Topic: Review: E3D Edge filament
I recently picked up a spool of the new E3D Edge filament to try out. It available from Filastruder and came to $49.99 after priority mail shipping within the US. I had some pretty high expectations of this filament due to the properties that E3D mentioned on their own page (http://e3d-online.com/blog/Edge). I know E3D makes quality products, so I was anxious to try it out. First, pictures (all of these printed at 0.4mm nozzle, 0.2mm layers, with a Titan Extruder, speeds pushing 60mm/s, hot end temp at 240C):
I think the parts look great, and they are very strong. I would have no issue using this for any mechanical part that used ABS. There was no noticeable odor at all while printing. It had excellent adhesion to the bed (glass with glue stick) and even the thin end of the middle part had absolutely no warping. They came of easy with an x-acto knife. The slight banding shown happens on all plastics on this printer. The layer adhesion is also great.
Now for my only complaint: this stuff really seems to accumulate on the nozzle. I should have taken a picture of all gobs of burnt filament that I cleared off after about 5 prints and 3 hours. It was bad. I didn't notice it at first, but when it got to the point where gobs of burnt plastic were falling down into my print, I had to stop one and clean it off really well. I lost one print of the gear where it accumulated enough in a single print to cause the nozzle to catch on it and skip, causing a big shift. However, its worth noting that the layer adhesion was so great that even though I could get a good grab on it, I was unable to pull it apart across layers, even using pliers. The accumulation seems to happen a lot quicker when printing at 100% infill, so I dialed it back to 40% and that worked a lot better. Also, I switched back to ABS to make sure I could eliminate a leak in the hot end assembly, and that confirmed that this was only happening with the Edge filament. This was with a V6 hot end, but it does have about 2 years, 3 printer installs, and probably 20+ kilos of filament passed thru it.
Any suggestions on how to reduce or eliminate the accumulation on the nozzle? I have heard this is an issue with PET filaments, which Edge is based on.
I also have a spool of Esun PETG that I picked up from Amazon and I'm going to try that in the same printer next and do a detailed comparison.
Overall, I really like the Edge filament and if I can figure out how to deal with the accumulation then it will stay in my filament arsenal. The cost should be mentioned. At about $50 for 750 grams, it is about double the cost of Esun PETG ($24 per Kilo from Amazon). If that produces similar quality prints, it will be hard to stick with Edge. More research is coming and I will update this. Thanks!
