Brands of filament used successfully in your M2

[kosal850]

I'm getting low on my provided pla roll shipped with my printer. However, I do have a lot of other brand filaments laying around to use. Hopefully they will work as well as the makergear filament.
so i'm wondering what other brands people have been using and getting good results from.

I understand some of these may be made by the same company, just rebranded. As for the makergear pla, it definitely looks different than the other pla spools i've used.. makergear pla has more of a rough texture to it than my other brands..I wonder if this is due to the design of the extruder....

[jimc]

The makergear pla is great stuff. They reduced the price of it recently so if you are a pla user then there is really no reson to buy it anywhere else. I mnow what you mean about the slight texture if the filament. Not sure if thats intentional but the texture makes it slide through the feed tube with less resistance. There are so many plastic suppliers now its not funny. There are many goods ones but even more bad ones. You end up putting some bad quality stuff through your extruder and it just creates problems, clogs, jamming or you just get bad print quality.

[Capt. John]

Makergear filament, both pla and abs go thru the guide tube the easiest.

Guess this is the true test if your filament is really round.
I admire any company that makes their products here, not in Chinaville.

Used other brands/colors Makergear does not stock, sent one brand back to Amazon because it was just plain nasty stuff.
As far as brands? ...there's too many to try to list/recommend, nor would I staying inside the rules of this forum.

[helix_3]

I have had only excellent experience with Filament Direct's grey PLA (my current supplier), as well as ToyBuilder Lab's PLA. Matterhacker's basic filament is sometimes good and sometimes bad. Of course Makergear's filament is excellent as well.

[Dale Reed]

I'm going to stick my neck out and speak not only for myself, but for jimc as well. We've both had great results with MadeSolid's PET+. I've use the clear, and it's nice. jimc has used it much more than I have, in several colors I believe, and had good results, from what I've read here. Extruder temp is about what ABS uses -- about 240C with the v3b hot end, give or take, and the bed temperature I use is 70C, similar to what I use with PLA. I use hair spray on the included-with-the-M2 borosilicate glass. It's less viscous than PLA, so you have to really crank up the retraction, coast, and negative restart distance, etc., but bed adhesion, layer adhesion are great, way less shrinkage and curling than ABS -- on par with or better than MG PLA.

And you can't beat MG black PLA. I've gone through a bunch of it. My go-to stuff. Can't go wrong there.

Dale

[Tim]

So what do you use for retraction, coast, and negative restart distance values, and what else is hidden in that "etc"? I have had serious problems with PET+ on overhangs; even with support underneath it ends up with a (randomly) rough surface and loses all detail. In the worst case it creates a bird's nest. Would that be alleviated by correcting those parameters, or is there something else going on?

[jimc]

i recently got a sample of colorfabb xt in opaque black. they are releasing an opaque line of their pet in a couple months and got a hold of a pre release sample of it. i have to say its really nice stuff. i didnt have a ton of it so i picked a few different things to test for and did some prints. i basically did a print of the make torture test to see how it did. the stuff bridges fantastic. the strings actually shrink up and pull tight as its bridged. really great. i managed to do the arch first shot with no support at all and almost no hanging strings. warping is about on par with pla so very slight. strength is fantastic. now compared to the pet+......the clear pet+ i find to be fantastic. the opaque ones i have so far had a problem with layer bonding. its not super bad but it aint great either and i have printed the stuff up to 270. maybe i'll just do a crazy high temp print and see what happens with it. anyway with the xt i dont get this at all. the layer bonding is so strong that i tried to take a 2mm wide piece and snap it length wise along a layer and just a corner snapped off so once printed this stuff is totally one piece. its has a feel, flex and strength that of plexiglass or polycarbonate without snapping so easy. all in all so far i am liking the xt better but again i need more print time with it. once its available in a couple months i'll pick up a roll. its supposed to be priced at around $40-45 for a 3/4kg roll. i think thats a few bucks cheaper than pet+

[jimc]

tim, do you have your v6 installed yet? i have a 1/2 tuned process for the opaque pet+ for the e3d hot end if your interested

[jdacal]

Do you guys know if Makergear sells the larger reels of filament? I guess the one that weighs about 5 lbs?

[jimc]

Not that i am aware of. Only place i know for sure is ultimachine. You may be able to get them from push plastic as well since they are a manufacturer but you would need to call them.