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It is hard to get good quality PLA on Amazon?
The filament market is confusing, especially for Amazon. There are so many brands that keep coming and going, and, the fact that most of the reviews are “bought” with discount coupons doesn’t really help. Do you agree that you need to make an informed choice to avoid hours of frustration? Then you are lucky! This is exactly why I’ve written this article!
If you’ve been following 3D printing for any amount of time, you know that the industry is now booming. 3D printing continues to change at a rapid pace with new technologies, brands, and materials. It can feel chaotic when trying to figure out the best practices, brands, materials, etc and you can easily become confused. So, why do we need to take into count the quality of PLA brands?
Well, in the worst cases, you can clog the hotend or cause critical problems with your extruder. This means losing lots of time cleaning up the blockage and reprinting the part. It’s also a monetary loss as you need to reprint the object or buy another filament.
Seem like a horror situation? It happens far too often. One common scenario is when I see bad reviews about a printer and I look at the printed model only to see that the bad printing quality is due to the filament.
Best PLA on Amazon
Below you will find some insight into some filament brands that I’ve used and tested on different occasions. I’ve chosen Amazon because it’s available almost all over the world and I’ve seen an increase in 3D-printing related products over the past years.
Best selling PLA amazon
HATCHBOX PLA 3D PRINTER FILAMENT
Hatchbox PLA is the number 1 rated filament on Amazon with great reviews and constant opinions from all across the web. I can see that lots of 3D enthusiasts use this filament because of the high quality and the wide variety of beautiful colors.
There are lots of great filaments out there, but little with such a good quality-price ratio. Also, the number of persons that only use this filament brand is huge, in a small amount of time this brand gained lots of love in the 3D printing community.
ESUN PLA 3D PRINTER FILAMENT
Against the new entries, Esun has been one of the best filaments for a long time, only recently there have been some issues with spool winding, but it’s not a problem as they do accurate quality control and it’s almost impossible that the filament jams, also their filament diameter is very accurate. I mostly use eSun when I need strong parts, I’ve noticed that their plastic is much more resistant than other brands on Amazon.
It not cheap as other filaments but in the long run, is a win, you will never have problems with this filament. Even if it’s not perfectly winded.
OVERTURE PLA 3D PRINTER FILAMENT
The best word to describe OVERTURE PLA 3D Printer filament is consistency. The only issue I’ve had was about the overlapping filament, but it’s not common at all. At such an affordable cost, you don’t often await the quality you get here. Is this high-end engineering level quality? NO. But if that’s what you want, then you’ll be paying for it. With OVERTURE, the general mood around the community is you get more than what you paid for.
The only true negative for OVERTURE is the main positive. It’s consistent. This isn’t going to wow you with its brilliance. It’s going to do the job you want it to do, and that is it. For me, it’s perfect.
SAINSMART PLA 3D PRINTER FILAMENT
SAINSMART puts out a product that works very well at a top-notch price point with high levels of smoothness. Most importantly, SAINSMART competes very well against similarly priced filaments.
If you are looking for a negative, you may find that a bad loop or two can be found periodically toward the end of some rolls. This is an irregular problem and not something you should expect to see on every roll. Many brands suffer from bad winding from time to time, but people rarely talk about it.
Best PLA value on amazon
TIANSE PLA 3D PRINTER FILAMENT
TIANSE works best at a low temperature. From my experience, to achieve the best results from this filament, I suggest you to calibrate the printer at a lower temperature and consider not using your heated bed.
People who will not take my advice above are in for a hard time. Some reported problems with high temperatures are: bubbling, stringing, etc.
Most reviewers liked TIANSE’s bright colors as an unexpected plus and were pleasantly surprised at how vibrant their prints turned out.
As an added bonus, this is even less expensive than many of its direct competitors.
SUNLU 3D PRINTER FILAMENT
Sometimes you just want solid quality. SUNLU doesn’t stand out as bad or good. There are no SUNLU lovers, but there are no SUNLU haters either. It’s a cheap, good quality 3D printing filament that performs as advertised.
The only negatives I’ve experienced were some badly packaged products bought through a third party, which could have been caused by a return. Periodic bad rolls can cause problems, but this has been noted with other filaments as well.
Sometimes it’s nice to find a product that I don’t have to weed through fake purchases to find the real reviews.
3D SOLUTECH 3D PRINTER FILAMENT
Many users love this filament. It has great reviews and performs as expected, frequently.
The user reports for most parts are positive. If it is working well for you, then you could see a little stringiness, good coloring, and a print that is slightly harder than PLA counterparts. It prints best around 215c for the first layer and around 210c for subsequent layers.
When it doesn’t work with your printer, you can expect jams, some brittleness, warping, or bending at times.
Many of these problems may be attributed to setup. When users switch from one filament to another, getting the settings just right can be a bit frustrating.
If you are looking for an inexpensive solution, try one roll of 3D Solutech. It works well for you? Then, by all means, jump on board and keep buying it, as it should consistently perform well for you. Your test roll didn’t work out? Then you may need to move to something more like the Hatchbox or ESUN.
ERYONE 3D PRINTER FILAMENT
ERYONE is a Chinese manufacturer that produces tolerable filament for a good price. All reports indicate ERYONE winds their spools, which translates into no kinks or errors while printing. It prints smooth and obtains mostly positive comments.
The only thing to fear is spool dimensions. For whatever reason, the spool hole size is strange and does not fit on several spool holders and it touches the lower surface. Some people rigged up a stand quick, others had materials on hand that worked.
Conclusion
I hope my contribution was valuable to your experience and that will help you go out and make a more knowledgeable decision when buying your filament.
Have you tried some of the filaments listed above? Let me know what kind of results you had.
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