Skilled Stratasys FDM printers demand a reasonably hefty value premium over your typical hobbyist-level machine, with the gold-plating persevering with even with the particular filament cartridges that you simply purchase for a few of their printers.
This raises the query of in how far this eye-watering price ticket is justified, and the way a lot is simply you paying for assist and the model identify. After buying a spool of Stratasys ABS filament by way of a US viewer, [Dr. Igor Gaspar] set to work to attempt to reply this query.
The viewer had already liberated the spool of ABS+ P430 filament from its cartridge, making it straightforward to make use of that instantly with the Bambu Lab FDM printer.
To make it a good comparability, [Igor] additionally wanted to have a pattern printed on an actual Stratasys printer, for which he used a neighborhood firm’s providers. An fascinating sidenote right here is that the US viewer’s firm moved away from Stratasys to Bambu Lab printers.
[Igor] was in a position to see his take a look at components being printed on the Stratasys printer, as mentioned firm is in the identical metropolis. This confirmed him that it took 14 hours to print the components versus 3.5 hours on the Bambu Lab printer, suggesting that his worries about the fitting printing parameters for the Stratasys filament have been warranted. Sussing these out was thus paramount for a good comparability and warranted some take a look at prints.
From a sheer aesthetic perspective the Stratasys-printed components appeared a lot cleaner, and their dimensional accuracy was additionally considerably higher because of the slicer adjusting for this. Between the used Stratasys M30 and Bambu Lab ABS filaments there’s no clear winner, with each buying and selling blows. Amusingly sufficient, the older Stratasys ABS kind within the type of the ABS+ P430 filament carried out one of the best of all when printed on the Bambu Lab printer at its most well-liked temperature setting.
Ethical of the story is thus that – until you actually wish to pay for that service contract – to loot previous Stratasys ABS spool cartridges and use them in your hobbyist FDM printer. As [Igor] says within the conclusion, the nicer appears to be like might be on account of them printing very skinny layers, a lot finer than the 0.2 mm layers he used. This might additionally match the for much longer print time and is thus one thing we will replicate on any FDM printer with a temperature-controlled printing atmosphere.
