Submitted 6 months ago by Damage@feddit.it to 3dprinting@lemmy.world
https://feddit.it/pictrs/image/1e7b6567-245d-4d90-808d-0f19c96180de.webp
I think 1kg spools are too much, I want to experiment with ALL THE COLORS… But few manufacturers offer 250g, and they are sometimes twice the cost by weight. Image
I buy samples from Atomic Filament when I don’t know which filament would work best for a project. They are 50g spools for under $4 each. It is usually enough filament to print out a filament sample card and a small test piece.
That’s $80 per kg.
You could try a filament sampler pack, but this might be too little of each color. Maybe buy a few packs 25 Colors Silk Shiny PLA Filament Sample Pack
PLA as a raw material is really cheap - you can get it for as little as a few dollars a kilo - and a lot of the cost of a filament roll is just making the spool, packaging, and shipping it. In the end, the price difference between 250g and 1kg of PLA on a roll is rather tiny.
The same reason why a can of cola is so expensive compared to a big bottle.
Thorry84@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Agreed, large spools are too much if you want to play around with all the colors. I have a box of old filament, each spool in plastic with a dry packet and the whole box with a couple of bags of drying stuff and a good seal on the top. But after getting a spool out to use recently (spool about 2 year old) and it printed like shit. I tried putting it in a dryer, but it didn’t help. So I tried more of these spools and they almost all seem to have gone bad.
Such a shame, I should have bought smaller spools, but they are harder to get and often more expensive.
clif@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Same. I go through periods of printing a lot then getting busy and not touching it for months. I’ve noticed my PLA and PLA+ get really brittle as they age even when stored in a dry box and drying again before use.
I can usually get it to print but I have to be gentle with it.
JetpackJackson@feddit.de 6 months ago
Yeah we just had that happen here, dug up old spools and they print pretty badly lol
Damage@feddit.it 6 months ago
TBH old plastic printed badly when it was new as well, materials keep improving.