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I purchased a roll of Sainsmart PLA in pink to print a few Owls. The first Owl came out fine and the filament work great.
Imagine my surprise when doing the second Owl, the filament ran out. I discovered that hidden below the surface of the
roll there was a cut in the filament! They apparently did not have enough to do a full roll so they just wrapped some more
on the roll without bothering to splice the pieces together. A close inspection showed the the filament did not look bent as
was my first assumption, the ends looked as though they were cut. This is the last time I will ever buy the SainSmart brand
with their cardboard spools.

That sucks! I am running their white now, so far without issues.

At least at work, where we get rolls of fabric, the rolls are flagged that they are split. Of course, I have seen rolls (100 yards) that have 4 splits in them.

Besides loosing your business... You should throw them a severe complaint!

Eaglezsoar wrote:I purchased a roll of Sainsmart PLA in pink to print a few Owls. The first Owl came out fine and the filament work great.
Imagine my surprise when doing the second Owl, the filament ran out. I discovered that hidden below the surface of the
roll there was a cut in the filament! They apparently did not have enough to do a full roll so they just wrapped some more
on the roll without bothering to splice the pieces together. A close inspection showed the the filament did not look bent as
was my first assumption, the ends looked as though they were cut. This is the last time I will ever buy the SainSmart brand
with their cardboard spools.

I just ordered 4 spools from SainSmart... This is a bit of a bummer. I might print out a few spools and just re-feed the SainSmart stuff onto it if that's the case with the splices. At least then I could make sure it's wound properly too.

Tinyhead wrote:

Eaglezsoar wrote:I purchased a roll of Sainsmart PLA in pink to print a few Owls. The first Owl came out fine and the filament work great.
Imagine my surprise when doing the second Owl, the filament ran out. I discovered that hidden below the surface of the
roll there was a cut in the filament! They apparently did not have enough to do a full roll so they just wrapped some more
on the roll without bothering to splice the pieces together. A close inspection showed the the filament did not look bent as
was my first assumption, the ends looked as though they were cut. This is the last time I will ever buy the SainSmart brand
with their cardboard spools.

I just ordered 4 spools from SainSmart... This is a bit of a bummer. I might print out a few spools and just re-feed the SainSmart stuff onto it if that's the case with the splices. At least then I could make sure it's wound properly too.

It may have been a one time fluke or maybe not. One thing is for sure, this is one customer who will never buy it again.

I've always had very good luck with Sainsmart filament. This sounds like a one time fluke to me.

I've been using my rolls of Sainsmart and just had the 'middle of the roll'. Luckily I was extruding manually to prime for a print when suddenly there was nothing in the EZstruder! Behold, there was one of these separations in the filament. The odd thing about it all is that this second half of the roll behaves completely different than the first. It has a much lower melting point and where the first half needed to be run at a flow of around 85%, this half needs to run at 100% or the print is starved.

I've got to retract my entire statement from above. Turns out there was no break in the filament roll; the filament would eventually snap if left straight for too long and was breaking right at the extruder. If the printer kept going, the filament was fine, but I've had it a couple times now where the print finished then the machine sat over night and I came back in the morning and the filament had snapped there again. As far as the melting point goes, it was likely that it was always that low and I had ramped it up to get higher speed on a different print and forgot. I have these temps marked on my rolls for future reference so I just went with what it said. The flow was likely because my Z0 height shifted slightly and it was pushing too much filament out the sides and I thought it was a flow issue. Everything is spot on now and it runs back at 98-100%.

I have also had the snapping problem with Sainsmart PLA. Too bad because it prints really nice otherwise

Eagle, would it be okay if I moved this into the Filament sub-forum?

brent wrote:Eagle, would it be okay if I moved this into the Filament sub-forum?

Certainly, that seems like the best place. Thanks!