As I’m graduating college in a few weeks, I’ll be losing access to my university’s free printers and filament. I’m going to build up a home lab with a couple printers where I can make goofy little mechanical projects as well as some components for my cars and stuff.

Who’s your go-to for PLA and ABS/ASA filaments? Those will be my primary print jobs in any serious volume. I know our college’s club has had hella problems with random chinese brand filaments not printing consistently but I also don’t want to spend $30+ per kg for something like Prusament.

  • BastingChemina@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    In France I’m buying from ArianePlast. It’s good PLA for a decent price.

    I have not tried it but they also have “Eco” PLA at 13€/kg

  • IMALlama@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I’ve printed a decent amount of PETG from both Push Plastic and Atomic Filament. Both have been very solid/reliable, but I would probably give an edge to Atomic as far as quality. Their PETG has never let me down. On the ASA front, I’ve run around 9 kg of Polymaker ASA through my Voron with another 1.5 of blue and white sitting on two different 3kg spools. I ran 2 kg of their ASA through my i3 clone printing prints for my Voron. I haven’t had any problems with it, and it does occasionally go on sale for very attractive prices. I bought my last two spools on November 24th last year for $50.39 (for a 3 kg spool of blue) and $67.19 (for a 3 kg spool of white). Polymaker’s ASA does require what seems like a very low extrusion multiplier (I’m currently at 0.893), but you can print the stuff blazing fast in terms of mm^3/s.

    Now that I know that both Atomic Filament and Push Plastic offer ASA, I might give them a spin when I need a refill. I don’t go through that much filament and don’t mind spending a little extra $$ for something that could result in less headache. I also like supporting American companies/manufacturers where I can.

  • th_in_gs@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    "Jinos 3D Filament” is pretty cheap. I started using them during the pandemic when it was hard to find PETG. Seem to be a small place in North Carolina that manufactures mostly for their own use? Sometimes they take a couple of days to ship.

    They sell mostly on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/382556327412

    [Edit: Just re-read that you’re looking for ABS/ASA - I don’t think Jinos does those, unfortunately]

  • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Microcenter’s Inland pla+ has been good to me. Microcenter used to ship it free, and they may still, but it’s been a bit since I ordered. It’s $15-20/kg. Some day I’ll use great filament and might call this stuff garbage, but I’m not there yet. The standard pla is less impressive, causes me more grief than I like.

  • neclimdul@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Had great luck with polymaker and find they’re in the sweet spot of predictable quality and price for me.

    • dlatch@lemmy.world
      English
      1·
      2 months ago

      My go-to is their “REAL” PLA brand. It’s good quality, is made in NL and comes on cardboard spools.

      I am a bit fed up with all the shit they throw in with each order though, there’s only so many pens and stacks of post-its I need. When I remember, I add a line in the notes field to leave it out.

  • bluewing@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    For PLA and PETG, I like MatterHacker, though I have been buying some Voxel PLA lately and that’s been pretty good stuff too. Voxel does run sales that get the price down to $15/$16US a kilo.

    For ABS/ASA, I’m still using a the same kilo of Zyltech ABS I bought 5 or 6 years ago. And I still haven’t used 200g yet. I did dig it out this weekend to print a couple dozen custom cable clips for my boat with it though.

  • morbidcactus@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I bounced around a couple, my goal was to find stuff cheaper than prusament that also produced nice results. i really liked the stuff spool3d in Canada sells but ended up coming across matter3d as spool3d carries some of their products. They’re way cheaper than anything I can get on amazon and I found the quality up there.