26

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

indhobbies has a good selection of colorant. I've tried some and works great at 100:1 ratio. Hope this helps!

27

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Thanks for the company name (http://www.indhobbies.com). I went an ordered some - they're out of stock on almost everything right now, but their catalog looks pretty good: 1# bags of ABS, PLA, HDPE, etc., and 1oz universal masterbatch  (100:1) in a wide range of colors including UV colors, which will be fun when they come back into stock. It's good to have another supplier focused on providing small quantities for home users.

28

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Keep in mind that they have no data on their ABS. It may have a very low MFI, and therefore very slow extrusion and print speeds.

29

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Their ABS extudes just fine, I have not printed with it yet but I know people that have.
@laird: I just ordered some colorant from them so they have it in stock. Might want to send them an email to tack some on.

30 (edited by DePartedPrinter 2013-09-14 17:53:25)

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Anyone run PET through their Filastruder? I have access to limitless quantities of the stuff in a couple of different colors.

SD2 with E3D, SD Press, Form 1+
Filastruder
NYLON (taulman): http://www.soliforum.com/topic/466/nylon/

31

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

laird wrote:

Thanks for the company name (http://www.indhobbies.com). I went an ordered some - they're out of stock on almost everything right now, but their catalog looks pretty good: 1# bags of ABS, PLA, HDPE, etc., and 1oz universal masterbatch  (100:1) in a wide range of colors including UV colors, which will be fun when they come back into stock. It's good to have another supplier focused on providing small quantities for home users.

The masterbatch colors they offer look pretty good

SD2 with E3D, SD Press, Form 1+
Filastruder
NYLON (taulman): http://www.soliforum.com/topic/466/nylon/

32

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Yes, in particular being able to order 1oz at a time, of universal masterbatch (use with ABS, PLA, etc.), is awesome. It makes it very easy to experiment.

I hope that there's plenty of competition in this space, once the market grows a bit.

33

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

DePartedPrinter wrote:
laird wrote:

Thanks for the company name (http://www.indhobbies.com). I went an ordered some - they're out of stock on almost everything right now, but their catalog looks pretty good: 1# bags of ABS, PLA, HDPE, etc., and 1oz universal masterbatch  (100:1) in a wide range of colors including UV colors, which will be fun when they come back into stock. It's good to have another supplier focused on providing small quantities for home users.

The masterbatch colors they offer look pretty good

I got in touch with the company. They called me back over the weekend (impressive). They'd been having trouble with Paypal deciding that everything was out of stock, which they fixed. So I've ordered "one of everything", and I'll post reviews when it (and the Filastruder) arrive.

34

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Maybe at the end of the next updated instruction, we could have a glossary of terms for those of us new to extrusion.

elmoret wrote:
Ralphxyz wrote:

MFI

"Melt Flow Index"

Thanks Tim and thanks for the link, I really hang on your every word as I really need to learn this extrusion business.

Ralph

We're all learning together. smile

Lots of filament is PA-747 resin, if that gives you a baseline for what sort of MFI is in the ballpark. Keep in mind there are 2-3 different ways of measuring MFI, so make sure you're comparing apples to apples.

If it's worth doing, get a proffessional, if it's worth doing right, get me.

35

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

I've tried to do that here:

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/3935/pol … -tutorial/

For example, MFI/MFR is linked to a Wikipedia article. Let me know if there's more to add!

36 (edited by mirox3m 2013-10-24 08:35:24)

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Hi guys! I am trying to find a replacement material for MG94 in Bulgaria (EU) and found this material "Polyman M/MI-A 40" catalog.ides.com/datasheet.aspx?I=70001&USR=2%7c3%7c0&FMT=PDF&U=1&CULTURE=en-US&E=130368

Question is whether it is appropriate?
MFR at 220C, 10 kg is 42 cm3/10 min where MG94 is 42 g/10 min. As I understand by the density value 1 cubic cm is 1.05 grams.

I also found that LG Chem (Turkey) have several high flowrate ABSes like LG HF380G with MFR - 53.

37

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Those both sound suitable.

Really MFI is just an indicator of extrusion speed. Lower MFI is okay if you're patient. smile

38 (edited by mirox3m 2013-10-24 18:42:16)

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Thanks for your reply!
What other indicators should we look for in order to determine the "quality" of ABS? Something that indicates warping?

39

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Warping is due to thermal expansion coefficient and stiffness, though those parameters are not always on datasheets.

40

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

I found a website run by some guy in my country that offers a place to sell pellets. I guess its just from industry to another, but dont know if I could buy a small batch from them. The lowest quantity was 150kg(A lot I know), but when I checked the MFI it was 4 times higher than MG94! I dont know if this would cause problems with the diameter of the extrusion or not. What else than MFI and how its measured should we be looking when buying from industry users? The resin I found was LG chem AF-305

you can find the site by googling "muovinetti abs". use google translate to translate it to english

41

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

The MFI of AF-305 is 4x higher, but with twice the force. There are many ways to measure MFI. I would say it will flow better than MG94, but not 4x better.

Shouldn't cause a problem with extrusion. It's flame retardant though, so probably a bit pricier than other ABS resins.

42

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Prices on that site are really low, about 3,3€ per kg. I couldn't link the page so I added the instructions how to find it. really cheap plastic, but I dont know how small quantities they sell

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Right, but it looks like that's for buying in bulk and doesn't include shipping. I can get MG94 cheaper than that if I'm buying in bulk and not including shipping.

I was just trying to say, if you don't need the flame retardant properties, you can probably find a resin that flows just as well and costs less.

44

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Hi,
Is it recommended to use regrind material? Its significantly cheaper here in South Africa, and i am struggling to find suppliers who have virgin material and who will sell small quantities.
If its suitable to use regrind, would it make sense to mix virgin and regrind to even out the batch?

Thanks in advance

45

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

If I had regrind available I'd certainly try.

I would probable start with 80% virgin and 20% regrind and work from there.

Ralph

46

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Aq wrote:

Hi,
Is it recommended to use regrind material? Its significantly cheaper here in South Africa, and i am struggling to find suppliers who have virgin material and who will sell small quantities.
If its suitable to use regrind, would it make sense to mix virgin and regrind to even out the batch?

Thanks in advance

I haven't tried it myself, but I've read that commercial plastic injection can use 10-20% regrind. More than that and supposedly the quality suffers, so they only use that for things don't need to be "consumer grade" - cafeteria trays, that sort of thing.

47

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Greetings all,

So i went through to the company who indicated that they have re-grind, but unfortunately it was not as clean as i had hoped so i guess that is not an option.

However they did have virgin styrene, which is essentially the S in ABS. Has anyone ever experimented with this? boiling pt is 145 °C.

48 (edited by adrian 2014-01-13 08:02:46)

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Styrene itself is pretty useless I would think.. plus the S bit of ABS is the result of polymerizing the styrene (and arylonitirile) in the presence of polybutadiene.. its not just 'styrene' added to the mix so to speak... These three monomers then actually form a new molecular composition and thus is not something that you can just subtract from the formula and get the same properties of ... particularly when you get down into the whole 'being polar' properties of how the chains attract and bind to one another...

Anyway - I'll leave it for the more well informed to comment; since I'm just going from my own summations and long forgotten high school science...

49

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Aq wrote:

Greetings all,

So i went through to the company who indicated that they have re-grind, but unfortunately it was not as clean as i had hoped so i guess that is not an option.

However they did have virgin styrene, which is essentially the S in ABS. Has anyone ever experimented with this? boiling pt is 145 °C.

What's wrong with it?

I extrude "trash" ABS through a melt filter, works fine. It has twigs and dirt in it.

50

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Just wanted to add a new review for "Sabic GELOY" resin. I bought 5 lbs from ebay.com/itm/161124110617?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649 Apparently, this is the same resin as "Luran", currently being sold by indhobbies.

This is actually my first extrusion with a filastruder knockoff of my own design, so take this review with a grain of salt. First of all, the Ebay listing is wrong -- this is not an ABS resin, it's an ASA resin so it smells and handles very different from ABS filament that I'm used to. I extruded at 210 C, using the recommended 1/16" nozzle (1.58 mm). It came out pretty thick, between 1.86 and 1.9 mm. Going hotter with the temperature made the surface very bubbly and nasty, so I couldn't get it any thinner. Also, the filament itself came out extremely stiff, and hence refused to reliably coil. The resin also smells terrible. I have a different motor from the filastruder (10 rpm, 13 Nm), so I can't really comment on the speed of extrusion. However, it did seem to extrude quite quickly.

I haven't tried to print with it, but the smell is so strong that I'm rather hesitant to try. I think I'll have to pick up some MG94 as a point of reference.