I tested 3D Printing filament for accuracy and found...that it's not.

[@kiskiller3]

FYI i run filament manufacturing at my job and we have 4 lasers to ensure ovality aswell as diameter is within 0.03mm. we are quite proud of our quality material here!

[@Mwwwwwwwwe]

Cool! I like the way you don't shill the brand like some Chinese manufacturers with fake accounts do

[@dbiprinting]

What brands do you guys man for

[@Etrehumain123]

That's very cool you don't tell your brand right away otherwise I would call that a fishy advertising. You just made a free feedback, and I apreciate it

[@Frank5010001]

Multicolor-filament is intentionally a little oval, for that the extruder press it in a certain direction, so that the colors are on the same side whilt the print.

[@Iisakki3000]

That makes a lot of sense. I was wondering how will it stay properly orientated.

[@wtflolomg]

Well, I have to dust off my bona fides as a former embedded systems software engineer at a company that built industrial equipment for the plastics industry. 30 years ago, I was deep down a rabbit hole of making equipment that increased the accuracy of resulting product of extruders. Our equipment STARTED before plastic pellets even hit the hot end... I could write several pages on blenders and flow control, volumetric versus gravimetric... how humidity affects production, or even the curious calibration curve of speed vs. flow rate changes due to momentum and inertia of pellets through an auger and sleeve. I do feel like dimensional accuracy could be greatly improved by better flow control of the input material (and as a bonus, savings can be incurred by filament makers with tighter tolerances on additives like colorants) - I did this on a massive scale, controlling the thickness of greenhouse films being made in rolls of material miles long. My equipment also was used to control the consistency of fibers used for making carpets - like those in airports, so they'd wear evenly even when produced in separate lots. As I said, I could probably write a very long article for all3dp on the subject, but for the most accurate production, manufacturers need to control the INPUT flow rate, and the OUTPUT speed of the filament produced. Adjusting the speed based on output measurements is nice and all, but it's a forensic calibration that misses important control points. I can talk about it now because the patents are expired, but we were able to control flow (which also results in more consistent mixes of base materials) to a very extreme degree, think 100ths of a percent. I feel like a mechanism for winding spools at a consistent filament feed speed (note, this is NOT the same as rotation of a spool, whose diameter changes as it fills up) would be possible, and that's 95% of the way to providing consistent, accurate filament thicknesses. Feedback from measurements on the output would be great, but those two lasers... are they really measuring thickness, or just where the outer wall is (opposite side might be bulging as well). I feel like you'd need a pattern of lasers around the entire filament as it travels through for decent accuracy. Anyway, thanks for this great video. I'll have to put together my own TED talk ont he subject, if they are willing to book me for 3 or 4 hours. 😂

[@EdRopple]

"Sunlu was kind enough to...*answer* them." Notable only for the rarity. Manufacturers need to be clearer about what you're actually buying.

[@brandonbrown3600]

Atomic Filament has been the most accurate I have seen myself. It is extremely consistent in measure over a large length and often is +/- .01

[@LostInTech3D]

sadly we can't get a lot of US filaments over here!

[@theglowcloud2215]

Atomic makes good stuff. And their price on carbon fiber nylon is really good ($50/kg)

[@brandonbrown3600]

@@LostInTech3D that's a shame. Maybe there is a way we can order a spool and reship it to you. Their pigments and quality are superb.

[@brandonbrown3600]

@@theglowcloud2215 that and the gummy bears make it worth it!

[@802Garage]

Idea if you want to make testing roundness and consistency overboard, but easy: Get a micrometer with USB output, set up a jig that spring loads the micrometer lightly and holds the filament perfectly between the jaws. Have a motor slowly spin the filament and log measurements every 15 degrees of rotation or so. Pull the filament through a set length and do another set of measurements. You could use an extruder to pull provided it was far enough way from the point of twist or had a release mechanism. With some basic code you could completely automate measuring a reel of filament with thousands of points, calculate the average cross sectional area from each set of measurements, and spit out a nice data set. :D

[@theredstormer8078]

I like the way this guy talks about the funny machines.

[@chuck2501]

I'd imagine that the hot end has an amount of melted filament to a fixed qty that would be replenished by the variable filament. This would absorb the minor differences like a reservoir as long as it isn't sustained for too long.

[@LostInTech3D]

Yeah like a buffer. I don't know, but I'd be interested in finding out

[@christophstrasser4190]

Exactly right, this is definitely the case for minor variations over short lengths of filament. This is more a guess based on experience: the length that will matter is in the region of 1-2 times the volume of the already molten filament. So volcano style hotends should even suffer less from that.

[@SyntheticFuture]

Considering the nozzle is much smaller than the filament I bet there's a decent buffer. Although it would be nice to see machines that actually measure the throughput of material instead of just "the length of material it feeds". But I bet that's a lot of r&d and manufacturing cost for not a lot of gain for the end user.

[@aggese]

​@@SyntheticFuture you are right that would be a headache to do and would likely not accomplish anything. What might be usefull would be to measure the internal pressure in the nozzle

[@DiThi]

So measuring an oval over diagonal axis doesn't yield the same result, however it's not a problem because: 1. It's small enough (depending on the "laser spot size" I've simulated I got it below 1% of cross sectional area for a VERY oval circle, 0.75 to 1) 2. For print quality, consistence is much more important than the absolute number, and filament won't have sudden changes in ovality since that's likely to be result of the imperfections of each specific machine. You can't see the difference between the two cubes but you clearly would if you changed the flow rate mid print. Similarly if the filament is oval in the measurement it will likely remain with roughly the same oval axes (even if it fluctuates between "wide" and "tall").

[@ScottHess]

I wonder how it would work to take a length of filament, cut it into 1cm pieces, then compare weights of those pieces and also smoothed weights over longer distances. The variance of the amount of filament per length would be the target metric. Of course, cross-section is also important you could imagine a section of filament which goes extremely oval and causes extruder issues.

[@LostInTech3D]

I bought scales to try, but it would have been too much for one video. I'll probably do it later

[@Metapharsical]

Just kicking in here...What about taking thin slices and placing them on a paper copier machine, taking an image scan onto your PC and analysing the relative differences in cross sectional area. (Sorry if you already thought of this, I havent finished watching the video) Also, what about freezing the filament and snapping it instead of cutting it?

[@ScottHess]

@@LostInTech3D Yeah, my kitchen scale deals fine with sourdough-starter amounts of material, but I suspect this would need a milligram scale. And tracking the pieces in a way which didn't affect measurements would be annoying. I wonder if any of the cheap scales have digital interfaces?

[@GuruMN]

I suppose in general I've been printing structural functional parts with larger nozzle sizes and generally intentionally overextruding slightly to ensure I don't get gaps between walls, despite appearance deficits in layer lines, but now that I measure out this trimmer line I've been drying and printing with and set the diameter in my slicer based on a quick single measurement, now I see why those particular prints always look like a mess with occasional bulging layer lines for multiple layers at a time, it's all the manufacturing process because it doesn't matter when you are trying to remove weed stringing from a yard. Despite appearance of prints, trimmer nylon is reasonably flexible and resilient. I think my biggest issue is that I need to drag the printer out to the garage when I print with it because it smells bad, I print ABS in the garage too.

[@802Garage]

You should not be breathing the fumes from melting trimmer line at all. Could definitely contain toxic compounds.

[@MihaiDesigns]

Cool study! Regarding your Patreon FIRST! tier, you can unpublish it rather than making it "sold out" so that it doesn't take up space in the membership level list. Won't affect existing members.

[@LostInTech3D]

Ah, thanks 👍

[@philippeholthuizen]

Conclusion: ‘It doesn’t really matter’. Possibly the most philosophical Lost in Tech video yet! 😀

[@jackphilp7057]

The best filament I've tried was Polar Filament. Their whole thing is making filament sub 0.02mm +/-, and we've found they're usually 0.01 to 0.005. Definitely suggest trying them out. Also they're based in my home state.

[@robcauson4595]

It's good that Sunlu answered your questions. I've asked them several times whether they're VAT registered, since sometimes they show VAT on invoices and sometimes they don't, and they've ignored me every time. Funny that.

[@PCBWay]

We owe you one: GOOD Job!

[@float32]

There was a project a whole back that used shadows and webcams to measure the cross section in real time.

[@LostInTech3D]

If you can point me to that it would be useful!

[@MrV8rick]

Hi great info. I worked making Monofilaments for 16 years shift boss and fitter ,from 0.15mm for paper making to 3mm cutting line most cutting line 1.5mm, The name you were looking for was Extrusion line operator. on big filaments like our 1.75 we would check the ovality with hand mic and a slub or nub (lump in filament) arrester set just above filament size. Water level in first quench bath affected ovality. In smaller filaments we had laser mics monitoring size of 1 strand and printing a chart, we had tollerance. I have seen a few bits about printer filament manufacture and I see no nub arrester so that would affect things I have come across the odd nub

[@benjaminford8173]

I am curious how Polymaker's stuff compares, their materials have always served me well.

[@LostInTech3D]

If this is a popular concept, I'm not averse to trying to get into testing out filaments autonomously...so maybe we'll find out

[@josephvanas6352]

polymakers stuff is supposedly some of the more consistent out there so it would be interesting to see if thats true

[@WolfA4]

"What is the cross sectional area of this filament" I can hear this being said in my calculus professor's voice.

[@christophstrasser4190]

Nice video, thank you. Completely agree on the result, the region of accuracy we are in now, the effects are negligible. All the theoretical calculations comparing+-0,02 mm versus +-0.05 mm are more marketing than anything IMHO. I remember back in the day of 3 mm filament, I always measured at least ten points in a new spool, took the average and put it in the slicer. Did not do that in the last five years. And one more thing to add to the extrusion process: the lasers used operate at a given frequency, usually no more than 1000 Hz. That means you will only get readings every few mm to several cm of filament. That's why most manufacturers have a "knot detector" which basically is a hole of specific diameter. Should there be a lump in the filament which makes it bigger than said hole, it will stop the line.

[@LostInTech3D]

interesting info, thanks!

[@bluerider0988]

I think where this makes a difference is if your trying to produce accurate parts. I try and get a base measurement for each roll i run and put that into my slicer. I have experienced underextrusion on multiple occasions and my parts ended up small. Did some problem solving and determined the filament was small. Updated the filament size in the slicer and it fixed the issue. I think it depends on what your printing. If your printing dragon's and stuff it won't make any difference. If your printing stuff that fits together with small tolerances then it can make a difference.

[@Qwarzz]

I'd argue you shouldn't be printing anything that requires tight enough tolerances for this to matter with FDM printer but I'm sure there are people who are succesfully doing just that :)

[@bluerider0988]

@@Qwarzz In a normal machine shop I agree that you likely wouldn't, but if you own a small business and you have no other way to manufacture the part then you make due with what you've got.

[@evlsc400]

Thank You I even went back to old videos about clogs to mention this.

[@SianaGearz]

Hold on a second. You're pressing the filament against an extruder gear, you turn the gear a certain angle, and the length of the filament corresponding to the circumference fraction comes forth. But what is the underlying radius? The effective extruder radius is the radius of the extruder gear minus however much it has notched the filament plus the radius of the filament in the direction that the pressure is applied. So the ovality matters. Since you can't predict or control that the filament is loaded along or across the oval axis or somewhere in the middle. So you care potentially about the maximum deviation of linear dimensions and the ovality more than the cross sectional area.

[@bobdaripper77]

the most premium dinosaurs

[@RobertONeillPhotos]

One of the things ignored in the correctional area statement is the feeder. If the feeder feeds faster or slower because of the dia change. as a analogy think of the filament as a flat ribbon with the same area. it severely changes how much is pushed out.

[@3sotErik]

@0:39 "We don't ever ever ever but it for its size" Sorry, but I learned to avoid GST3D filament because of its size. It kept jamming in my Capricorn bowden tube before even making it to the hotend. Its been a long time but I want to say that it was getting up to 2.00mm every so often. I ended up going DD just to use up the 8 spools I had because the DD conversion was cheaper than replacing the filament with the cheapest on Amazon.

[@Loneman_OG]

_"Am a bovvered? Am a? Does mi face look bovvered?"_ Am I? Well, not particularly, as most of my prints get post-processed and painted, but it does explain why the odd roll of Chinesium filament requires a couple of % increase in flow rate to eliminate under-extrusion. Cheers for putting yourself through this torture test so we don't have to. 👍 Oh, and thanks for leaving me with a hankering for some Blackpool rock, which is odd as I don't actually like the stuff... hmm, strange. 🤔😄

[@LostInTech3D]

Rock is one of those things that's fun until it's jammed in your teeth! I've not had it for years...

[@Enjoymentboy]

It would seem that filament volume over a given length would be a more accurate means of measuring then. As long as, let's say every 10mm, has the same volume as the previous and next 10mm section then generally we're going to expect the same extrusion volume. 10mm at 1.73mm is 94.024727 mm3. 10mm at 1.75mm is 96.211275 mm3. 10mm at 1.77mm is 98.422956 mm3. I'm honestly not going to panic over a potential deviation of 4 mm3 over a 30mm length.

[@orange-micro-fiber9740]

I always print a 2 wall, hollow cube to calibrate the roll. I measure 4 walls, average them, add a fudge factor, and use that as a flow rate for that specific roll. It's usually within 3%

[@KevinGroninga3D]

I make a lot of my own filament from recycled PET plastic bottles. And that filament is somewhat hollow and shaped like the letter ‘C’. So cross section and actual ‘volume’ of a given length of filament is even more of a variant. To print correctly, I have to increase the extrusion rate in order to get good prints without under-extrusion. 😅

[@theglowcloud2215]

Do you notice any downsides to PET vs PETG?

[@KevinGroninga3D]

@@theglowcloud2215 no, the only real diff is the print temp. PETG is around 235-240C whereas PET prints at about 258-260C. And I think PET is a little harder. But that makes sense because they’re adding glycol to PETG to somewhat soften the plastic and to lower the melt temp.

[@lasskinn474]

@@theglowcloud2215 a bit before PETG hit the market there were some filament on the market marketed as just PET. I'd rather have that again than petg to be honest

[@alexanderdiogenes8067]

Thumbs'ed up for "Plasticking lyrical."

[@klausnielsen1537]

All those microscopic filament pictures looks like candy to me. Now I am hungry😅

[@TechieSewing]

Not as well rounded then! ;) A micrometer is such a cool way to look like a serious KZbinr, everyone should buy one! I'm happier about the return of an exercise book and play doh though, a great demonstration! Maybe people will remember π × r2 now :)

[@ArnaudMEURET]

AFAICT, the volumetric variations are compensated through the pressure measurements done in real time on the hot end of the Prusa Mark 4

[@LostInTech3D]

fascinating, although from seeing prints I dont know if they have that working very well. But still, cool

[@spudnickuk]

This is something i noticed a while ago and found it was more problematic with cheap PLA My favourate Brand is Esun and every reel of PLA + I used to test but after so many times i don't bother as always accurate After watching this video I thought to do a check and still good, and I buy 4-6 reals per month Anyway this is a good video that shows how you could be getting problems.

[@SteveLFBO]

What filament did you use for that Yorkshire pudding tray at 12:38? ;-P

[@LostInTech3D]

pretty sure it's kingroon and I dont think it's oven safe!

[@Aplysia]

I would hope that, in the pro 3d printers, they have some kind of feedback mechanism in the extruder to compensate for any deviance in filament area. Something like adjusting the feed rate real-time to get constant nozzle pressure at a given temperature.

[@05Matz]

That would be excellent, but as far as I know nobody's really developed a means to DO that with a filament of unknown, non-circular cross-section. The idea I'm toying with is to wrap two abrasion-resistant tensioned strings/wires around the filament from different angles, measuring the force they're pulled out with from the center point, but I'm not sure if that would work and it sounds fiddly to load.

[@kimmotoivanen]

I think there is no need, since most filaments are "good enough" to not notice any difference. If your filament is not "good enough", why feed it to pro 3d printer at all?

[@05Matz]

@@kimmotoivanen I was kicking the idea around mostly to make use of home-made recycled filament, which I think would tend to be of poor diameter consistency with any reasonably cheap home-made filament maker. If you can compensate on-the-fly for oddly-shaped filament of uncertain and varying diameter, you should be able to get much better results out of fairly crudely recycled filament, which would open the door to high-end home users or low-end businesses/community operations reducing their plastic waste significantly by grinding up their own failed and unwanted prints of a particular material type (and potentially other commercially unrecyclable plastic waste of known composition and cleanliness) to produce prototyping filament for use in applications where a lower quality is acceptable. Recycling plastics centrally at large scales... doesn't really work well, especially in the context of 3D printing, so the only way to ensure re-use of your waste plastic is to do it yourself, and anything that brings down the skill, effort, and expenditure required to get a decent homemade filament (by expanding the printer's definition of 'decent') makes the currently rather impractical practice of home recycling that much less impractical. As far as I know, diameter control is the most difficult part of home filament extrusion, so broadening a printer's tolerances for inaccurate and especially varying cross-section would go a long way to making filament from crude garage-built lines more usable.

[@vejl]

What about using a web cam combined with a line laser, at a steep angle to measure filament diameter, and multiply with 6 to get 3d measurements? The laser line will change position on the filament depending on the thickness. Very likely not as easy as written above, due to filament being bend etc.

[@LostInTech3D]

I am looking into exactly that, and yes....it sounds easy on paper lol

[@F_K3NT_D]

I find it funny how everyone spends hours micro tuning their printers when the very material being pushed through these printers is so inaccurate to start with. Great video

[@LostInTech3D]

Thanks! And yep. It's kinda funny.

[@BramCohen]

What you really care about is the volumetric flow rate, that is volume per length, and a lot of noise in the the shape or even unevenness in the cross sectional area doesn't matter all that much as long as it averages out quickly. Given that filament is produced by controlling exactly that rate it seems a little silly to worry about the shape of the cross section.

[@LostInTech3D]

you have a 1:4.3(ish) ratio of input to output on a .4 nozzle, so it's slower to average out. In terms of the averaging....I'm working on some ideas to better map the filament end to end. Without spending thousands on laser equipment, hopefully. Would be very cool to see.

[@BramCohen]

@@LostInTech3D Not sure what you mean by that. The volume the nozzle is covering is determined by the area it covers over time times thickness of layers, so whether there's an overflow on a 100% filled model will have nothing to do with the nozzle size except as it affects the behavior of the slicer

[@SianaGearz]

Where does it average out? To produce 20mm of extrusion bead, you consume just 1mm of filament. So even millimetre scale frequency of deviation becomes magnified instead. This effect is lessened for larger extrusion width.

[@lasskinn474]

@@BramCohen yeah nozzle size doesn't matter as such. though if you do a thick and wide extrusion slight variation doesn't matter as much where it could cause gaps if you were doing 0.2m hole 0.1mm layers which are problematic with how slow the flow is and how few extruder steps it is per mm of travel as it is, so the difference needed for it to go from very little to nothing for some part of the travel is not that big.

[@Guardian_Arias]

I was eating Katsu and some Edamame as I watched this video.

[@skyrider4789]

Thank you for this video. Watching it made me think that perhaps someday the spools of filament will go the way of the floppy disc and cassette tapes, and that 3D printing material will just be sold in bags of pellets, eliminating all the plastic waste of spools as well as all the inherent problems filament (breaks, jams, etc), and our machines will be able to consistently extrude much more accurate layers of plastic string? 🤔

[@LostInTech3D]

Maybe even liquid, once the stratasys patent runs out!

[@karellen00]

Honestly if your printer is well calibrated a 5% difference can be clearly seen, you have to be in the range of 1, 2% at most to be left unnoticed (and towards underextrusion). At least I know I can print PLA with 100% extrusion multiplier, ABS with 97-98% and ASA with 94-95%, if I use an ABS profile with ASA I can definitely see that the print is plain wrong. To properly calibrate you should even use half % increment, but I'm a barbarian and I stop at full 1%, and sharing the same profile between all brands of the same material.

[@macelius]

I just set most of my filament profiles to 1.72-1.73mm from default since years ago.

[@LanceMcGrew]

I understand why youtubers go down rabbit holes but don't know why viewers like me follow you :)

[@becauseican2607]

I had a lot of print failed recently. The spool was garbage. I measured with digital calipers and got everything between 1.46mm (extruder gear does not grip) and 2.01 (does not go into hotend)

[@LostInTech3D]

Thats an insane amount of deviation!

[@henninghoefer]

9:07 To me that's circular enough. What I find much more interesting is the white center core which showed up in multiple apparently single-color filaments.

[@LostInTech3D]

That's just an artifact from the cutting method

[@henninghoefer]

@@LostInTech3D Oh, thank you

[@1800Supreme]

What's the music playing at 10:00?

[@aggese]

±0.02 or ±0.03 is norhing filament used to be sold as ±0.05 or even ±0.1 tollerance and that is significantly harder to work with

[@johnsathe2429]

I've always wondered why Prusament filament is about 3X what other filaments are priced. Is it that much better?

[@LostInTech3D]

£27 a reel here, so only about double. It's good stuff though.

[@mamatuja]

Hey Mr. Tech I have a solution to your filament size and shape problem: Adjust your steps per millimeter ratio for your extruder motor by the weight of your printed model in comparison with your slicer estimate.🤔🤞🤘

[@LostInTech3D]

that...is an interesting idea! I actually bought some 0.001g scales to test around this, but at 15 mins...I thought it can wait until later, haha.

[@CookieTube]

I thought of that too ever since I got into 3D printing. However, this makes a few very big assumptions, which might make this not work at all in practice: 1) You assume your slicer knows exactly the material density and weight. Which even per manufacturer, per color, etc... might change. So, it wouldn't be enough anymore to simply state "pla" or something, you'd need the exact material density/weight. 2) You assume no weight/material gets lost or added during the printing: like material getting vaporized (odors!). I assume this is a tiny, maybe even unmeasurable amount, but still... And more importantly, much bigger factor I think, weight getting added because of moisture absorption, .... It would be a very nice way in theory, but I fear in practice not so much? However, it would make for a very cool experiment though!!! And who knows, maybe it does work?! Science baby!

[@CookieTube]

Addendum: and you could even go further than that.... but it would require either co-operation of the manufacturers, or either a whole lot of time, setup and equipment for the home user: get a material thickness profile record of the entire spool you're using. This can be automatically be done in the factory during the spooling process: thickness is constantly monitored and recorded, and stored as a profile online, together with a spool serial number. Slicers and/or printers can then lookup this profile and use it to control e-steps on the fly, knowing where they are on the spool -- implies you don't cut and waste too much from the spool of course. At least not without recording the length you've cut/wasted. Or at home: re-spool every spool and measure the thickness yourself using an automated tool. Record that in a home-made database which the slicers or printer can use on the fly. Or measure the thickness during printing, using a "material thickness sensor" right in front of the extruder. Anyways... yeah..... I'll stop fantasizing and over-engineering now.... lol

[@mamatuja]

@@CookieTube you can tell your slicer what the exact or average diameter of the filament is (not all are 1.75mm exact). And you can figure weight per length.... Too much detail. I just check the weight of my prints sometime.🤘

[@mamatuja]

@@LostInTech3D Don't forget to enter the exact or average diameter of the filament in the slicer. As you know not all are made precisely to 1.75mm. 🤘🤞

[@xXKisskerXx]

actually I've bought some cheap china stuff and it was WAY OFF from 1.75mm (1.64mm at it's worst spot) - and I had to heavily recalibrate to get the extrusion right. It was WAY off from the 0.04mm +/- accuracy it claimed. (after tuning to accept that it would be 1.66mm instead, the prints came out great!) Those microscopic photos kinda look like moons or planets, which is just way cool to think about since they are so tiny. (fyi the company seems to have either been absorbed by others, or simply vanished to rename itself and contact was left bare, no refund, no talk, nothing) This is what led me to just "pay a little more for a reputable brand" as even if I did at that time have a decent run with generic filament, it suddenly started to be more like a coin toss if it would be good out the box, or if I would need to spend time measuring and adjusting.

[@olafmarzocchi6194]

Good brands provide confidence intervals, like "90% within 0.02, 95% within 0.03, 99% within 0.05 mm". Getting only the maximum deviation is not important... Also, the average value is not important, since flow is compensated. Flexibles are often smaller because while pushing they compress and expand, so they need to avoid friction

[@davidboop3550]

I always thought the diameter of the filament never really mattered because I thought the part where the filament is in the nozzle which is roughly about 12 mm, for me,that is almost completely liquid I thought so you're counting on your esteps to be correct? Because that is truly what dictates I thought. Then once your e-steps are perfect and you have a brand new nozzle that is supposed to give you 0.4 or 0.6 whatever your nozzle may be, you adjust your flow rate to make that correct.

[@davidboop3550]

In my experiences that's why I'm quick to change a brass nozzle or just leave a hardened steel nozzle on for an extended period of time

[@txrascal]

Very interesting video.

[@critter42]

So does Prusa's hexagonal filament change the equation at all?

[@LostInTech3D]

I have...no idea how they measured that in their machines! 🤣 sadly I didn't pick any up, I do regret it.

[@critter42]

@@LostInTech3D i'd be happy to send you what's left of my roll. only printed a benchy and a chip clip from it. I was not happy with the performance. For me it was inferior to the regular Prusament. I suspect that the 1.75 needs to be measured at the verticies of the hexagon rather than the sides to make sure it fits, which I think means the cross-sectional area would be less than in a regular round(ish) filament, so I suspect I probably need to increase the flow rate...

[@JohnLattanzio98]

You can't buy it anymore...

[@bluerider0988]

It was a joke, hence the reason it was released on April fool's. But I give them credit for actually producing some. That's what I call dedication to the joke.

[@CookieTube]

@@bluerider0988 But but but... there I was hoping for heart shaped filaments 😥

[@MrBodzinek]

I recently bought a spool that was 1.9 mm, and it didnt fit in my extruder :(

[@LostInTech3D]

Haha that's way outside of tolerance 🤣

[@psygonzo7974]

Plug the tolerace graph into the slicer

[@mynt4033]

That would be a cool idea if it weren't too much work. Not even industrial 3d printing does something this meticulous.

[@lordmemester8798]

wow I feel so lucky to be among the first 119 viewers of this video also, cool topic! very interested to see what the video covers in more depth. Edit: OMG I got a heart from Lost In Tech i feel so special :3

[@lordmemester8798]

oh noooooo I edited the comment and the heart went away :( :( :( :(

[@TechieSewing]

@@lordmemester8798 Must have had a change of heart ;)

[@warmesuppe]

What microscope are you using?

[@LostInTech3D]

It's an andontech...I'll dig out the actual model and link it on the amazon page

[@Loneman_OG]

I was fooled, too, at first, but then I realised it _wasn't_ filmed with a microscope; it was, in fact, just a regular camera, a pair of giant tweezers and some sticks of rock. 🤨😂

[@TheButchersbLock]

Very interesting the pop up text saying the variance in size could be seen as z banding. Great stuff as always mate 👍🇦🇺😊

[@ParedCheese]

Chinese is read left to right. That's why the process diagram is "backwards". ;)

[@LostInTech3D]

Haha I mean I suppose so

[@johnsathe2429]

You may be mistaken, as English is L to R, Chinese and Japanese I believe is read down the columns and R to L. But it's been a very long time since I've much with either language. Arabic is from L to R but the numerals are read (to Westerners) to be in the correct order. It's all smoke and mirrors.

[@ParedCheese]

@@johnsathe2429 I can't read either and know very little, and I don't doubt your wisdom, but apparently it's at least part of the reason. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322406/#:~:text=Writing%20directions%20of%20English%2C%20Mainland,still%20written%20top%20to%20bottom.

[@ThatJay283]

maybe now we need hardware to measure filament cross section area and modify the flow rate based off of that lol

[@LostInTech3D]

Tom Sanladerer actually did a thing on that, although I think based on my initial results, it's probably not that huge a deal in most cases, but his device is out there.

[@theglowcloud2215]

Never heard of Noulei filament, but my experience has been that random Chinesium filament has the least consistency across batches in terms of dimensional accuracy. One spool of Eryone PLA might be bang on, and the next is way off. Prusament might be slightly off, but it's the same amount off across batches, and the deviation is very rarely that high. You get what you pay for.

[@LostInTech3D]

I also wouldn't be surprised if some brands buy rejects from others.

[@brandonbrown3600]

@@LostInTech3D that is very likely I bet.

[@CookieTube]

Some very long time ago, somebody did a test on a massive amount of brands/spools, also spread across time. I can't remember anymore who it was (also a YT'ber though). Some brands are indeed far more consistent than others. But a well known name is no guarantee by default!! What might be a good consistent brand now, might change later, and vice versa. It doesn't just depend on the batches, but is even a function of the evolution of the brand on itself. You indeed get what you pay for, but again that is no guarantee by default! Some really overprice their stuff compared to others! If you, as a random users, need to believe every popular youtuber, then it seems every named/sponsored brand is equally good and worth its money in gold. The only way, as a consumer, to know for sure (somewhat), is when manufacturers publish the thickness profiles for each and every spool they make (eg: online database, using spool serial number.... and then slicers/printers can even use that!). Proper good manufacturers will benefit from this as this would be a form of advertisement/guarantee of quality. Until then, we only have anecdotal evidence from ourselfs, and hearsay evidence from the (sponsored) youtubers.

[@mamatuja]

Hey Mr. Tech, are you trying to print a Swiss watch? The problem is not the filament size, it's the fact that you are English.😂😂😂

[@baxrok2.]

Wouldn't pressure advance negate these minor variations?

[@LostInTech3D]

No - pressure advance is an open system that assumes the filament is of constant cross sectional area. It's just some math that multiplies the extruder rate.

[@baxrok2.]

@@LostInTech3D I see.

[@CookieTube]

@@LostInTech3D Time for somebody to include a (consumer-level) pressure sensor inside their hotend...(Bamboo, after your lidar inclusion, are you listening?) Might be a selling point for a new printer: "no more under/over extrusion, no matter what brand".... lol.

[@05Matz]

@@CookieTube Huh, a pressure sensor in the hotend would seem to measure the required data for filament cross-section compensation (how much plastic is in the melt chamber) far better and simpler than any cross-section measurement device I could come up with, as well as being useful for all sorts of compensation tricks for other artifacts of printing (oozing, pressure advance stuff, etc.). That's legitimately a great idea, though it would take a lot of firmware effort to make full use of it, and I'm not sure where or how cheaply such molten-plastic-safe pressure sensors are available. Would a captive plug in the chamber wall held in with a strain gauge of some sort be sufficient? How could leaks and friction be avoided?

[@jamesharris9894]

I check mine wont buy less than .03 try get .02 accuracy

[@jamesharris9894]

I pulled the rookie move. commented before finished video now after watching. I see what u mean about the accuracy of filament even with me checking company's advertised accuracy

[@RomanoPRODUCTION]

I am lost in shape. :)

[@noway8233]

Good manufacture put there tolerance , a good filament must be around 1,75 +- 0.02 mm , even +-0.03 , if they dont say nothing ...well yuo now known why😅😅😊

[@lasskinn474]

when the smaller filament(than 3mm) hit the market it was sold as 1.8mm. what's up with it changing to 1.75?

[@danielkrah5129]

Have you checked if the idler is off center? Otherwise the measurements are pointless ...

[@LostInTech3D]

I wasn't measuring with an idler

[@jc84com]

Interenting stuff. Something that i really like to see is o ingredients list on filaments packs so we actually know what materials we are printing there are so many blends