[ABS-MG94] Powder colorant - Red

I recently got my package from OS3DP.com  which included pretty much much all the powdered colorants they offer. But for now, I will cover the red powder and base any other powder reviews off of this.

Extruder:
Mostly stock Filastruder v1.6 vertical extrusion with full barrel insulation, header wrap, melt filter, Filawinder

Extrusion:
Temp: 189c
Rate: 6-9" per minute
Average diameter: 1.73 +/-.02mm

Printer:
Solidoodle 2, E3D Titan extruder, E3D v6, E3D Volcano w/.6mm nozzle, direct Y drive, Lawsy carriages, DRV8825 driver on E,  mirror and Aqua Net.

Mixing:
2g of powder per 500g of virgin MG94 is recommended, so I went with about 450g virgin/2g powder. The powders contain a few pellets which aid in bonding the powder to the virgin pellets, so keep them in there and let them fall as they may into the batch. If you do small batches at a time, try not to let them all fall in at once.

Next, pour it into a glass jar. A cleaned out pasta sauce jar will work just fine for this. Once dumping it all in, I was still a tad skeptical on the end result as I am used to masterbatch, but I was willing to make the plunge.

Close the lid and shake the jar. The longer you shake, the better the powder bonds and evenly distributes itself among the virgin pellets. I believe I shook for 20 minutes while singing along to Mary Poppins with my daughter. Don't we all lose track of time while singing with Julie Andrews?

The pellets seemed extrusion ready after 10 minutes or so, but I always get sucked into Dick Van Dyke's rendition of "Stepping Time".

Back on a non-Disney related topic, the color was extrordinarily true to its description. It came out a touch too light for me as I like very bold colors, so maybe a touch more powder next time.

Printing:
The rear bearing holder for Lawy's carriages is pictured. It came out a little too light for my taste as it looks a little more strawberry, so maybe about .2g more powder next time. Nonetheless, it looks great.

Printed .2963mm height
2 perimeters, 100% infill
232c for extruder, 97c for bed

Comparison to available filament:
I've bought red ABS and PLA from Octave and Makerbot, and this really printed more like Makerbot filament. I'm unsure of the polymer they use, but it behaved a little more like the MB red PLA as it lost a little bit of gloss and an ever so slight amount of color while printing. The Octave red of course acted more like ABS and requiring the same settings as the home extruded red powder MG94. This extruded material and color consistency is as pleasing as other filament I've bought before getting into home extrusion.

Takeaway and comments:
First of all, hats off to Jonathan from OS3DP for top-tier customer service! He responded quickly to any of my questions and we even talked over text and phone call as well as email, which is almost unheard of with internet-based companies.
When using masterbatch, I either had color banding or slow extrusion. For some print jobs, the banding was unacceptable, so the powders sounded like a good solution. As I extruded, I noticed a drop in production speed until I fire/acetone cleaned my nozzle and filter. I am purging the red to test other colors and I am confident in using the red powder at around 1% or less per 500g to yield a reliable pink as this completely demolished color banding. This would be a cool experiment with mixing ratios.