esun petg

[nelsond6]

If you happen to live near a Microcenter store, they are selling PETG for about 25 bucks. I think its just rebranded esun. My local store had the blue on sale for 18 bucks. So far, I have been printing the blue color and my prints have been turning out great. I think I have found a replacement for the PET+ that I have been using.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/4420 ... l_(22_lbs)

-Dan

[jimc]

sure is. they have magenta, natural, blue and yellow.

[rsilvers]

Cool. I was just 500 yards from there. Then again, they are closed on Easter.

[jimc]

While i do like microcenter, its an hour from me so I would have to ship it. By the time i do that its either the same or just a couple bucks more from william and i think i would rather give him the business.

[rsilvers]

PETG was a top pick from my statistically-invalid material test and a price/performance leader at $34 per KG. In my mind, the last think they need to do is sell it for $18 per KG. At full price it is 1/2 to 1/3 the price of the competition as it is (competition that I assumed was better just for being more expensive - until I compared them). Virtually no one knows that it is awesome though, so if it is not moving, then lowering the price helps. With so many unimpressive products being hyped and selling at a high price mostly due to marketing (Beats headphones), this a product that deserves a lot more exposure.

[insta]

sure is. they have magenta, natural, blue and yellow.

It is 100% rebranded eSUN. The other inland spools match up with eSUN's offerings 1:1 and the spools look like the OEM spools. The fiberglass tape that holds the filament down is even the same we get on William's rolls.

That said, even with a MicroCenter on my way home, I have no problem ordering from William. The ~ $4/spool difference isn't huge, and I know he will take care of me. It is immensely convenient though, to run out of something and be able to pick up a spool of known quality nearby.

[hillkwaj]

So, last weekend I bought a spool of the Inland magenta PETG at Microcenter and got literally the best print quality ever on some larger objects (Bari sax mouthpieces). Settings were my standard PLA with the temps cranked up to 245/100 printing onto kapton. Absolutely beautiful prints on my first try with other than PLA.

This week I got a roll of blue eSun PETG from William. Tried printing with the same settings and got a relatively ugly print with a ton of strings, ugly corners, and some random blobs. Was able to clean it up quite a bit by dropping the extrude temp 10 degrees and increasing retraction, though still not as perfect as the magenta.

By the way, both filaments ran around 1.65mm and dimensions on cal cubes are good.

Anyway, wondering if the variability between colors is typical or if this reflects some difference in formulation between the Inland and eSun?

[jimc]

someone previously mentioned that they needed different settings with the magenta than they did with other colors. i have printed 2 spools of magenta but a ton more blue. i didnt notice too much of a difference but maybe i just didnt pay attention. im sure there is no formula change from microcenter to the esun branded. the r&d to reformulate that when microcenter wants to sell that at rock bottom prices wouldnt really make sense. i can almost guarantee its the same stuff that has been stuck on a black spool so i can be private labeled. the difference in print can be from different dia filament. you said you had the same settings. did you measure the filament and change the size?

[hillkwaj]

Thanks for the insight, Jim.

I did indeed measure each filament and such. Actually at this point I'm thinking there were other factors at play since when I printed the same objet today in magenta with what I thought were my prior good magenta settings, the object came out looking about the same as the blue. Part of the issue could be the geometry - the sax mouthpieces were very round geometries with no corners whereas the object I've been struggling with has a lot of right angles which is where things tend to get ugly. I also printed the mouthpieces with high infill, and a higher number of perimeters and tops/bottoms as I wanted them to be very solid.

I've further tweaked my magenta profile to bring the print speed down, add a bit more retraction, turn on the fan, turn on wiping, and a couple of other tweaks and it appears that I'm now back to a very clean print with today's object with no noticeable stringing. Once it completes I plan to switch to the eSun blue and immediately print the same object without changing a thing in order to compare the two. If the quality differs substantially I'll follow that by immediately printing with Inland blue which I just picked up at Microcenter today.

If you're lucky enough to live close to a Microcenter it's hard to beat the convenience of being able to run out and pick up just about anything - mine probably has 300+ spools of filament including PLA, ABS, PETG, PET+, HIPS, PVA, flexible, glow-in-the-dark, UV and temp color changing, conductive, etc. The only down side is that they're not well organized so it took me an hour of digging through the shelves to find a roll of the flexible (their online system claimed there were 4 in stock at my store).

Steve

[Slipshine]

I have just ordered 2 rolls at the $29.00 price direct from the sight.
I ordered the second one to get the order over $50 and get the free shipping.