Last year, around the time when I was just getting started with 3D Printing Industry, I was also helping out with some copywriting for 3Dprintmaterials.guru, a recently developed community for the purchasing, testing, and reviewing of 3D printing filaments. Co-founded by Edgars Ermansons and Didzis Dejus, 3Dprintmaterials.guru is attempting to deliver an interactive way to browse different filament types, and by offering both technical information and actual user-experience, offers the 3D printing community a refreshing and wholesome way to shop for 3D printing materials. I’ve been corresponding with Ermansons and Dejus via email, and it is clear that the 3Dprintmaterials.guru team believes that they have the most interactive and community-based approach to purchasing 3D printing filaments around.
“There are millions of 3D prints made yearly with thousands of different kinds of 3D printers and hundreds of different kinds of filaments. However, until now the huge amount of information about things like optimal printer settings, material properties and quality that these prints generate was not made use of to further improve the 3D printing experience,” said Dejus. “3Dprintmaterials.guru is changing that because we improve information quality about filaments by aggregating the user-experience information from 3D printing community and presenting it in easily understandable way.”
While other similar platforms, such as Filaments.directory and Aniwaa, offer users technical data sheets on a number of filaments, 3Dprintmaterials.guru is co-dependent on their community of 3D printing experts and enthusiasts for valuable user-based information. The 3Dprintmaterials.guru platform features over 300 filament brands already, and, thus far, over 80 community members have applied to become filament testers. The team has developed a standardized methodology for the ‘Pro Testers’, ensuring that every factor of the filament is taken into consideration. This community-based approach allows 3Dprintmaterials.guru to offer a wide-range of 3D print filament options and opinions, and, by making users an integral part of the platform, users can find out exactly how a filament works on a specific printer.
“Our ultimate goal is to make the filament browsing and choosing process less confusing and to create the perfect filament marketplace for regular 3D printer users by combining 3 important parts in one place: manufacturer specification, user-experience information and option to buy it,” Ermansons said.
While looking at a particular material, users can look beyond the mechanical properties of the filament and see exactly how that filament turned out on a specific printer. This is what sets 3Dprintmaterials.guru apart from other 3D filament websites: the primary focus on letting their 3D printing community interact with one another and expand their material database in the process. The platform does more than just list out filaments; it also offers an interactive map to browse filaments by region. Thus far, the 3Dprintmaterials.guru database contains about 318 different brands of filament from all across the world.
Anyone with access to a 3D printer can apply to become a Pro Tester for 3Dprintmaterials.guru, which allows users to test filaments and present their feedback on the platform for the entire community to take into consideration. There are even various 3D printing filament awards for testers, encouraging the 3D printing community to share their thoughts and expertise for the growing consumer market. At the end of the day, a technical data sheet can only tell me so much about how my chosen filament will look post-extrusion. But, what if I could see exactly how that filament turned out on the exact same printer model as mine? That is the engaging and community-based approach that 3Dprintmaterials.guru is currently trying to conjure up.
