Usually it is 1-3%.

The ones i just have ordered are 10gram to 1kg pellets.

Are you sure it is a PLA masterbatch? They usually are specified "universal" or for only "ABS, PP etc".

Black masterbatch is one of those that you need less of.

Was going for a marbled look and I think it turned out perfectly.  This is the gnomon for the digital sundial.

Just so there is no question of what exactly I am using, it is PLA 4043D, and I'm using PLA Colorant. This batch happened to be black. I know with ABS Warpage has A LOT to do with pigments, and colorants, which leads me to my question here, did I use too much colorant when mixing the  balls? I call them balls because they are far from pellet shaped lol.

After quite a bit of time and playing around, I made my own nozzle and got the setup put to where I feel is optimal settings and was quite pleased to find that consistently it hits right around 1.74 averaged. It is running a melt filter as well that I milled into a spot for into the nozzle.

I haven't seen any forums about PLA warpage with a DIY filament maker. So that's why I wonder if its the colorant ratio. No other PLA spool I have warps this bad, using SAME settings, same temp, same gap. even the same tacky layer.

I have been experimenting with using powdered pigment in the Filastruder. However, it seems that the particular colourant I want to use (I am a design research student) is not strong enough to give truly lovely colours when mixed with the PLA pellets. I ended up adding a lot, which made the melt flow really slow and resulted in unusable and very brittle filament. Reducing the amount of pigment got the melt flow back up and let me make usable filament, but the colour became really pale. Now I think I need to make concentrated masterbatch to make this colour work.

It is a special pigment, that loses its properties when heated above 230C, so a cold way of making PLA masterbatch is what I'm looking for. To make matters worse, I am not sure about compatibility with acetone - it might kill the special properties of this pigment as well. water would work, but how could I make masterbatch like that? Any ideas?

Interested on those but do you know same batch from US supplier ?
emakershop.com is not US seller

Hi Tony,

Sorry, been on holiday so only just saw this.  My masterbatch is manufactured in the UK, so you are unlikely to get the same in the US. 

I am happy to ship to the US if you want, especially as it is Masterbatch.  It doesn't make sense to ship ABS/PLA to the US as the shipping costs are silly, but as Masterbatch is low weight it fits into an envelope and can be mailed.

My contact details are in the various listings.

Regards,
Craig

Is there a standard way of expressing it such that .05 would mean the values maintain a range that is no more than .05 from Min to Max?

Were there a standard way to express "1.75mm with a maximum variation range of 0.05mm" doesn't really tell you much: where is min and where is max relative to the nominal? In short, could be anywhere from 1.70 to 1.80mm depending on how you read it; assuming it's a symmetric +/-0.025 would be a dangerous game!

If you like the bigger numbers, you could do something like "1.725 +0.050/-0.000" but that seems more confusing to me.

+/- is pretty straightforward isn't it, or have I just been doing this stuff for too long??

Here's an example:

http://zenikinetic.com/filament/1-75mm- … -filament/

Trust me - "+/-" is a very normal way of reporting a tolerance. A megabit and a megabyte are not the same thing at all. +/-0.06mm is just a better way of stating "0.12mm variation", since you can define the + and - separately. In your case it'd be 1.75mm +/-0.06mm.

More helpful reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_tolerance

Well i am not talking about leaving it NOT RUNNING for extended amount of time allowing moisture to build up. If the unit runs, its own heat will dry what ever air will try to enter the back of the tube.
Again, there is no way to tell for sure (i think) without testing it.

I don't think the air in the hopper gets hot enough. With PLA temps, the barrel at the hopper is around 45C. I would expect the air in the hopper to be closer to 30-35C. That won't dry the PLA.

So 1.75mm +/-0.06mm? Horray! That's good to hear.

I would agree that a 5C swing will impact diameter tolerances. Kudos to you for recognizing the need to re-autotune the controller after changing the physical characteristics of the system (in controls, we call this the "plant")!

If i ran machine for over 24hrs with same filament partially sealed (no seal between the hopper and the tube, just the bottle and the hopper seal) diameter variation has not changed, not even by 0.01mm. Would not fluctuate below 1.68 or above 1.8.

As i said before:fluctuation was (i suspect) due to temperature jumps from 1.62 to 167. I should have re-self adjusted the thermostat (as per instructions) to learn environmental change i created by re-wrapping the nozzle and the barrel with new heat seal wrap in hopes to create more barrel temperature to allow more pre-melt and increase chances of even color mix but it didt help with the color.