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.
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.