Hi, all. So I’m pretty new to this hobby, and this might seem like a short-sighted question. But I was wondering, how important is the brand name when buying filament? I live in South Korea, which means AliExpress orders arrive here pretty quickly and are generally a viable option. The thing is that I see filament on Ali for half the price of the reputable brand name stuff I can get in Korea. Do any of you have any experience with the cheaper, no-name stuff? Is plastic just plastic, and the brand is just jacking up the price because they can? Or is there an important difference between the filament produced by the big brands and filament made in China that I can get for much cheaper? Any and all advice would be much appreciated.
Just to add…avoid any carbon fiber doped filaments, they are proven weaker and those carbon fiber fragments are dangerous to breathe or touch. It’s similar to asbestos.
Yes. If I absolutely must use a fiber filled material, I prefer glass fiber rather than carbon. A fiber fill in your filament reduces shrink and warping and increases rigidity, and makes some tough-to-use polymers more printable such as Nylon. However, the above is correct in that it reduces tensile strength and especially layer adhesion strength, i.e. tensile strength along your Z axis. (Plus, carbon fiber fills basically always limit your color selections to black, black, and black.)
If you need mechanical strength of some type or another, it’s almost always a better idea to use a non-filled filament in a more suitable material and work on modifying your printer or getting a better printer that’s capable of printing that material. I can do straight polycarbonate in my machine with a pretty high degree of success (other than very small parts, I’m finding) so in all honesty I don’t have much use for fiber filled filaments anyway.