eSUN wood filament
Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2015 2:55 am
I bought a spool of the eSUN wood filament from William at Intservo, and he's been begging me to try it out and post a review on Amazon. Today I found out why---somebody posted a one-star review back in March, which is currently the only review for the filament. It was one of those reviews that basically just says "awful stuff" and doesn't even go into details. I'm mostly copying this post from the Amazon review I just submitted.
This is the first time I have worked with any wood filament, and I can't say enough great things about the eSUN "Woo 3D", except maybe that the name is a blatent rip-off of the original Laywoo-D3. The point of wood filament is to be sandable and stainable, and this filament excels at both. Parts fresh off of the printer have a fairly rich beige tone that's not half bad by itself. Unfinished, though, it looks a bit like plasticized balsa (see photo). A quick rough-up with fine-grid sandpaper or steel wool gets rid of the plastic look, and staining makes it difficult to tell apart from real wood. . . from a distance. The filament layers give it a sort of grain, but it's a bit too straight and evenly spaced to look natural up close (you can see this from the other photo, although honestly, the photo doesn't really do it justice. Also I haven't done the second coat of stain and polyurethane gloss coat yet). The weight is like balsa, much lighter than any other plastic I've worked with, so if you want it to feel like wood as well as look like it, you'll have to weight it internally. As far as printing, it was as easy to work with as any PLA I've used. No jams on my 0.35mm nozzle, although I've heard that jams can be a problem with some wood filaments. The stuff is very, very stringy, so aggressively dialing up the retraction distance is recommended. But at its worst, a little sandpaper gets rid of the strings completely.
I've heard that when printing, wood filaments will make the room smell like a carpenter's shop. This stuff has no smell at all. It makes me wonder if there's any wood in it at all. It may be related to some filament I got from a Kickstarter campaign a year (or more) ago (a company called Polymakr, see
http://www.polymaker.com/shop/polywood/), which got its wood consistency from some sort of foam structure to the plastic. I have no idea if the eSUN stuff has real wood in it or not, but as long as it has the right look and feel, and doesn't jam the printer, and is trivially easy to work with, I'm not complaining. This stuff is fun to work with!
This is the first time I have worked with any wood filament, and I can't say enough great things about the eSUN "Woo 3D", except maybe that the name is a blatent rip-off of the original Laywoo-D3. The point of wood filament is to be sandable and stainable, and this filament excels at both. Parts fresh off of the printer have a fairly rich beige tone that's not half bad by itself. Unfinished, though, it looks a bit like plasticized balsa (see photo). A quick rough-up with fine-grid sandpaper or steel wool gets rid of the plastic look, and staining makes it difficult to tell apart from real wood. . . from a distance. The filament layers give it a sort of grain, but it's a bit too straight and evenly spaced to look natural up close (you can see this from the other photo, although honestly, the photo doesn't really do it justice. Also I haven't done the second coat of stain and polyurethane gloss coat yet). The weight is like balsa, much lighter than any other plastic I've worked with, so if you want it to feel like wood as well as look like it, you'll have to weight it internally. As far as printing, it was as easy to work with as any PLA I've used. No jams on my 0.35mm nozzle, although I've heard that jams can be a problem with some wood filaments. The stuff is very, very stringy, so aggressively dialing up the retraction distance is recommended. But at its worst, a little sandpaper gets rid of the strings completely.
I've heard that when printing, wood filaments will make the room smell like a carpenter's shop. This stuff has no smell at all. It makes me wonder if there's any wood in it at all. It may be related to some filament I got from a Kickstarter campaign a year (or more) ago (a company called Polymakr, see
http://www.polymaker.com/shop/polywood/), which got its wood consistency from some sort of foam structure to the plastic. I have no idea if the eSUN stuff has real wood in it or not, but as long as it has the right look and feel, and doesn't jam the printer, and is trivially easy to work with, I'm not complaining. This stuff is fun to work with!