1 (edited by jesse 2013-06-22 14:36:22)

Topic: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Open Source Printing LLC Natural color ABS pellets (came with kit, around $15 for 2 lbs with shipping)

  • Sabic MG94-NA1000

  • Good diameter filament

  • can be colored

  • relatively expensive in large quantities

Open Source Printing LLC Natural color PLA pellets (around $15 for 2 lbs with shipping)

  • Not yet tested

White ABS pellets from Carl's Industrial Salvage - ($7.50 to $2.25 per pound shipped)

  • Filament came out thick (1.80+ mm at 180c)

  • White was bad for colorant because it makes a pastel color. 

  • Got chewed up in my extruder teeth and had to be removed multiple times.

  • Rigid, difficult to wind

Natural ABS pellets -  (accepted offer of $27 shipped for 10 pounds)

  • Porene SP 100 (Thanks IanJohnson)

  • Correct diameter, 1.75mm, when extruded at 180c. 

  • Flexible enough to form big loops on it's own

  • Can be colored

  • Easy to wind

Ind Hobbies: ABS, PLA, HDPE, Santoprene ($2 to $4 per pound + shipping)

  • Not yet tested

SeeMeCNC ABS pellets ($7 to $9 for two pounds + shipping)

  • Semilac brand

  • A little thick at 180c (1.80 mm)

  • Printed fine

2

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Relevant:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc … iSmc#gid=0

Also the OSP pellets are Sabic MG94-NA1000.

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

bumping thread, updated list

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

The natural pellets for $27 was Porene SP 100. 

When melt flow rate is given with 10 kg, rather than 5kg @ 220c, can you multiply by 2 to get an equivalent measurement?

Sabic MG94 has a melt flow of 12 with 5kg of pressure at 220C
Porene SP 100 has a melt flow of 18 with 10kg at 220C

Does that mean MG94 would have a melt flow of 24 at 10Kg, meaning it flows more easily than Porene SP100.  I wonder if the difference would be noticeable while printing, and how high of a flow rate you can take before the filament is oozes too much for good controll while printing.

5 (edited by nachokaos 2013-06-10 22:07:32)

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

just a question i allready buy to OSP ABS colorants also i get from local suplyer an ABS pellets call Terluran HH-112(Basf) can i mix without problems i let a link with terluran especifications.

ww.promaplast.com/uploads/Terluran%20HH-112.pdf

sorry i cant post links allready just add a w

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

OSP's colorants are rated for all ABS, so that should be fine.

However, the MFI on the pellets you quotes is pretty low, that could be a problem.

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Sorry Tim but what is MFI?   I even googled it. https://www.google.com/search?q=MFI& … ;ie=UTF-8]

You have to remember you dealing with some ... well lets just say ignorant people here (well speaking for my self).

Ralph

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Ralphxyz wrote:

Sorry Tim but what is MFI?   I even googled it. https://www.google.com/search?q=MFI& … ;ie=UTF-8]

You have to remember you dealing with some ... well lets just say ignorant people here (well speaking for my self).

Ralph

Melt Flow Index:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melt_flow_index

A measurement of how easily the polymer flows through an orifice.

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Maybe we could do a comparative test between filaments at the printer.  Something like extrdude 50mm and measure how much oozes during the next 30 seconds.  So much depends on temp, hotend design, steps/mm, etc that you can't really make a standard but you can keep those things the same on your own printer and say "this flows more than that". 

I wonder if extruding, remelting, etc changes the MFI of the plastic, and if different extrusion temperatures  or speeds will give you different results.  That happens with Nylon powder for SLS printing.  The powder closest to the model can't be reused, because the additional exposure to heat reduces it's MFI.

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

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

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

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.

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

elmoret wrote:

OSP's colorants are rated for all ABS, so that should be fine.

However, the MFI on the pellets you quotes is pretty low, that could be a problem.

thanks for answer Tim, how i can resolve that, getting down the temperature...supoustly this ABS was more resistant to high temperatures,that cud be a problem to print with this when are fillament...
i just be getting an advance of what i do, hope to have my Filastruder soon and get the answers by my own, iam litle lost with chemicals especifications etc.
thanks!!

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

To a certain extent, polymers flow better the hotter they are.

If you use that resin, you may have to print slower and or hotter, that's all.

Specifications might be intimidating at first, but I promise they make sense after a little studying!

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

elmoret wrote:

To a certain extent, polymers flow better the hotter they are.

If you use that resin, you may have to print slower and or hotter, that's all.

Specifications might be intimidating at first, but I promise they make sense after a little studying!

Rethanks again¡¡ but what about filastruder i must get up the extrude temperature a bit too...?

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Sure, but it's capable. It'll still extrude that resin at normal temperatures, just a little slower. If you want to crank up the heat, its capable of about 215C without upgrading the heater.

16 (edited by jesse 2013-06-22 14:37:23)

Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

First post was updated with review of SeeMeCNC (Semilac) ABS pellets

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

In my area, there are no local suppliers, so I'm looking for online suppliers. But so far I'm not finding an ideal solution, so I'm asking for advice.

What I'd love to do is to buy 20 lbs of a high quality ABS, with a bunch of different masterbatch materials to experiment with.

What I find so far is that:

- the industrial plastics suppliers will sell exactly what you want, specced and pelletized, but want to sell by the truck load. For example, the minimum order for masterbatch for one place I called is 25#, which would be fine if I wanted to make 250# of one color of filament, and they like to sell 800# boxes of base materials. But the per-pound prices are very low.
- Open Source Printing, who has small batches (1-2 lbs) of ABS and PLA, which is smaller than I need (though I can order 10 2# bags, I suppose). And they only have a few colerants and no other masterbatch.
- eBay has all sorts of random stuff, in reasonable quantities, but you can't get what you want, just what happens to be there, and most of the listings are pretty vague about what you're getting ("10# ABS, tan").
- Art suppliers sell various powdered colors and other materials (e.g. glow-in-the-dark) which looks like fun. But it's not pelletized, so may not be a good idea in the Filastruder.

So in my dream world, someone (OS Printing?) would decide that they want to buy the awesome, pelletized industrial grade stuff, but repackage it into smaller quantities for people using Filastruders and such. The challenge, I imagine, is that the market is too small right now, so if you buy 25# of a colerant and sell it 1 oz at a time, it'd take years to sell it all.

So I guess what I'm looking for is a supplier that has more range and larger quantities than OSP. Or perhaps some industrial supplier that could be talked into selling small quantities for this exciting new market. :-)

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

laird wrote:

So I guess what I'm looking for is a supplier that has more range and larger quantities than OSP. Or perhaps some industrial supplier that could be talked into selling small quantities for this exciting new market. :-)


This is bound to happen eventually.  I would like to see more colorants on the market.

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

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

OSP is adding two colorants soon - black and glow in the dark. The trouble is demand, like you said. The more people buy Filastruders, the faster that problem gets solved smile

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Has anybody tried http://3dprinterstuff.com/ ?  They have a 50 pound bag for 230ish.  Thats about $4.18/pound.  Best deal I have seen so far for a smaller amount.  Unfortunately, my 'struder serial is 1190, so I figure at least a month before I even sniff trying to make my own filament.  Any and all feedback is welcome.

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

$4.18/lb is not great. OS Printing is cheaper, and it'll be MG94.

1190 is your order ID, not your serial. You should see your Filastruder before the end of September.

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

You're right, elmoret.   It is a better price, especially with the free shipping when you get the bundle with colorant.  Also, I am assuming that with colorant, you really only need maybe four or five (red, blue, yellow, black) to achieve most colors.  Just depends on the amount and combination of colorant.

As an aside, thanks for the update on my order! smile

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

I happened to find 20 kg sack of Bayblend T85 granulate for cheap from ebay.de, here's some initial results.

Bayblend T85 is an ABS/PC blend with Vicat softening temp of ~130 C as opposed to MG94's ~100 C, so it needs a bit more heat to melt. It has a bit lower melt flow index than MG94, but a lot lower viscosity at extrusion (print extrusion, not filament extrusion) temperatures.

Here's some raw granulate:

flickr.com/photos/35681248@N03/9644606914/

This granulate needs to be dried, my first try with undried pellets produced very crummy looking filament. After some initial trial and error, I settled to extruding at 210 C. Here's what the filament looks like (this bit was made from granulates dried for one hour in 100 C oven, I'm currently testing a second batch dried for 4 hours):

flickr.com/photos/35681248@N03/9641372223/

It's not quite as accurate as what you can get from MG94, and the Filastruder was clearly labouring harder than when extruding MG94, but the results are perfectly usable. Here's "the owl" printed at 50% size and 0.2 layer height at 270 C:

flickr.com/photos/35681248@N03/9641374967/

For printing, I quite like the characteristics of this plastic. Not surprisingly, it behaves somewhere in between of ABS and PC, with less viscosity than ABS, but not as low as PC. I like the low viscosity since it reduces several aberrations when printing, like upcurling of overhangs, softening of sharp corners and unevenness of top solid infill. Also, it didn't give a damn when I tied the filament into knots, but larger printed pieces still feel very firm and solid.

All in all, I can definitely recommend this plastic with the caveat that it's not quite as easy to extrude into accurate filament as MG94 is. But if you happen to find a surplus sack for cheap, do grab it...

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Hi. I found local suppliers of plastics. They gave me pellets. They call it abs, but it is very fragile.
They ask me exect name (mark) of your abs which you sent in kit.

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Re: Plastic pellets for filament: reviews

Says it in the first post. SABIC MG94-NA1000.