"New Formula" Printer Filament

Background

After experiencing some serious issues with the early low cost 3D printer filament available from 3D Printing Systems I decided to purchase some more of the more expensive Up! filament from them. Bruce was very persuasive and convinced me to try a roll of their "New Formula" filament. I thought I'd share my experience with it. This is not anything approaching a rigorous test, there is little science here, it's just a pragmatic comparison with the Up! filament from the perspective of an end-user.

The problems I experiencing printing from my Up! with the original low cost filament were:

• spooling failure, the extrusion assist feeder was having difficulty pulling the filament from the spool.

• extrusion failure, the extruder was also having difficulty feeding the filament into the extruder head.

• extrusion head got clogged.

I've had many tens of hours of largely flawless printing with the original Up! filament, so this came as a bit of a shock and surprise.

Bruce stocks a filament with a new formulation and that is the one available at his site labelled "New Formula". I experimented with a roll of "StarBurst" which is a deep blue color with silvery flecks through it.

Configuration

For the prints I used an Up! printer with ABS settings. I printed with 0.15mm resolution, fine settings and default for everything else. I pre-heated the build platform for one hour prior to printing. I did not use the standard Up! extruder nozzle, instead I've switched to using Chris Bates' 0.5mm nozzles.

Results

The first thing I noticed was that the mechanical problems I'd experienced with the earlier filament were not evident. The filament spooled flawlessly for a four hour print. There was no clogging of the extrusion head, although at one point I did manually remove what looked and felt like a hair from the extrusion head.

When the print was completed on inspection I noticed a few things:

• • There were small imperfections in the print. Mostly small holes, but there were also strange hair-like structures evident. The small holes I believe were caused by what sounded like bubbles as the print was proceeding. While the printing was taking place I'd hear small "pops" and I'm guessing they little gas bubbles that have expanded and broken into small holes in the print. The hair-like structures I have no explanation for and no idea how they arose as I wasn't watching the print at the time they were created.

  • The surface quality was generally not as clean.

  • It was much more difficult to remove the printed item from the perf board. The new formula filament seems to stick solidly. This is both a good and bad thing I guess. Suffice it to say, it took much longer to remove.

  • The printed item itself felt stronger, but more brittle. The plastic seemed less pliant but more resilient. This probably explains in part why it was difficult to remove.

The print, still on the perf-board straight off the printer. Note the hair-like structures and the small holes in the surface.

The print after removing it from the perf-board and giving it a rough knife-clean. The white powdery looking artefacts are a result of cutting/breaking off scaffolding and I think are an effect of the plastic being more brittle.

You can see in these untouched surfaces the holes I mentioned earlier.

Shiny! and the surface imperfections have been pretty much corrected, but the color has been affected. This was the first time I'd used Acetone vapour finishing so I made some mistakes, but there is no missing the fact that the color has changed. Compare the lower part of the legs to the upper. This might be inevitable and perhaps it's unique to the 'StarBurst' but it's something to be aware of.

Summary

Cons

• Harder to remove from build platform

• Minor surface imperfections

• Brittle

Pros

• Stronger, Flexible

• Cheaper

• Range of colors

• Feeds well

• No sign of any warping, even on large raft-less print.

On balance I would buy and use this filament. I wouldn't use it for every job, but for many print jobs that I do the relative weaknesses of this filament aren't an issue and the apparent additional strength might be an advantage. The lower cost is certainly important if you're on a budget.

I've subsequently done a few other print jobs using this filament with slightly better results. The hair-like issue has not recurred, so again I remain stumped as to what caused that.

PostScript, 24 March: I've completed over fifty hours of prints with this filament now and while I still have a marginal preference for the original Up! filament I've entirely happy with this one for most of my day to day print jobs. Large raft-less jobs are flawless with no warp evident at all.