Afinia 3D, one of the best known brands in home 3D printing, has begun stocking and selling its own line of PLA filament fully-supported on its H-Series 3D printers which, include the H480 and H479. As 3D printing fans will know, PLA,also known as Polylactic Acid, is a cornstarch derivative and is the world’s second most commonly-used 3D printing thermoplastic. Current Afinia filament colours include Green, Blue, and Gray, with Black, White, and Natural becoming available in the fall.
John Westrum, Afinia’s Vice President commented: “Afiniacs are an enthusiastic and creative bunch, and they have asked us to add PLA filament to our line-up. In our experience, 3rd party manufactured PLA filaments do not print consistently and have issues with brittleness, nozzle clogging and bridging or spider webbing that can leave users disappointed with the results. Our Premium PLA filament was engineered to mitigate these common issues and to give a great printing experience. One of the biggest problems with PLA is the removal of raft and support material from the model. The new Afinia Premium PLA comes away clean leaving the user with a beautiful, glossy model.”
Afinia lists the advantages of its Premium PLA as:
• No pre-heating of the platform required – The H-Series platform quickly heats to a low 50°C which is the platform temperature for printing PLA
• Reduced warping, lifting, or curling of models – Afinia’s Premium PLA filament has a reduced thermal expansion coefficient than ABS which means the PLA layers are less likely to shrink after printing
• Less odour – Compared to ABS, Afinia’s PLA has reduced odour and a pleasant, sweet smell like pancakes
These do sound somewhat like claiming the general benefits of PLA, for example pretty much all PLA has a more pleasant smell than ABS, and adding a brand name to those generic benefits. However, I guess as almost any of the many hundreds of suppliers of PLA are all claiming to be slightly better than the other, without many mentions of specific quantitive material properties among any of them, this is essentially the norm.
There is, generally, a contrast between open source FFF and closed source desktop FDM 3D printers, in that the majority of open source printers opt for allowing any provider of filaments to be used on the machine, closed source often opt for only allowing proprietary feedstock. A few brands differ from these trends. There is now also a growth in optimised own brand filaments for the better selling open source brands. It’s possible to take a number of different perspectives on this. I currently believe that this range of approaches being in the 3D printer market creates choice. Diversity and competition are good for the end user. Ultimately, perhaps, 3D printers that allow the user to choose either optimised own-brand alongside the choice to use filaments made by other companies are giving users the widest range of budgeting possibilities and 3D print results. Some print jobs won’t need high quality filament. For example, prototypes from amateur CAD doodles can be crafted in low quality cheaper filament, then the end 3D printed functional item in the more expensive optimised filament. There are a range of approaches. You know what is best for your budget and your print job.
It’s good to see Afinia joining the increasing breadth of home 3D printer companies – such as the recently reported Tinkerine – that is now also producing their own-brand optimised filaments.
