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Jan 2016
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N1C0
Jan '16

The 3D Hubs monthly trend report is one of the best resource for choosing the best 3D printers on the market. So now we are in the situation where it is quite easy to find a good 3d printer but is is still quite difficult to know what are the best filaments on the market for fdm 3d printers. New materials are released every month so it gets even more difficult to choose.

What about a 3D Hubs trend report on materials for 3d printers? The platform already has data available on filaments. That would be great to share it so everyone could make better purchase decisions. It would profit to the whole community.

What do you guys think about it?

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    Jan '16

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    Jan '16
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Gauthier
Jan '16

I made a survey about 3D printing filaments. I will release the results this week.

If you want to see the first result, look #3dprintingsurvey.

If you are curious about filaments, subscribe to the private beta to discover filaments.directory

Cheers

Andrew3dhubs44
Jan '16

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.

Cheers

Andrew

Fargo3D
Jan '16

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.

Bali
Jan '16

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:)

N1C0
Jan '16

It is indeed tricky because the filament market is so fragmented. I guess even the biggest filament producers only have a tiny market share. If you would represent the world’s filament producer on a graph, I guess that it would probably looks like that : 95% other, 5% big producers.

Maybe it would help to present the filament market share depending on the location (Europe, North America, Asia, etc). After all, I’m based in Europe and it is sometimes way too expensive to ship a US based filament to Europe so it would make sense to divide filaments market according to region.

N1C0
Jan '16

I have a suggestion about the rating of the filament. I’m not a data scientist so bear with me if I don’t use the right terms.

-3D Hubs already knows which kind of filament is used for every print that is made on the platform.

-Customers already rate the prints that they order in order to give a quality rating. They actually rate both the printer and the filament in one rating. Let’s call it the global rating.

Would it be possible to “filter” the data in order to only get the filament rating? In other words, you would study how a filament influences the quality of a 3d printer’s global rating and then “subtract” the printer’s rating from the global rating to only get the filament rating.

For example, a good filament on a bad printer will probably have a better rating than a bad filament on the same bad printer. On the other hand, a bad filament on a good printer will probably have a worse rating than a good filament on the same good printer. If you could find the correlation between a printer quality and a filament quality, you would be able to find a statistically pertinent rating for filaments.

Does it makes sense? What do you think about it?

3Dscaleworks
Jan '16

it will be difficult to let customers rate the filament . because in not only has to do with the printer. It also has a lot to do with settings! You can have a good printer and good filament with a bad result caused by poor settings

N1C0
Jan '16

You’re right. Bad settings can create noise. On the other hand, a hub owner who has enough experience probably knows his machine and his filament very well.

N1C0
Jan '16

Pretty cool article. Thanks for the awesome work Gauthier.

Bali
Jan '16

Currently we only have data on what material is being used (i.e ABS, PLA), not specifically on filament producers (like Colorfabb PLA). That might be something we could ask Hubs to specify in the future - it’d also be a great way to show customers what exaclty they’ll receive in term of material properties, color etc.

Once we differentiate materials in a such manner, it’d be possible to subtract the “printer effect” - we just need large enough pool of data.

There are two ways to approach: One is like our trend report, which is based on data from orders, including customer ratings. The other is asking our Hubs to review the materials they use and rate them (like we did for the 3D Printer Guide). I’d opt for the 2nd one - Hubs can provide more comprehensive data on their materials since they actually use them.

bdurack
Jan '16

Great article! Very nice to see this sort of data collated and presented so nicely, good effort!

bdurack
Jan '16

I would be keen to know which “special” filaments are gaining in popularity. Colour would also be interesting.

To be honest, I personally don’t think filament manufacturers/brands are all too important as we all have our own preferences anyways having invested time in getting our settings right for the filament brand we use. It would all become quite confusing for a customer if suddenly filament brands were listed… the customer wouldn’t be interested in that I can’t imagine.

3dprintingguy
Jan '16

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!

N1C0
Jan '16

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. :wink: