I think that’s a great idea! It would be very helpful to have a ranking type system, especially as lots of the filaments don’t make it to Australia quite so quickly (if at all) so it would be good to have a list of others you could choose if the one you want isn’t available.
So will hubs now have to start listing what supplier they used for PLA/ABS? I imagine it is easy to create a trend report for different types of filament (PLA, ABS, Nylon, NinjaFlex) but substantially more difficult to account for the many different suppliers of basic filaments.
Indeed, that’s a bit more complex. Obviously Hubs change filaments/filament suppliers more often than they do printers, so it’d be incredibly hard to keep that data up to date.
On the other hand, it’s quite clear that the filament market is fragmented and there’s no great guide for printer owners to compare and learn about materials.
We’ll think about a smart solution to work this out and fill this void, suggestions are welcome of course:)
I agree with you Bali, specifing which fliament we use on each order would really only work if we used 1 or 2 filaments, I use and swap around filaments from 6 different companies so would be very tricky if we allowed customers to specify filament as well as printers. 3D Filament Guide would be an awesome annual report!
That’s right. It might be an easier task to just make a filament guide once a year by asking a limited number of people to rate filaments. Gauthier actually already made an awesome job with his filament directory.
Still, I think that it would be interesting to know on a monthly basis what kind of filament the hubs worldwide really use and which one is trendy.
This kind of information is mostly useful for hubs owners because if they pick the good filament, they can improve the quality of their product. The filament brand name doesn’t have to be directly visible for customers on the interface. They already have enough trouble choosing between pla, abs or pet.
