Alternative to RepRapper PETG?  

RE:

Plenty of good PETG out there. I'm currently going through a lot of Overture, no issues. Also lots of Sunlu but Overture feels "smoother", not sure how to describe it.

Edit: I just printed some stuff with IAMEI transparent PETG, very nice.

RE:

I've found that the Overture so-called transparent PETg is an almost identical replacement for the RepRapper so-called transparent PETg.

Overture, Paramount, and Hatchbox come to mind immediately as go-to PETg brands that I've had consistent good results with.

Lately IEMEI has worked fine as well, but I've only used (and reordered) the black.  I also have an unopened spool of Jarees white, from a recommendation here (Chuck?) which I'll try as soon as my current white PETg spool runs out.

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

How does the grey/silver, black, and red stack up?  I use those three a lot.

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

Posted by: @ryan-f15

How does the grey/silver, black, and red stack up?  I use those three a lot.

Not sure who you're asking specifically, but for PETg black, Overture, Hatchbox, and IEMEI all work fine with the I3.

Ditto with various brands of gray and specifically an Overture silver-gray whose prints look very much like those printed with the silver-gray sample included with the printer.

The only red(ish) PETg I've used was kind of a brick red (forget their very specific shade name) of Paramount which I used for one building and it printed just fine.

In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of any PETg that I've had trouble with on the Prusa.

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

The only one I can think of is gray Sunlu, which gives me an ungodly amount of stringing with a 0.8mm nozzle, despite hours of trying to rein it in. 

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

Hmmmm ... I can't remember using any Sunlu PETg.

I do know that PETg, in general, seems to be more stringy and more oozy than PLA or ABS, but I've never had stringing or oozing to the point of spoiling a print.

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

I've never heard of IEMEI filament.  I'll look into overture and hatchbox right now.  Will I have to change any print settings?

RE:

Posted by: @ryan-f15

I've never heard of IEMEI filament.

You have now!  😉  😉  IEMEI, for me, anyway, prints just like the more well-known brands.

Seriously, all of the above brands (Hatchbox, Overture, IEMEI) print quite well using the default PS 'generic PETg' settings.

I've found that there are VERY few cases where changes to the default settings actually need to be changed to get good prints with most of today's filament.  (The only case I can think of right off hand is one brand of metallic PLA which needs a slight temperature boost.)

@ryan-f15

I'll look into overture and hatchbox right now.  Will I have to change any print settings?

You will most likely have to tune your profiles for the new filaments, but it shouldn't be anything outlandish. I use a slightly different profile for Hatchbox or Prusament then I do for Overture etc,, it doesn't hurt to do some small tests and see how it reacts, this should be good experience for you if you have never used anything but RepRapper Petg. For me this normally means an extrusion multiplier test and a temp tower run with default settings, this normally results in minor temperature changes to the hot end and very minor if any change to the extrusion multiplier, and of course it depends on what your printing as well.

Good Luck

Swiss_Cheese

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

Do you mean IEMAI?

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

You are correct, I just checked a spool of it, it's IEMAI.

I have no clue as to how to pronounce it.

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

Pretty good stuff.  

Posted by: @jsw

You are correct, I just checked a spool of it, it's IEMAI.

I have no clue as to how to pronounce it.

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

Posted by: @cwbullet

Pretty good stuff.  

Yes it is, and another data point here.

Last night (actually early this morning) I had reason to try the IEMAI PETg on my 'other' printer, the Ultimaker S5, which only recently officially supported PETg filament.  (Before, it was fudged by manually adjusting a few parameters.)

It printed fine, but the spool is a bit wonky on the rear Ultimaker spool holder, resulting in kind of a disconcerting and attention-getting 'THUNK' every revolution.

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

I fell in love with their transparent orange.  It is easy to print and easy to remove from the plate.  I wish Prusament would come out with more transparents.  

Posted by: @jsw

 

Posted by: @cwbullet

Pretty good stuff.  

Yes it is, and another data point here.

Last night (actually early this morning) I had reason to try the IEMAI PETg on my 'other' printer, the Ultimaker S5, which only recently officially supported PETg filament.  (Before, it was fudged by manually adjusting a few parameters.)

It printed fine, but the spool is a bit wonky on the rear Ultimaker spool holder, resulting in kind of a disconcerting and attention-getting 'THUNK' every revolution.

Posted by: @jsw

 

Posted by: @cwbullet

Pretty good stuff.  

Yes it is, and another data point here.

Last night (actually early this morning) I had reason to try the IEMAI PETg on my 'other' printer, the Ultimaker S5, which only recently officially supported PETg filament.  (Before, it was fudged by manually adjusting a few parameters.)

It printed fine, but the spool is a bit wonky on the rear Ultimaker spool holder, resulting in kind of a disconcerting and attention-getting 'THUNK' every revolution.

Does the spool have to be attached or mounted to the ultimaker spool holder for the print to work? or can it be placed on another spool holder?

Regards

Swiss_Cheese

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

Yes and no.

For the machine to detect Ultimaker brand filaments via the chip in the spool, yes, it has to be mounted on the rear.

When loading, if the machine does not sense the filament type, it prompts the user via the front panel to select the type, such as PLA, PETg, ABS, etc.

Right now the machine is printing an object with IEMAI PETg and I have the spool to the side of the printer using the 3D Upfitters nice plexiglas spool holder.

On the 'other' printer (the Prusa this time) I'm printing an insert spacer so I (hopefully) can just put it on the built-in Ultimaker spool holder without that annoying thump every few minutes.

@jsw

I'm considering getting one, I want an at least, duel head printer at the house. I was considering other options but recent events have changed my mind about my choices, and I think Ultimaker is at least developed enough that I wont have to play games with it and it will just work.

do you find that to be true? I know you bought because of the great deal that came your way, But I'm not seeing a lot of complaints about the machine, I'm looking for 1.75mm also, Iirc yours was 3.0 when you got it.

RE: Alternative to RepRapper PETG?

Swiss, it's a great printer.

It's not as foolproof as in 'you push the button, it does the rest' as the Uprint, but it's approaching that level.

Although I'm a Prusa fan, I have to admit that for everyday printing, the Ultimaker S5 requires far less 'futzing around' than does the Prusa.

They (Ultimaker) offer their proprietary filament if you want it, but don't lock out other filament, as does Uprint.

At the semi-recent Make Omaha, I was chatting with an exhibitor from one of my former employers (UNMC) as he was showing off things like 3d prostheses and anatomy training aids and I asked him what printer(s) they used and he said the Ultimaker S5 and went on that they selected that model due to the simplicity of operation and that students, researchers, etc., could concentrate on their models and not on the details of making the machine do what it's supposed to do.

When I got the machine, both extruders were for 3mm filament.  I converted the left one to 1.75, mainly to allow sharing filament with the Prusa.  The kit is said to be tolerated by the Ultimaker Powers That Be, although not officially supported.  I use the right extruder mostly for soluble support material, so I left that alone.

As I was considering the modification for 1.75, there were some reports on the Ultimaker forum that some had gotten 1.75mm filament to work by simply loading it and adjusting the flow rate in Cura to compensate.

The one thing I was very leery of for a while was updating the firmware.  My machine had 5.8.x on it when I got it, and the upgrade to 6.x was a 'trap door' with no easy back-out and some reported 'bricking' the machine by attempting the upgrade.  I waited several months to upgrade, until things were sorted out and stable, before doing it.  I did not want to have to pay for a service call to straighten things out if the upgrade barfed.  Version 7.x is out now and I'm holding off on that until I know it's robust and stable, although they say that it's easy to downgrade to 6.x from 7.x.

At first I found that prints on the Ultimaker were more prone to things like zits and streamers, but I always blamed Cura for most of that, as I know that slicings from Cura for the Prusa also tended to have more zits and streamers than those sliced with PS.  The latest Cura versions seem to have helped significantly with that.

I was going to suggest that you might look around on places like Ebay for used machines, as a new S5 is now listing for over 6 kilobucks.  (It was just over 5k when I checked before making an offer on the one I have) and I looked on Ebay and everything there is close to or above list price.  🙁

There are some slight dimensional differences between prints on the Prusa and prints on the Ultimaker.  The 'body sizes' are close to identical, but circular holes of a given size tend to be smaller on prints done on the Ultimaker.

RE:

One thing I forgot, which I was reminded of when checking the Ultimaker forum, was a minor annoyance.

I switched filament in the S5 from a black PETg to a so-called transparent PLA.

Upon loading filament, the S5 starts extruding a streamer and prompts you to confirm 'when it's extruding consistently', and I let it run and run, still noticing quite a bit of black in the so-called transparent.  It eventually stopped and homed the extruder.

I launched the print and the lower layers were obviously 'stained' by the remaining black filament in the hot end.  I ended up aborting and restarting the print.

There does not seem to be any way on the S5 to manually extrude filament, as there is on the Prusa.  Also, there does not appear to be a way to continue the purge cycle until the color is correct.

I have another black print running now, and then I plan another transparent, so I'll probably start to print a calibration cube and abort it when the contamination is no longer obvious.

Minor annoyance.

I just got a reply on the Ultimaker forum suggesting that I might create a print that prints in mid-air without support, but, IMAO, it's probably easier just to start and abort a print.