Review on Dimensional Polyamide Filament Consumables by OVERTURE by Mark Deuschle

I still like Overture so I'm a bit biased. They're not my #1 but I'll use them if the price is right or my main filament (eSun) is out of stock. I received an inquiry from a customer who needed a small piece of nylon. Oooh! I've never printed in nylon, only used PLA and dabbled in PETG. To be honest, I was a bit scared! That was my big chance. I started reading and all the pages said I need an enclosure to keep the heat in or else the print would warp. ug. I have a CR-10 Max (huge) and the cheapest pre-built case is $700. Even assembling the hacky railing myself cost me at least $100 and multiple trips to Home Depot, which is hard to justify with a lousy, fairly small print. Another site said I had to go outside. There's another $50. And I searched several evenings and weekends to put everything together. Yes, back then I could print with nylon whenever I wanted and ABS and blah blah. I just don't have the strength for that at the moment. (I'm old.) Another site said I should get some Magigoo (which I ordered but hasn't arrived yet) to get bed adhesion. Well, that's at least another $30. Give me a break! Turns out I didn't need any of that when printing with OVERTURE Easy Nylon Filament. For some reason the name of the product doesn't say "Easy" (it says on the roll), but it should! This is a wonderful way to describe this experience. It was easy. Fast PLA is simple and way easier than I ever expected. I decided to just try it without all of that just to see what happens. I decided to treat it like PLA and see what happens. The only thing I got wrong with PLA was the room ventilation and temperature. I know it's going to be smoking because we melt plastic, so I opened the window and put in a fan. I turned on the central AC fan just to pressurize the room and stuffed some towels under the door. I have pets and children so I don't want to smoke in my house. I have a HEPA filter so I set it to max. And that's all. I was concerned that the ventilation would cool and warp the nylon too much, but that didn't seem to matter. Here are the settings I used: 50º C bed. I use a Wham Bam Pex flexible bed designed for nylon. I already had this 250ºC end, I use a Micro Swiss full metal hotend with a hardened 0.4mm nozzle. First layer, 104% width, 6mm feed at 30mm/s as I am using a bowden tube. Set the fan to 0%. Prints at a speed of 50 mm/s. Note that these are all the same settings (except hot-end temp) that I use with PLA+. That's right, this thread prints more or less like PLA! And my pressure was almost perfect. A tiny thread comes loose at one corner. What if you know 3D printing, this is the perfect print. In my opinion, anything that takes less than 1 minute to clean, which literally means 5 seconds of cleaning, is perfect. Who are these wizards in OVERTURE and why isn't all nylon like this? Okay, let's talk smell. It smells even in a ventilated room. It's not scary - I'm sitting in the room as I write this - but I'd say you probably don't want to be around. As you'd expect, it's a warm plastic smell. I don't know if it lingers after printing. I'll update this review when that happens, but I assume it won't be. The price was great. Less than $30 for a kilo roll. I am tempted to buy another one knowing that if it becomes popular they will raise the price. And I bet it will become popular as soon as there are more reviews. There were no reviews or ratings when I bought it, so it was kind of a coincidence. Let's add this. Let's say $30 for a roll. -$150 for a case I don't need. -$50 for a vent I don't need. - $1,000 time savings by not installing the specified enclosure and vent. All in all, this magic thread saved me $1,170 (or $170 if you don't count the work). If I had chosen a different nylon I would have had to spend every last penny. That's a real saving. [Edit: I forgot to include the cost of Magigoo, which I don't need.] I said at the very beginning that Overture wasn't my number one choice. I'm thinking very hard about changing my mind. I'll put it this way: I won't buy any other brand for nylon unless absolutely necessary. It was a fun weekend!