Filaments, Better Filaments and Colors. Time for a change.
I am really new to 3D printing and I am constantly on the hunt for new filaments. But. I have noticed a trend lately. Company after company releasing their "better" filament. Generally they do so with marketing fluff and little substance explaining why their filament is better than company B's filament. What EXACTLY does it mean to me as a user is what needs to be explained. If you want me to buy your standard, boring red filament, explain to me what makes it better. Information is what I want. Not marketing fluff. If I want marketing fluff, I will go shopping for a car and some guy in a plaid suit.
Something else I noticed, for the most part, they all seem to be in the same tired colors. It would be nice to see a variety of colors. Multiple shades of blue. Transitions between blue and green. And it would be nice to see some form of color information (CMYK, Pantone, or Federal) or some formal color specifications. Photos don't cut it if you need to match a company color or logo. And even within sites that sell filament, some have extremely inconsistent imaging showing the colors. And even others don't show any color at all and leave you guessing what color names are from a dropdown list. What am I talking about? Well, lets look at one of the big player's description...colorFab: "At least as bright as a summer day, that’s how intense this shade of blue really is. We have no doubt this vivid blue color will complement your designs.". Really. What hue is it? If you look up "Sky Blue" on MatterHackers, their PLA doesn't look remotely the same color as ColorFab's. THIS is why we need to have decent color info about what we are buying.
If 3D printing is ever to make it into a mainstream manufacturing solution, standardization of supply materials is going to have to happen. Calling your filament "Baby Butt Beige" doesn't tell a manufacturer squat about what color it is any more than calling your filament "premium" or "xt" tells them what makes it different or better.
What we need to see is information about a filament. More than whats currently provided (which is almost nothing). Things like if it fluoresces (ie glows under UV, aka blacklight). I have purchased several spools from different sources that looked like it should glow under UV (think parties and Halloween) yet did not. Can it be etched/cut safely in a laser cutter (think awards or trophies). What chemical resistances does it have or not have (if I print a chamber safety flag for a gun, will the flag dissolve the minute it touches a bore solvent). Most of that is controlled by additves to the base ABS resin. What did they add? Who knows. And extremely rarely is any detailed info given about a filament.
I am not talking about stifling new filament development, I am talking about standardizing the information provided to the end users. I am talking about working together to make this more of an interchangeable part concept than one-off concept. I am talking about being able to look at a filament and tell its Pantone PMS 802 2X and that it glows under blacklight and its UV stabilized for use outdoors or even looking at a glow-in-the-dark filament that looks like pantone 806 in daylight and glows pink in the dark (I was surprised by MakerGeeks' glow pack, NONE glowed anything but green even though they were different colors in white light). Right now, I can't find ONE website that will give me any of that information about a filament.
So, can we please start getting useful information about filaments please?
