@kongorilla Interesting. Thank you for the testimony. Depending on the Prime Day sales, I’ll try to limit myself to 1 spool of eSUN. Toybuilder and Inland are sold on Amazon but they’re more expensive and not on Prime so I’d buy them from the original sellers. Hopefully Hatchbox goes on sale though.
I have eSun PLA and PETG. The PLA I find prints at lower temps than the equivalent filament from other manufacturers. I also see a lot more stringing when printing higher than the optimal temps. Still a good filament.
The PETG on the other hand is amazing stuff. I use it as a replacement for ABS. Has the same characteristics as ABS, but without the smell, or the “shrinkage”. It’s sticky like PLA and will adhere to the same surfaces as what you’d use with PLA. The stuffs great and I’ve used it for heat sensitive prints like the effector on a Kossel delta printer. The “natural” color is like printing water. It’s eerily translucent if you get your layer heights just right. Amazing stuff the PETG. a bed temp of 100 - 105 with a hot end temp of about 240 and you’re golden. I’d definitely recommend picking some up.
@Chris_Wilson Are you using any cooling with that PETG?
Just received my spool of eSUN PLA this morning. Slight delay as USPS shipped it to my building rather than my office, so it had to go through the internal mail system.
Seems well packaged and vacuum sealed. Hopefully I can try it out tonight. However I didn’t get any sample filament, I am assuming because the order was fulfilled by Amazon.
@John-Paul_Hopman I read the info on their website. You have to email them with what smaple you want.
@Rien_Stouten only the fans that are part of my extruder, no additional fans though.
Recieved my spool of eSUN 1.75mm white PLA yesterday and thought I would share my thoughts so far. For background, I have only used half a spool of light blue filament from SeeMeCNC, so I don’t have much experience on the subject.
Filament was nicely packaged and vacuum sealed with a desiccant pouch, could hear the air enter when I cut the seal. It does appear tightly wound in order to get all of the filament onto the spool, though I am not sure what impact that will have on printing.
Fist thing I noticed was the filament had a matte finish. My roll from SeeMeCNC had a glossy finish to it. Bending the filament, both brands had a similar “quality” to them. Twisting the bends at a 90 degree angle though, the SeeMeCNC filament broke fairly quickly while the eSUN filament took quite a few twists.
I only had time for a quick test print using my existing temperature settings and such, no time for calibrating the filament. I also was using a new version of Repetier-Host and Slic3r. The filament seemed to extrude fine at 190/195, no bubbles or steaming from the nozzle to suggest a moisture issue. However, once printed, I seemed to have bumps and other issues in the layer that was laid down. At this point I am willing to blame my lack of calibration / setup of the filament.
The bad news though is that it doesn’t appear any filament is on sale for Amazon Prime Day.
@John-Paul_Hopman Thanks for the update. I was disapointed by the Prime Day Sales. Nothing I wanted was on sale but that didn’t stop me from buying 2 semi-exotic (translucent red and glow in the dark green) rolls of Hatchbox PLA and a roll of Nylon Bridge. Might still buy a roll of the eSUN to test and for the free sample.
On an unrelated topic I bought an old Xbox 360 Kinect on eBay for $30 for 3D scanning 
Careful with the glow in the dark. I have heard it tears up your nozzle almost as bad as Copper / Bronze fill filaments.
@John-Paul_Hopman Was not aware about that or the copper/bronze filament. Is that just cheap copper and broze filament or colorfabb’s as well? Would it be fine in an all metal hotend with stainless steel nozzle? Thanks for the warning.
Heard about metal-filled filaments from a presentation E3D had at this years Midwest RepRap Festival. Most of the damage is internal to the nozzle. The ColorFab guy there told me about the glow in the dark filament, which surprised me.
E3D started selling stainless steel nozzles for use with metal filaments, so I am assuming it will last longer than brass. If I ever get that far though, I plan on having a separate set of nozzles for special filaments.
@John-Paul_Hopman I’m just using a Printrbot Simple Metal with heated Bed right now. I’m planning to buy their new all metal hotend when it comes back in stock. They don’t sell replacement nozzles for it though and their out of stock with the brass ones. I’ll try to refrain from using the glow in the dark until I either get new nozzles or the metal hotend.
I had some printrbot glow in the dark PLA, I didn’t see anything that would lead me to believe it was as harsh on the tips as bronze fill. I found the biggest hassle to be the ease in which the direct drive gear would grind the filament on retractions, causing jams.
@Tom_Georgoulias What temp were you printing at?
Been a while but I think i used a range of 190-200-ish.
@Tom_Georgoulias Interesting. That shouldn’t be too hot. I’ll try to print at 185
@Adam_Steinmark Hobbyking is having another sale. Just got a pretty decent deal on 2.5 kg of eSUN PLA from them. Cheap enough to take a risk even though I am still playing with the spool from Amazon.
@John-Paul_Hopman Only half kg spools. Id prefer a full kg. But half spools are pretty good for testing multiple colors. The only sale I see is on a few 3mm rolls.
Double check the US East warehouse, I ordered a 1kg Natural for $12 I think, a spool of silver for $10 (listed at 1kg rather than 1.6kg shipping weight), and then a half spool of black for around $7.
Then again, I have ordered from them before, perhaps I am getting some kind of return customer discount.
@John-Paul_Hopman Now that I narrowed it down to the US East I see it, thanks. I might order, I spent $65 on filament this week though. Any indication on how long the sale might last?