Filament from China? Anyone try it?

[MartinPoets]

Has anyone tried ordering printer filament from sites like Alibaba.com? I see it is very cheap
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/11...ufacturer.html

As low as $8 per roll. Has anyone given this a try? Is the quality the same as the stuff you buy in the US?

[MysteryAlabaster]

I'm a bit weary of the price, but I really don't want to be the one to say 'It's from China, It's really cheap, There's something wrong here'...

Without putting in all my personal info, I can't account for shipping costs. Some companies charge extra for shipping so the actual cost of the product seems lower.

If you can find out what the cost would be after adding in shipping, that might help you decide.

[jimc]

i posted something about the chinese stuff in another thread. this appears to be a different manufacturer than any that i have used so i hate to group all chinese filament as being bad. that would be unfair. $8-$16 however imo is what filament should really cost. $40-$50 for a spool of abs is absurd. the US stuff from village plastics is super stuff and considering you can get that shipped for $37 from www.onlinefilament.com i guess the big deciding factor is what is the shipping costs from the china manufacturer on alibaba. in the end with shipping if it cost $30 per roll you might as well pay the extra few bucks and get the good stuff. if the china stuff is only a couple bucks to ship then i would love to try it out.

[TeddyYan]

I've ordered other things from Alibaba, and for the most part it has all been cheap stuff. I would guess that the filament would fall into the same category, but I don't want to say it's cheap since I've never used it.

[thejollygrimreaper]

you generally get what you pay for where filament is concerned, it's also very dependant on your printer, extruder and hotend, i wouldn't even bother trying to run this stuff on an up! or a stock standard mk7 extruder, but it should go fine 1.75mm and somthing with a jhead or one of my hotends (aluhotend) on it, the concern used to be diameter consistancy with chinese filament, however these days the bigger concern is more about foreign dirt inside the plastic itself especially as we are now looking at 0.3mm 0.2mm and 0.1mm nozzles as becomming a standard thing in the very near future

[Wired1]

It would have to be extremely cheap for me to want to risk it. I use a lot of PLA from Vik and have never had a problem with it, plus I want to support kiwi business as much as I can. That said I buy a lot of motors, bearings, rods and extrusion from China because it is a lot cheaper so maybe filament might be worth a test. Maybe someone could be a guinea pig and try out a few reels of those available.

[MysteryAlabaster]

It would have to be extremely cheap for me to want to risk it. I use a lot of PLA from Vik and have never had a problem with it, plus I want to support kiwi business as much as I can. That said I buy a lot of motors, bearings, rods and extrusion from China because it is a lot cheaper so maybe filament might be worth a test. Maybe someone could be a guinea pig and try out a few reels of those available.

If it's really that cheap, I might be able to convince a few of my techie buddies who work in the lab with me to all buy some rolls together.

If I do, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[ronnytedeski]

If it's really that cheap, I might be able to convince a few of my techie buddies who work in the lab with me to all buy some rolls together.

If I do, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

That would be awesome. I'm sure many of us would love to know how good it really is, but none of us want to spend the money LOL.

[MysteryAlabaster]

That would be awesome. I'm sure many of us would love to know how good it really is, but none of us want to spend the money LOL.

I'll look into it later today... I'm kinda bushed from ComicCon last night and my feet hurt, but once I eat I'll be good to go.

If it really is only $8-$16 then I'm going to buy like two rolls myself.

[jimc]

cool, let us know what you find out.