So made in USA filament seems like better quality? Where is the 3DPC Pla made? Shouldn’t country of origin be on the product somewhere?
I"ve just gone through my stack of reels and only two show country of origin. It doesn’t really matter anyway since there are no national quality standards that I’m aware of. National origin does NOT guarantee quality, although there are trends. I’d go more by brand reputation rather than nationality.
As much as China is rightfully maligned, there are a few Chinese companies that take quality control seriously and actually produce above-average products.
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Lego for certain.
I have filament from Holland, USA, Canada, Even the filament made in Halifax. China, Czech Republic, and who knows.
My go to filaments are made in Canada. The Canadian Maker line is made in Ontario, and the Eurekatec made in NS. The best I have ever used are from the Czech Republic. I also like Sunlu from China.
I would suspect the 3dpc filament is likely Canadian. I like it too, I have no clue where it is made.
I haven’t loved the US filaments myself. The precision filament I was given I didn’t care for. Taulman is good but it is hard to print with and costly, it might not be fair to not like it because it is spendy but…
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Neat! going to order some. PLA only right? Personally I’d much rather order from places I can call and they answer the phone.
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yes they carry other brands too.
Thanks for that. I wasn’t aware there were Canadian made filaments.
I wonder if 3DPC is aware of them?
They specifically stated in another thread regarding the recent PLA shortages, that they were waiting for a [shipping] container to arrive, so I suspect it comes from Europe.
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I got an email this morning on the IIID Max PLA+, made in the USA. I really want to try some but am apprehensive on dishing out money just to try one roll plus shipping only to be disappointed by the outcome, or spend over $100 to get the free shipping, again to be disappointed by the outcome.
What would be really nice is to be able to order a small amount, say 10 to 20m samples at a fraction of the material and shipping cost just to try it. Wouldn’t this be nice?
If someone has already tried a roll, any feedback?
Standard PLA is made in China
Euro / Value PLA is made in Europe
IID Max is a new brand, from the USA, we’ve tested them purchasing and it prints great.
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Chris,
How does the IIID Max compare to the Euro in prints? I read some online reviews and there is apparently some issues with diameter tolerances of the IIID Max.
We’re aware of some manufacturers of Filament in Canada. We use to carry Materio3D from Montreal. The challenge? At the time they could only produce 50 KG/day so they were unable to produce enough material to keep up with our demand.
From the filament we’ve tested it printed just fine but I can’t speak for their past history or for our entire first shipment. The good news is that they are a responsive, US-based company so if there are any issues we can quickly resolve them.
Here is a coupon code for 1 free roll of the IID Max filament per customer for the next 5 customers who wish to purchase it.
Coupon Code: FREEIIID
Lets get some testimonials on the product posted on this forum.
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Thanks Chris!
Going to try a roll. Hope it works out.
Just ordered one roll of white to try with my Lithophane I like to use PLA+, at the moment I get great result with the ESun PLA+ at 210c and 60C bed 50mm/s 0.4mm nozzle at 0.12mm layer.
Thanks!
I’ve tried a roll of black with some basic Ender 3 settings. Printed a castle dice tower, printed ok. Didn’t find any diameter issues. Think with some settings tweaks it will be a decent filament to use. Hopefully the rest of the colours will the same.
If you want my opinion about PLA just as long as the diameter stays consistent and it’s not wet should be good At the end of the day PLA is really just for trinkets and fast prototyping. I love the 3DPC line it all works good from pla to abs petg carbon I love it all. For the price you can’t go wrong
Just received 1 roll of III3D white.
I printed a nightlight lithophane with same settings as my ESun PLA+ Cool White.
210c and 60c bed at 50mm/s layers at .2
The layers seams to be fine and bed adhesion was ok so the finish look good.
It seams a bit more translucent then my ESun filament and not as white.
I will do so more test with it and maybe a 20mm test cube to see if it comes out the same as my other filament.
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So how does it look with a light behind it? Is the colour difference equally noticeable?
Thanks, Chris, for offering some of us a free sample of the IIID Max PLA+ filament made in the USA. I got mine a few days ago, and finally had the chance to open it up and give it a go. Out of the box, the spool was a weird looking color, not the same as any shown on the IIID Max website, but it is just a spool, right?
The filament came in a non-zip locked shrink-wrapped package with one desiccant pack. Why is it so hard to include a zip locked wrap? I pulled a couple of meters off the roll and measured the diameter along the x and y axis at various locations. The diameter varied from 1.65mm up to 1.8mm and not always perfectly round, more oval one might say.
The box indicated PLA+ while the label on the spool did not even say PLA on it other than the recommend temperature ranges.
So here is where I got confused and got into my head that I was going to test PLA+ filament. Where I should have read the description of this filament more closely, I thought PLA+ was a blend of PLA and ABS. The temperature range on the spool seemed low for filament to contain ABS in my mind.
Moving along, I usually load the new filament and print the PRUSA plate at the default PRUSA setting. First layer at the 215°C extrusion looked surprisingly good for PLA/ABS blend. No odor either to speak of. The PRUSA plate looked descent.
Next up, temperature tower. I chose the 230°C down to 190°C tower since this was in the range of the label. Not what I expected at the higher temps as I saw a lot of stringing until the temperature dropped down to 190°C. Again, super weird for a PLA/ABS blend.
Next up, after selecting a suitable extrusion temperature, 210°C, I ran multiple tests with variations of retraction and retraction speed. In the string test group shot, there were more, but I decided not to include them here, from left to right, first layer at 190°C, second and remaining layers 185°C with retraction at 0.8mm and 35mm/s, 200/195 and 1.4mm & 40mm/s, 210/205 and 0.8mm & 35mm/s, 210/205 and 1.0mm & 35mm/s, 210/205 and 1.6mm & 35mm/s. I finally gave up. This filament is stringy AF. I decided to go with the 210/205 and 0.8mm & 35mm/s.
Up next was the cube test looking for dimensional accuracy mainly. The Z height was good at 20mm, X and Y were s smidge smaller than the 20mm, say 19.97mm to the 19.96mm, close enough.
Finally, Benchy time. Not surprised that there would be stringing all over it, but it is fine enough that it can easily be removed. The layers for the most part looked good. I think it could be a bit better if it were not for the inconsistent filament diameter. The overhangs looked very descent, no complaints here.
Here are my final thoughts on this filament. Okay, it is just PLA, nothing special, no ABS formulations, etc. Good adhesion on both the PEI and textured sheets. Nice low melting temperature, so good on energy. In terms of flexibility, I found it to be marginally stiffer than Prusament PLA and not as stiff as Euro PLA which I like about this filament. It does not have that brittle feeling to that of Euro PLA. I cannot speak to the strength of this filament compared to others. The overall finish looked good, just a little inconsistency in the layers.
I’m not a big fan of how it was wound on the spool, seemed kind of messy and I could hear it untangling itself as the printer was consuming it.
I think it is a good choice filament at a reasonable price when it’s on sale for prototyping. If you are looking for a great final finish in PLA, I would consider one of the others over this one.
Edit: Just changed some unit issues and spelling mistake. This is what happens when you decide to post late at night when you should be in bed. 
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Thanks for the thorough and informative review. I haven’t had a chance to test mine yet.