.
I do this for every spool, and I seem to get more consistent results because of it.

ymmv

In Australia there's a company in Melbourne called Lybina that makes great filament - at least I think so. It's very consistent and prints beautifully. Full disclosure, I sell it in my webstore, but I wouldn't if I didn't think it was great

Hansen wrote:Hi all

Just bought myself a Rostock and while waiting for the kit to show up, I've started looking for some high quality filament. Do you guys have any preferred brand of filament for use with the Rostock v2? I am looking for both PLA and ABS producing a nice surface quality. I am in Denmark, so a European supplier is preferred.

Thanks in advance!

I got a roll of Gold PLA from ColorFabb to make some stuff for my daughters. I was happy with it - dimensionally consistent (and dead-on the 1.75mm target), and well packaged.

Hands down the best (and most expensive) PLA is Faberdashery out of the UK. Their colors are unreal (Bling Bling Gold and Mercury Red are my 2 faves) and the stuff prints like butter. But it is expensive and expensive to ship to the US.

Thanks for all your replies. It seems people use a lot of different suppliers. Maybe the PLA/ABS quality is generally increasing

Sadly most of the suppliers mentioned are US based, and it gets quite expensive to ship to Denmark with shipping and customs costs. On the other hand, it is almost as if filament is twice as expensive in Europe as in the States, so it might be beneficial to buy in the US anyway.

Being a (very) new owner of an assembled Rostock I haven't tried much, but it turns out that there is a dealer - almost local to me - that sells filament of decent quality (I think). The price is also reasonable. For you Danish people you can check out their website here: http://www.reprap.me.

BR
Hansen

My personal favorite PLA and ABS filament supplier is Filament Central out of Florida. Cheapest I've found too. With coupon codes you can get a roll for $25.

I just picked up a spool of ABS from justabs on amazon for $20. I was expecting it to be junk but is printing really well. I have an imgur album (http://imgur.com/a/1H0yu) with a rocket I printed at 2x scale for the /r/3dprinting contest over on reddit. I printed at 245c to avoid the dreaded separation that happens while abs cools - and it worked great! Feel free to vote in the contest as well. Two of the entries used a rostock max to print!

I tried some cheap filament from ebay for $23. The black was very good, but the red was horrible. I made a few of my cases and they just look totally different. I will have to try some of the ones you guys are using.

RAMTechRob wrote:I tried some cheap filament from ebay for $23. The black was very good, but the red was horrible. I made a few of my cases and they just look totally different. I will have to try some of the ones you guys are using.

This is the problem with cheap filament in general, it's not that it's all bad, it just tends to be inconsistent, it would still be cheaper in most cases to buy cheap Chinese filament and just throw away the crap stuff, the problem is you don't know which rolls are bad in advance. And if your unlucky there can be crap embedded in it which will block the Hotend.
Just not worth the time to me for the money saving.

My ramblings...


MCM Electronics sells $20 spools now. Ships from Ohio. I haven't tried it personally, but others said that it was just as good as their other stuff.

I bought a promo spool from BotFeeder, and it printed better than what I was using before.

The rolls of filament that I have from SeeMeCNC say "Toner Plastics" on the sticker. Which is the same sticker that you can make out underneath the label that Inventables puts on their spools too

A company in Chicago that gave me a printer demo was attempting to come up with a turnkey printer with OEM slicer settings and all of that, and their claim was that PLA was almost always fine, but ABS tended to vary in quality and performance. I've never printed with PLA, so I can't speak to their claim.

MDMD wrote:I just picked up a spool of ABS from justabs on amazon for $20. I was expecting it to be junk but is printing really well. I have an imgur album (http://imgur.com/a/1H0yu) with a rocket I printed at 2x scale for the /r/3dprinting contest over on reddit. I printed at 245c to avoid the dreaded separation that happens while abs cools - and it worked great! Feel free to vote in the contest as well. Two of the entries used a rostock max to print!

Another for Justabs on amazon, my last two spools were from them, 1.75mm grey abs, no problems at all with that filament yet, I didn't have to print that high temp however, I've been printing at 232C, though I also have an enclosed build chamber so I've never once had an issue with layer separation, and I've printed tall parts right near the max build height.

I finally received the PLA filament I purchased through Massdrop.

It was Monoprice-branded and one of the two spools came in an unsealed bag with no desiccant while the other came in a Monoprice box in a sealed bag with a desiccant pack...

I haven't tried them out yet because I don't have anything I want to print in Orange.

What is the best filament to print Clear pieces with? I have the Rostock Max v2. Any details and/or tips to printing a really clear part?

elwooddbeauchamp wrote:What is the best filament to print Clear pieces with? I have the Rostock Max v2. Any details and/or tips to printing a really clear part?

Some of the Taulman nylons like TGlase are close to clear. Natural ABS is opaque white. Not sure about how clear PLA gets, but it often comes in translucent colors, so probably closer to clear than ABS.

Hansen wrote:Hi all

Just bought myself a Rostock and while waiting for the kit to show up, I've started looking for some high quality filament. Do you guys have any preferred brand of filament for use with the Rostock v2? I am looking for both PLA and ABS producing a nice surface quality. I am in Denmark, so a European supplier is preferred.

Thanks in advance!

You can check 3d2print, I'm currently using them in ORION. The quality of their filaments are good however I just haven't tried Rostock v2 yet.

Best I have used to date is GizmoDorks for both ABS and PLA (used 6 or 7 spools by now) through Amazon Prime. About $27 per kg. Free Shipping and for me next day delivery.

No runs, no drips, no errors - But your mileage may vary.

Has anyone used filament from these guys? They have 2lbs for $26 right now. I'm looking to buy first spool ever and currently shopping around.
http://www.protoparadigm.com/1-75mm-abs/

I know a lot of members scorn ebay filaments, but so far, all but one of my rolls of PLA and ABS have been bought from this seller for $20 or less per 1kg roll

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3D-Printer-Fila ... id=2048038

All of the different types and colors I have bought (Sky blue, Flourescent Orange, and Natural PLA, as well as Transparent ABS) printed well for me so far, after fiddling with different temperatures for each filament.

As far as size consistency and quality of product, it has been better than anything else I could imagine. I don't know of any way my filament could be improved.

lightninjay wrote:I know a lot of members scorn ebay filaments, but so far, all but one of my rolls of PLA and ABS have been bought from this seller for $20 or less per 1kg roll

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3D-Printer-Fila ... id=2048038

My order was waiting for me when I got home from work. If it prints as well as they package it, it should be awesome. Three spools, free shipping, 60 bucks. I did buy a spool of hips to play with.