First of all thank you for the beautiful 3DHubs community which advised me in my previous post to buy a PRUSA 3D Printer for my school. Now the question comes to the amount of filament we need. Our school is located in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Ordering something here is impossible normally, but we use the US Embassy Post for our school, which also takes 2-3 weeks to arrive. So the 3D printer will be available for every student to use but with a fee of course. To buy enough filament, I was wondering how many prints would a 1 kg PLA filament last? I know it depends on the size and the quality of the prints, but taking into account that the students will not print something professional, how many prints would a 1 kg PLA go for? Thank you!
1 Like
Hi There!
Here is a really nice article MakerBot created that shows how much can be printed with 1 kg. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
http://www.makerbot.com/media-center/2012/02/24/a-matter-of-scales-how-much-can-you-print-with-a-single-1kg-spool
Hope this helps!
Martin
Why don’t you buy a 3 kg spool PLA white Filament and some other in color 1 kg this will be enough for a month
how many you can print is difficult to say it all depends an the infill percentage used for a model
TimVB3D
4
You get about 330 meters in a kilo of PLA, so it depends on the average print your students will make.
cobnut
5
Hi @denonakavro as others have said, 1kg actually produces a surprising number of prints, and you may well find it’ll last a month or more so you should have plenty of time to order more in once you can see how it’s being used. Personally I’d go for 1kg each of white, black and another colour; there’s no way you’re going to use 3kg in a month (as long as your students don’t print HUGE solid fill objects, which wouldn’t be fair for others wanting to share it).
On a side note, don’t be tempted by cheap filament. The quality of the filament is a BIG factor in the success/quality of the finished prints and cheaper filaments really aren’t worth the money they appear to save. Also make sure you have somewhere to store opened reels. Filament must be kept bone dry and most printer people have cabinets/boxes that are kept at low humidity.
