Amazing filament for Special occasions.
I've received it in Sample Package from 3dFilaprint. First thing you will notice when dealing with it is its weight. Its 2x the weight of normal PLA. Meaning your prints will be much heavier, but also you will have half the length of filament per weight. That weight comes from Brass particles embedded in filament which allow prints to be sanded and polished to achieve amazing Brass like look.
All those things come with few filament properties I've never seen in normal filaments:
- Its much harder and brittle than most PLA filaments - you need to be careful with filament path between spool and hotend. If bend radius is too sharp it will snap
- When I've tried to print it using my normal PLA temperatures (200-210C) it behaved like water - it was oozing badly. I had to drop temperature down to 185 before i could get consistent extrusion from 0.4 nozzle
That leads to my only issue with that filament - cost. Because its "Made in USA" in relatively small quantities and it's using top quality raw materials it cost staggering £51.50 per 500g. Combined with double density it boils down to equivalent of ~£200 for 330m of 1.75 filament (typical length in 1 kg spool of normal PLA).
It will never be your everyday Filament, but it can be that one used for special occasions where normal stuff is just not good enough. You will want to test print part with normal PLA before commiting to this filament, but one you get it printed you will know it was worth every penny spend on this filament.
PS. You can also get short sample of this material from 3dfilaprint if you want to test it before committing to bigger amount
Model in pictures - Sir Pigglesfree by Louise Driggers (@loubie3d)