1 Topic by aprzy15

  • aprzy15
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  • Registered: 2012-08-21
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Topic: Don't buy Matterhackers filament!

Over the past year I have bought all of my filament from Matterhackers.com. At $33 a kilo, Matterhacker's filament is on the cheaper side. And with this cheaper price comes lower quality.

Many times during a print, the filament has bound up because the filament was not wound properly. This issue happened on about 20% of the filament rolls I have bought from Matterhackers. Because of this, I decided not to buy from matter hackers anymore, but I still had to use up the filament I had left.

A few nights ago, I started a print and decided to let it run over night. I woke up the next morning with the filament completely bound up. it was so bad I had to cut the filament to untangle it. Unfortunately this problem caused a lot more issues than it seemed.

Because the filament was bound up, the extruder motor could not pull the filament, but still tried to pull the filament. This force on the extruder caused  gears inside a gearbox attached to the motor to strip, completely ruining the gearbox attached to my motor.

This happened to my makergear m2, and Makergear was nice enough to send me parts to fix this problem, even though it was a filament issue.

Point is I am not buying Matterhacker's filament again because ruined my extruder.

Makergear M2, Solidoodle 2, Check out my 3D printing blog   http://3dprintertips.blogspot.com/

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2 Reply by pirvan

  • pirvan
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Re: Don't buy Matterhackers filament!

That's really strange.

I've had filament that had criss-crossed itself and got all bound up that it pulled the spool off it stand, but never stripped gears.  Worst case, the drive gear would start chewing up the filament in one spot and that would be it.

But strip gears ??  What are those gears made of?

To print or, 3D print, that is the question...
SD3 printer w/too many mods,  Printrbot Simple Maker Ed.,  FormLabs Form 1+
AnyCubic Photon, Shining 3D EinScan-S & Atlas 3D scanners...
...and too much time on my hands.

3 Reply by FrancisDaniel

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Re: Don't buy Matterhackers filament!

bad experience, your filaments does not have consistent diameter size. since you already knew that your filaments are causing trouble, you shouldnt have left it running overnight.

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4 Reply by gr3g

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Re: Don't buy Matterhackers filament!

aprzy15 wrote:

the extruder motor could not pull the filament, but still tried to pull the filament. This force on the extruder caused  gears attached to the motor to strip

Doesn't seem possible. Wooden or plastic gear maybe?

5 Reply by 3DDPLUS

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Re: Don't buy Matterhackers filament!

can you show more photos that make us better understand?

6 Reply by BotFeeder

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Re: Don't buy Matterhackers filament!

I understand your pain aprzy15.  I hated when the filament tangle up & it is damaging the printer itself.  And not talking about the burnt nozzle.  I never like baby-sitting the printer.

BotFeeder - Professionally Manufactured 3D Filament

BotFeeder's Website

7 Reply by insta

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Re: Don't buy Matterhackers filament!

gr3g wrote:
aprzy15 wrote:

the extruder motor could not pull the filament, but still tried to pull the filament. This force on the extruder caused  gears attached to the motor to strip

Doesn't seem possible. Wooden or plastic gear maybe?

There was a batch of weak extruder gearboxes from Kysan -- the pinion gear on the motor itself would pulp instead of skipping the motor.   This effected lots of people, but MakerGear uses their stuff OEM so they got hit proportionally harder by it.  It's since been corrected.