Last week I took the bait and bought some esun pla+ from an Amazon.de sale.

I normally print with Colorfabb of Prusament. Almost for 5y now and never had real issues, especially not with the Prusa Mini.

But now, I loaded a fresh rol and it just… was awful: under extrusion galore even in the first layer! A lot of clicking and clacking… just 😒

I read somewhere their filament comes “wet”… pretty convenient that they also sell… overpriced dryers right?!

Anyway I’m going to build a dryer now. Hoping that resolved the issues and this wasn’t all money wasted… sigh

Anyway I was wondering if someone else had the same issues? Or experience with this brand? How can you know that it’s dried enough? Or can it really only be with testing?

I’m investing in a mk4 soon, this has a direct drive, instead of a Bowden. Will this be less of an issue? I mean I know about the quality issues I was just thinking about that it seems like it just cannot pass properly, through … and I forgot how it’s named: the thingie that feeds the filament.

Anyway if anything: be cautious with that brand. I wish I had read some more before buying it, I trusted the reviews to much I guess

Anyway sorry for the long kinda rand post… it has been… a challenging week… 🤟

  • j4k3@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    IME, most cheap Chinese filaments from the name brands are fairly consistent for the same exact material and color, but I need to do all the calibrations for each new brand and color. If you look up base material pellet suppliers there are only a few major companies in the USA and Europe for PLA. China has a ton of small production plants that all came online in the last 5 years. It is likely that the base material is different between any given brand, and that means lots of calibration needed.

    • Gompje@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      To be honest I just took the profile from Prusaslicer. I did tweaked a bit during the print but it was like the extruder could not grasp the material. the clicking came from there. When I took it out again there were gaps in the filament itself.

      For the yellow I had a successful first layer, the green was a disaster from the start. I now made a dehydrator from a cheap food thing and I hope that it’s not all wasted …

      • thenoseknowsall@lemmy.oneEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Try increasing your print temperature and flow rate maybe?

        But FWIW, when I had those struggles on my MINI last year, I had to take apart my extruder and clean out a bunch of filament flakes that were causing it to slip.

        • Gompje@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Thanks!

          This must be the case then, given others can print fine with this brand and are saying the same thing. somehow this filament has more issues. It threw me off guard because the others where printing still very good. Therefore I blamed the one thing that has changed: the filament brand.

          I will clean with cleaning filament first, and then, after the backlog is printed; test it again before I disassemble. Thing is, idk about you, but I kinda got so used that the “mini just prints everything correctly no matter what I throw at it” that it kinda threw me off guard. And I actually lost some insights! Funny how our brain works isn’t it? 🤦‍♀️

          • thenoseknowsall@lemmy.oneEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            I agree! I had gotten so used to everything always just working…and then I bought some cheap filament and went through this same song and dance. Some filament just sucks…