Price of Prusament PLA Canada
Four years with my Prusa printer and I still can’t believe the price of Prusament in Canada. One shop has a spool of Prusa PLA for $60.. Amazon here has it for $51 (free shipping but few colors).. Directly from Prusa, the Shipping is $151 for a total of $461 for 8 spools. Voxel (in Canada) has it for $40 but only 3 total colors of PLA available. Although Prusa has a US distributor, our Countries have very expensive cross-border shopping costs (and who knows the current tariff status).
I ordered 8 rolls and 4 of those have reusable spools from BambuLabs (I have no BambuLabs printers) and the total cost (with shipping and taxes) is $146.
Hard to believe I can buy 8 spools from a Bambu (and similar for Polymaker, I just want reusable spools), for less than the cost of shipping from Prusa (at least in Canada)
I’ve standardized on plastic, re-usable spools as I’ve found the cardboard gets damaged easily and in a high-humidity environment I believe the cardboard will contribute to increased maintenance on keeping a spool dry.
RE:
PLA is from one vendor to the next is pretty much PLA. Unless you specifically need Prusa Orange. I grew out of PLA a long time ago but Polymaker, Overture are good brands (and cheaper).
There are two Canadian companies than make it domestically: Eureka for $25/spool and the other is M3D
RE:
You’re 100% right about the cardboard in humidity. It acts like a sponge, and the dust from the edges can actually clog up your Bowden tubes or gears over time. Standardizing on the reusable plastic spools is a pro move for long-term reliability.
So obviously an AI account.... Getting PTSD from AI-speak. In fact, I even recognize the cadence as ChatGPT. Especially: "pro move"
RE: Price of Prusament PLA Canada
I am pretty much no longer ordering filament from PRUSA. I refuse to pay the extra money for NFC, which I do not need and will never use. I fail to understand their thought process of eliminating non-NFC flame. I guess they are tired of selling filament. I have gone with many recommendations on this forum and found great and cheaper alternatives.
Extra HAM Radio - N4MCC
RE: Price of Prusament PLA Canada
I live in Sweden and Prusament makes more sense here. A refill spool of PLA costs around €26 and a new spool costs around €31. Swedish-made PLA from add:north costs around €24 (a new spool, not refill), which is comparable. I can get Chinese-made PLA filament for around €16 a non-refill spool.
So if you're like me and willing to pay more for supporting local companies (both Sweden and Europe) then Prusament is expensive but not ridiculous. Prusa doesn't offer a free-shipping option even if you order a lot of filament, so the €16 shipping stings a little when I can get free shipping from add:north (although I can completely understand how shipping is more expensive from Czech to Sweden than from Sweden to Sweden).
The biggest selling point for Prusament for me (apart from supporting European businesses) is that I find their print profiles to be well-tuned for Prusa printers. Tuning yourself can be fun, but sometimes I would rather pay for more well-tuned filament so I can just print.