Quick Review of the ESun Cleaning Filament

[korneel 176]

All;

Thanks to Kunststofshop.nl who will be selling the ESun Cleaning Filament, I received 2 badges of 100 gram of cleaning Filament from ESun today.

i just wanted to share my experience with the cleaning filament in my UM2.

a little bit of background;

i do the Atomic Pull every now and then, using Taulman Nylon. The method I use is to slowly insert it at 240 degrees and keep applying subtle pressure untill only nylon flows out of the nozzle. i then keep applying subtle pressure and turn the temperature back to approx 30 degrees. as soon as the temperature reaches 170 degrees no more material will flow out of the nozzle. the reason the keep applying subtle pressure while it cools down is to make sure the nylon completely fills the head..

once the temp reaches 170 no more material comes out and you can leave the material alone until it reaches around 30 degrees. leave it for at least 2 minutes then verify the nylon is attached firmly inside the head by pulling it up. the head should move up with the nylon.

heat up the nozzle again and start subtle pulling around 130 degrees. at around 140 the nylon should come free and should be cone shaped. keep repeating this process untill the nylon comes out completely clean.

since the last time i performed the atomic method i have printed a complete spool of Ultimaker PLA Blue and about 100 grams of Ultimaker Ultimate Red. I applyed the cleaning filament before starting the print with Ultimaker PLA Black.

it has been printing for about a week and a half at 215 degrees so there should be residu in the head.

now, the review;

the filament comes in a vacuum sealed bag on a bundle of about 100 grams.

 

 

 

the material feels a little bit like Nylon, but dryer and has a rough texture

 

 

to use the cleaning filament you should take about 10 cm and let this flow through the hot-end.

me being my usual unbeliever i made sure i used more (mistake!) and took about 15 cm.

 

 

 

 

you then insert this in the bowden tube and insert the rest of your actual material in the back.

 

 

 

theory is that you should now start extruding after heating up the hot-end.

this is where it all went wrong.

first of all, i took way too much cleaning filament. i took about 18 to 20 cm, and i am only using a standard 0.4mm nozzle. the filament gets sticky when pushing through (although not sticking to the PTFE coupler!) and is hard to push through. this meant that, even with a customer feeder, after about 5 cm of cleaning filament, my feeder started chewing into the much softer PLA.

and i still have 15 cm to go..

this is where the cursing started and the refusal to take more pictures of this failure.

at this point, i took out the bowden tube, inserted a short piece of bowden tube i use for the atomic pull, and heated the hot-end to about 240 degrees. i then started to feed filament by hand, slowly pushing out cleaning filament.

if you take a good look at the cleaning filament, you can see it taking out piece of black material, even though i only printed in blue and red;

 

 

(note, the completely black portion that you see is the black from the PLA filament i used to push the cleaning filament through.)

to me, this looked like the cleaning filament took out quite a bit of debris. but the proof is in the pudding, so i performed an atomic pull immediately after this. the results are this:

 

 

although my cold pull did take some material from the sides of the hot-end, the front (the cone shaped tip) is perfectly clean. not a single spec of burned material.

 

next time i would certainly only use 5 to 8 cm's of the cleaning filament, and just push it through manually or very slowly before other material. it does seem to work perfectly!

 

 

the cleaning filament is going to retail for about 15 euros per 100 grams, seeing as you would only use 2 grams approx per cleaning session, this should give you 50 cleaning sessions for 15 euros.. that seems like a great deal.

 

in my opinion, everyone should definately at least try this..

my recommended use:

 

after you printed material and need to change materials, take about 5 cm of the cleaning filament. take a short piece of bowden tube and insert this in your hot-end head. heat the hot-end to the temp of the to be printed material and slowly push the cleaning filament in. take a small piece of your to be printed material and use that to push the cleaning filament through. examine the cleaning filament for small black specks, showing it worked. after your cleaning filament is out and only your to be printed material comes out, pull out the material. reassemble the bowden tube and start printing.

 

K.

 

[DidierKlein 729]

Thanks for the review!

One thing that i know about this filament is that the diameter is 3mm (with a variation) so it maybe a cause of the problem you had at your first try

 

[reibuehl 42]

Do you know when this cleaning filament will be available? I couldn't find anything about filament on their English website...

 

[korneel 176]

it's available already.. what website are you referring to?

 

[reibuehl 42]

I tried http://kunststofshop.nl (with English language). I just noticed that 3D Printing Filament is only listed under Products if you select the Dutch version of the site. But even then, if I search for ESun, I do not get a hit.

 

[korneel 176]

ok, i've been in contact with kunststofshop.nl, it will be listed tomorrow.

 

[korneel 176]

it's for sale now here :

http://kunststofshop.nl/index.php?action=article&aid=5248&group_id=10000112&lang=NL

i am actually running about 3 to 5 cm in between every material change, completely took care of all of my nozzle clogging.. i almost miss taking the nozzle apart and burning it out..

 

[reibuehl 42]

Is there an alternative source that will ship to Germany for a more reasonable shipping charge?

 

[korneel 176]

i would contact them, they might be able to ship it using an envelope.

 

[fabi580 0]

amazon also sells it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00O92RW92/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1E7ZJ14B398M

 

[georgenelson 0]

I think it is great to read this review sure we can able to clean the filament.