To start, the US military has used several shades of OD not only in wartime since before the First World War, then given the official approval in the Second World War primarily for use in the European theater. Panzer yellow, Model Master 1711, and Tamiya XF-62 were the 3 colors I really wanted to hit with this. So instead of doing multiple similar posts, I'll just compile everything here and add to it. Model Master 1711 will be the Genesis...

Extruder:Filastruder #1870 v1.6 running stock aside from full barrel insulation

Extrusion:
Temp: 189c
Rate: 9~" per minute
Average diameter: 1.80mm with a tolerance of .05mm+/-

Printer: Solidoodle 2 pro, E3D v5, Bulldog XL, Lawsy's/wardjr's carriages, fishing line, Claghorn's direct Y drive, RUMBA

Extra tools used: Fredaxe's pelletizer
Looks ghetto, but it's a beast!

Mixing: This took a while to get down. While I considered making my own colorant I wanted the challenge of making a new color not available in pellet form by only using easily accessible masterbatch. My numbers are based in percentage on 100g of MG94 from OS3DP.

To spare you all the stories of failures and surprises, I have found it is crucial to have a pelletizer for the route I chose to take. I originally added 100g of virgin MG94 ABS and 4g of green and 1-1.5g of yellow and extruded. A couple individual black pellets were tossed in whole to experiment with shade. Eventually, I found myself in the ballpark of olive drab, but it wasn't consistent enough.

*I overpoured the yellow by .5-1g, so I picked a few out after this picture was taken*

As I was wrapping up building a Pelletizer designed by Fredaxe, I realized I may be able to isolate this shade.

100g virgin MG94, 5g regrind, 2g ground/crushed green and <1g yellow masterbatch to get the Model Master 1711 hue.

AAAAAANNNDDD.........


BOOM! Model Master 1711
Printing: Glass bed 97c with Aquanet Extra Super Hold is the go to for most when printing ABS, myself included. Hotend was set to 232c.

Basically reversing the number of green/yellow pellets used will yield Panzer Yellow as used in the African/middle east chapter of the European theater. To acheive Tamiya XF-62, add an extra 2g of green colorant (whole. unground/uncrushed).....but I will enhance on those figures another day.

Takeaway and comments: I will say that this would look much better with a matte finish for any military/combat related prints, so PA747 from Revolve3D would look much better. Crushing/cutting/or grinding the masterbatch before extrusion really seems to help with the consistency of dialing in new colors, but needs to be mixed generously before any reliable results are made.

Extruder:Filastruder #1870 v1.6 running stock aside from full barrel insulation

Extrusion:
Temp: 189c
Rate: 8~" per minute
Average diameter: 1.80mm with a tolerance of .05mm+/-

Printer: Solidoodle 2 pro, E3D v5, Bulldog XL, Lawsy's/wardjr's carriages, fishing line, Claghorn's direct Y drive, RUMBA

Mixing: At first I thought I would get to use my Pelletizer again, but my first attempt was a success, which made my original plan a failure
Originally, I was going to blend blue and red to make purple, pelletize, then blend equally with blue. However, the original mixture of 50g virgin MG94, 2.5g blue, and 1g red did the job.


Extrusion went a little slower than my normal run of colored filament, but I also knew what I was getting myself into when I dumped 6% masterbatch ratio into the hopper. And though it seemed highly consistent in color while gathering on the floor, once spooled (see above pic), there was more blue present than I had wanted. Either way, filament is filament and I ran a few prints with it and even the slightly bluer sections of filament printed with little to no noticeable difference in color.
Printing: Glass bed 97c with Aquanet Extra Super Hold is the go to for most when printing ABS, myself included. Hotend was set to 232c.

Comparison to available filament: To my knowledge, indigo is not available on the open market, but at first glance it does somewhat resemble Octave's "galaxy blue" which is tiny light specs in the filament, but doesn't print anywhere near as well as the indigo batch I had just made.

Takeaway and comments: I must say that it came out a touch darker than I would have wanted. An extra .5-1g of virgin ABS would have helped, but I wanted it to be deep. After printing, I tried to take a good pic and the printer lights were the only source of illumination that brought the shade out. I showed it to a few friends as well as the wife and the debate sounds an aweful lot like that dress arguement on social media in 2015. But maybe that's because indigo is a rarely used and marketed color.

Resin: ABS  LG Chem HF380
Equipment used: Filastruder #1700s melt filter, full barrrel insulation, vertical mount with Filawinder.

Filament printed on a heavily modifed Rostock Max v2 and a Mendel Max 2.

DETAILS:
Tip Diameter: 1.6 mm
Extruded temperature: 203°C (my temps have always ran high)
Filament diameter and tolerance: 1.75mm +/- .04
Extruded speed is 9 in/min.
Pre-extrusion processing: No pre-drying, been sitting in my garage doing nothing for over a year
Extruded filament is smooth and shiny.

Printing: Printed from layers .2-.6 on PEI heated print beds.  Printed speeds vary from 60-160mm/s.  Beds are heated to 105-125 degrees, depending on how much I want it to stick.  Printed temperature is from 230-260.  260 insures ROCK SOLID interlayer bindings.  Hot 110+ hotbed insures almost zero lift.  Sometimes its too stuck. 

COMMENTS:
This stuff was bought as a 20# bag over a year ago for around $3/#.  I was looking for the cheapest ABS I can find at the time, and remember reading somewhere that this was good.  No need to dry out apparently.  The filament looked great!

This stuff mixes with with various colorants that people around here use.  Virgin material is not quite as pure white as MG94, almost a slightly more dull.

Honestly, I love this stuff.  I haven't been able to find anymore lately.  Maybe it's my imagination, but I think warping is much less than MG94.  Either that or I'm just more experience with printing with ABS, as that's pretty much what I print almost exclusively. 

Below is my setup and prints.

Next step is Nylon 6/6 and Delrin 500p I have on order.

After trying to grind black pellets, pelletize black filament, and pelletize grey filament, I've had nothing consistent even with a 8% ratio when recycling.

Does anyone know of a reliable source for grey masterbatch?

Resin: PA-747 Opaque Purple. 

Where I bought it: Ebay for just under $3 a pound shipped, with color already in it.  The seller also included several packets of colorant (he didn't mention it in his listing so it was just a nice surprise), but even the black didn't change the tint of the extruded filament a noticeable amount.

Here it is after drying, and placing it in a Ziplock vacuum bag ($4 for the vacuum pump on Amazon, and $3-4 for an 8 pack of gallon size bags at the grocery store).

Setup:  I have a stock, horizontal Filastruder, that I assembled about a week ago.  With this being one of the first materials I used, I'd consider this a good starter resin since I started having usable results right away.

Here it is extruding:

Filament Results:  At 194C I get filament between 1.68mm to 1.8mm.  At first I thought it was coming in at 1.70mm but then I found one small spot where it went to 1.68mm.  That is 0.05mm to 0.06mm.  I don't have a winder yet, so it's pretty close to the stated +/-0.05mm for ABS.  Considering this is right after I first get the machine, and have little prior experience that's pretty good.  I did have problems winding it - it forms a perfect circle as it is extruded, but it REALLY wants to twist on itself as I try to put it on a spool, and then starts turning stressed white as I try to untwist it.

Print Results:  I leave my slicer at 1.75mm and 100% extrusion multiplier, then I print a single wall cube.  I measure the 4 walls of the cube from the top (the bottom can be affected by how close your first layer is to the bed), average the results, take the extrusion width from the slicer (for a .4mm nozzle that is .48mm), and divide by whatever result I got.  Eg, if the walls average 0.52mm I divide .48 by .52 for a result of .923, I then change my extrusion multiplier to 92%.  I keep the gcode for the single wall print on the printer, so this is a much quicker way to calibrate for each roll of filament rather than measuring esteps and filament diameter for every run of filament I do.

Here are new middle parts I printed for my Mostly Printed CNC:

Very even top layers (no over extrusion), very even sides (no z ribbing).  Very strong, I was printing with Verbatim ABS before, and it wasn't nearly as rigid and would break under screw stress quicker.  I suspect it was because I didn't keep the Verbatim ABS filament as dry as I should have.  Even ABS appears to be greatly affected by humidity - I had to turn the Filastruder off before a run was done and leave because of a storm rolling in, and overnight the pellets had absorbed so much moisture it was causing rough filament that you could feel and see was affected by the humidity the next day.

Here I'm printing new Z nut holders(also for MP CNC) on an E3D BigBox:

As mentioned before - definitely make sure it is dry before extruding.  It absorbs humidity very quickly.  It's some of the strongest ABS I've seen once printed, albeit that might be because it's so dry (since it's so fresh) compared to filament that has been exposed to humidity.  It is some of the worst smelling ABS I've ever dealt with - make sure your Filastruder is in a ventilated area really applies here.  The prints though look amazing to me - look how detailed the honeycomb infill is on the nut holder, or how the top of the middle parts I printed are almost perfectly flat.  I print with a brim, and get much better bed adhesion to a PEI sheet than I did with my Verbatim ABS.

Resin: ABS  Cycolac MG47-BK4500 (Black)
Equipment used: Filastruder #1700s melt filter, full barrrel insulation, vertical mount with Filawinder.  I separated out the motor and heater power so I don't get the inconsistencies due to the motor speed when the heater goes on and off.  Had a bunch of old small form-factor ATX 12v PSUs laying around, so I used that for the motor.
Filament printed on a heavily modifed Mendel Max 2.

DETAILS:
Tip Diameter: 1.6 mm
Extruded temperature: 217°C (my temps have always ran high)
Filament diameter and tolerance: 1.72mm +/- .04
Extruded speed is 7-8ish in/min.
Pre-extrusion processing: Pre-dried it overnight.  Not sure if you need to, but I'm now use to pre-drying everything.
Extruded filament is very smooth and shiny.  Very similar to MG94.
Printing: Printed from layers .2 mm on PEI heated print beds.  Printed speeds vary from 80mm/s.  Beds are heated to 120 degrees, it was stuck pretty solidly even after cool down.  May need to lower this to 100-110.  My other ABS I have to heat the bed to 120 for a solid stick otherwise I get corner warping. 

Printed temperature is from 255. 

COMMENTS:
This stuff was bought as a 20# bag off ebay for $54 ($35+$19 shipping) which is about $2.7/lb.  I'm always looking for the cheapest ABS I can find at the time.  This stuff was black too, which is awesome.  I've been mostly printing pure, because mixing in colorant has usually lead to mostly a heterogenous color.  You really do need to run it through twice for a more solid color. 

The prints (so far) look great!  It is VERY similar to MG94, except it doesn't extrude nearly as fast.  But its a lot cheaper and black.

My setup.

Pretty standard pellets.

Final spool of it.

Comparing it to PA746 in the middle and HF380 on the right.

Standard benchy.

Hi One and all,

Can someone point me in the right direction in terms of UV stabilised ABS pellets or Additives/agents that will work with filastruder. 

Has anyone done any work in this area?

Alternately a source of ASA pellets?  I see that this type filament is available and can be bought but is pretty darn expensive shipping to Australia.

Regards,

Stephen...

After having fantastic success with multiple types of ABS I thought I would try some PET.  I bought some Eastman 5214A (datasheet: http://www.matweb.com/search/datasheet. … 36bce3c182 ) with the hope of having an alternative to PLA that was less prone to cracking and didn't need a heated bed (having previously printed PETG filament to blue tape on a nonheated bed and finding it to be incredibly strong) 

At 230C it results in the stall protection kicking in at 1.61A.  At 235C it comes out almost like a liquid and breaks under it's own weight.  It comes out as a blob, and as it falls it stretches and breaks, and then another blob starts at the nozzle.    I dried it much more than I do ABS (few days in a dehydrator, few days in a vacuum desiccator, and finally about 5 hours at 300F in a convection oven) without improvement.  I finally got some extrusion by mixing it with ABS at a ratio of 75% PA-747 and 25% PET - but haven't used it yet (the diameter might have fluctuated too much to be usable at 1.4mm to 1.8mm, probably because the temperature had to be much higher than normal for PA-747 in order to melt the PET)

I'm wondering if it isn't the size of the pellets causing an issue - has anybody had extrusion issues with smaller pellets?  I'm going to try changing orientation, see if it performs differently in horizontal/vertical/45 degree.  Has anybody here tried PET themselves?

I got from a nearby plastic company some small batches to test for extruding and 3d printing.

PP (Total PPC 7642) http://www.totalrefiningchemicals.com/S … C_7642.pdf

TPE (Dryflex 825100? or 895100? can't really read what it says) but i can't find info about it. But i think it is too soft to be useful. I think they use it for gasket moulding or something. If i remember correct he said it was about shore 75.

PC+ABS (Lupoy HR5007) http://www.lgchem.com.tr/products/12122 … 7a_eng.pdf

First i tried extruding the PP. But it gets oval shape whatever temp/speed or nozzle size i use, should/must it be dried first like PLA?

I testprinted the filament (averaging the diameter) and it prints, but warps like ABS. Printing straight on glass does not work at
all. Printing on paperglue (gluestick) does almost work, it sticks a moment then it flips off off the corners.
Tried printing 210c and 225c, same result.
A quick search for PP printing have not got me any useful info.

Any tips?

I've been recycling unused filament with the Fredaxe pelletizer for a few months now, and I have had way too much fun with my Filastruder ever since. But, I noticed some effects I didn't care for. So this is just a basic discussion on the pros and cons of recycling filament.

Pros:
*You can recycle unused filament. I almost never use the last couple meters of filament, so this is good
*You can create new colors otherwise unavailable like I did for Olive Drab here
*If you accidentaly picked up or were shipped filament other than what you need, you can grind it back down and re-extrude, where you can then choose to modify the color a bit should you feel the need to.

Cons:
*Color contamination is not fun. At times, during the regrind process, there will be tiny flakes about 1mm in diameter. They like to stick to the inside walls of the barrel and not show up until a few kilograms later. This travel delay is more pronounced when extruding natural filament. As an example....

Both pictures were taken within 24 hours of each other, and I had only been extruding natural at that time. I used about 750g of PA747 to purge, but it was still showing up in the MG94 with colors I hadn't used in over a week while extruding almost every day.
*Properly separating pelletized materials and colors should be kept in mind to ensure consistency. You would hate to be halfway through a sensitive project when you suddenly noticed an imperfection. Because of this, you will want to plan ahead and think about some storage plans.

Has anyone done UTLEM, or is it too crazy of a material to work with at our level?

Resin: Lubrizol Pellethane 2363-80A

Where I bought it: Ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/322145267456 for around $1.71 a pound shipped.  I wasn't sure if I could get it to work, but for half the price of a spool of manufactured flexible filament I figured why not try.

Here are what the pellets look like:

The pellets almost look like little insect eggs (I think I saw a spider running away with one so maybe they're confused too).

I mounted the Filastruder vertically using this mount (works great for Filastruder 2.0): http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1508688

Here it is mounted on the wall:

Unlike rigid material this stuff will fall right down into your cooling fan if mounted horizontally with the guide in the normal position.  If you have to run it horizontally then try rotating the cooler to the top, and just let it fall almost straight down out of the nozzle.  It's so flexible that it wants to immediately droop down into the cooling fan if things are mounted the standard way.

It was one of my easiest experiences controlling diameter.  I tried a wide temperature wide of 150-175C (Edit: I actually found it worked better at higher temperatures and less of a drop.  196C and 30 inch drop worked well in a 2nd batch), and found it extrudes faster the higher the temperature, but for diameter the absolute best way to control it is simply varying how far it drops before it loops into a circle.  It forms VERY small circles (as opposed to the wide radius of ABS) and lack of a twisting motion I think helps it maintain better diameter consistency.  The feedback happens almost immediately - measure, too large? Raise the Filastruder up (or lower whatever the filament is landing on).  Too small? Lower the Filastruder (or raise whatever it's falling on).  It takes less than 30 seconds to have that section fall down enough to measure it and adjust again if needed.

Extruding it out of the Filastruder was the easy part.  Printing - now that's the hard part.  It came off my glass bed very easy, almost like it was barely attached, yet it was attached well enough to not come loose during an hour long print (and it didn't curl up at the edges at all - so no warp).  That means printing problems are the exact opposite of ABS - you don't have the warp, or bed adhesion to think about, but then it's all dependent on your extruder if you can print it or not.  I have tried to print Ninjaflex before, and had similar problems.  This stuff is slightly more flexible than even Ninjaflex, but to print Ninjaflex your extruder has to nearly be gap free everywhere so even if it's more flexible the difficulty is about the same (either your extruder has no gaps, or it does).  It is definitely harder to print with than Semiflex or PCTPE since those aren't nearly as flexible.  My E3D BigBox just continually failed - no matter the speed, even with retraction off and constant speed set.  My modified DaVinci however succeeded.  At first I tried producing filament that was slightly oversized (1.8mm average) thinking the larger the better - higher chance it won't exit the extruder somewhere other than intended.  That just increased PTFE tube friction so then I went back and made some smaller 1.70mm-1.75mm (hard to know how accurate that is since it's flexible and the calipers will just keep reporting it lower if you are applying pressure) filament - that's what I eventually got to work on the DaVinci.

At first I had it all nice and neatly spooled.  The friction is much higher as it goes through the PTFE tube, so I ended up just having it off a spool and letting it feed in as it needed to without going through a PTFE tube.  This is something you could NEVER do with rigid filament, but it didn't tangle with flexible.

I found it extruded a lot easier after spraying some high heat canola oil on ABS, then running that through the hotend first.  The high heat kind I found on Amazon (wasn't available locally) says it's good for up to 400-450F.  Actually all I'm doing is oiling the PTFE tube that's inside the hotend and that shouldn't be coming anywhere near 450F (if it were then PLA could be clogging in it) so you might be able to get away with a lower heat kind if you can't find the high heat kind.

Here is the DaVinci printing with it (standard - can this printer print flexible - Octopus model) :

And here is the final result:

With it being black you don't see a lot of detail, but it is there.  I need to try painting it (anybody here painted flexible before?) and seeing if the paint sticks and stays on when it's flexing.  My cat got ahold of it, and sat there biting the leg and pulling on it.  Then running around with it - so it's a hit there it seems (so much for all those bought toys that she never shows interest in).

What do I intend to do with it?  Why would you want flexible filament?  I'm planning on designing an adapter to connect my vacuum to a PVC tube.  Instead of printing, decreasing size, printing, sanding, running tape around something to increase it's diameter - instead of all of that I can just roughly print something near the right size, then stretch it over both things I want to connect.  I also plan to print a vacuum shoe for my CNC - if I use a door sweep it's too rigid - doesn't give enough as the CNC goes down into the wood.  If I use some vinyl I had it's too thin - the vacuum sucks it inwards and dust escapes.  With flexible filament I can experiment and find something with JUST the right wall thickness to not get sucked in towards the vacuum, yet has enough give that the CNC isn't using motor power on trying to just push the dust shoe down.

I recently got my package from OS3DP.com  which included pretty much much all the powdered colorants they offer. But for now, I will cover the red powder and base any other powder reviews off of this.

Extruder:
Mostly stock Filastruder v1.6 vertical extrusion with full barrel insulation, header wrap, melt filter, Filawinder

Extrusion:
Temp: 189c
Rate: 6-9" per minute
Average diameter: 1.73 +/-.02mm

Printer:
Solidoodle 2, E3D Titan extruder, E3D v6, E3D Volcano w/.6mm nozzle, direct Y drive, Lawsy carriages, DRV8825 driver on E,  mirror and Aqua Net.

Mixing:
2g of powder per 500g of virgin MG94 is recommended, so I went with about 450g virgin/2g powder. The powders contain a few pellets which aid in bonding the powder to the virgin pellets, so keep them in there and let them fall as they may into the batch. If you do small batches at a time, try not to let them all fall in at once.

Next, pour it into a glass jar. A cleaned out pasta sauce jar will work just fine for this. Once dumping it all in, I was still a tad skeptical on the end result as I am used to masterbatch, but I was willing to make the plunge.

Close the lid and shake the jar. The longer you shake, the better the powder bonds and evenly distributes itself among the virgin pellets. I believe I shook for 20 minutes while singing along to Mary Poppins with my daughter. Don't we all lose track of time while singing with Julie Andrews?

The pellets seemed extrusion ready after 10 minutes or so, but I always get sucked into Dick Van Dyke's rendition of "Stepping Time".

Back on a non-Disney related topic, the color was extrordinarily true to its description. It came out a touch too light for me as I like very bold colors, so maybe a touch more powder next time.

Printing:
The rear bearing holder for Lawy's carriages is pictured. It came out a little too light for my taste as it looks a little more strawberry, so maybe about .2g more powder next time. Nonetheless, it looks great.

Printed .2963mm height
2 perimeters, 100% infill
232c for extruder, 97c for bed

Comparison to available filament:
I've bought red ABS and PLA from Octave and Makerbot, and this really printed more like Makerbot filament. I'm unsure of the polymer they use, but it behaved a little more like the MB red PLA as it lost a little bit of gloss and an ever so slight amount of color while printing. The Octave red of course acted more like ABS and requiring the same settings as the home extruded red powder MG94. This extruded material and color consistency is as pleasing as other filament I've bought before getting into home extrusion.

Takeaway and comments:
First of all, hats off to Jonathan from OS3DP for top-tier customer service! He responded quickly to any of my questions and we even talked over text and phone call as well as email, which is almost unheard of with internet-based companies.
When using masterbatch, I either had color banding or slow extrusion. For some print jobs, the banding was unacceptable, so the powders sounded like a good solution. As I extruded, I noticed a drop in production speed until I fire/acetone cleaned my nozzle and filter. I am purging the red to test other colors and I am confident in using the red powder at around 1% or less per 500g to yield a reliable pink as this completely demolished color banding. This would be a cool experiment with mixing ratios.

Extruder:
Mostly stock Filastruder v1.6 vertical extrusion with full barrel insulation, header wrap, melt filter, Filawinder

Extrusion:
Temp: 189c
Rate: 8-11"
Average diameter: 1.73mm +/-.02mm

Printer:
Solidoodle 2, E3D Titan extruder, E3D v6, E3D Volcano w/.6mm nozzle, direct Y drive, Lawsy carriages, DRV8825 driver on E,  mirror and Aqua Net.

Mixing:
For powder based colorant, you only use 2g of colorant per 500g of virgin pellets. For this, I used about 460g and just shy of 2g...perhaps 1.9g, but unfortunately my scale only allows for one sub-decimal digit, so I had to estimate. As you dump in the powder, you will notice there are some pellets similar to masterbatch, but these specific pellets are to ensure bonding. If you are preparing or saving for multiple batches over just one bulk roll, don't try to pick them all out at once, just let the fall in as they may...with reason.

Once dumped into a mason or thoroughly cleaned out pasta sauce jar, begin to shake. As with all powder based colorants, you will notice the pellets change color within second, but you should continue shaking for 10 minutes or so. The longer you shake, the better the colorant bonds to the pellets.

Printing:
Printing went just as smooth as any other ABS I've extruded from my

Filastruder. Here is a center part for a spool.

Printed .3951mm layer height
2 perimeters, 90% infill
232c for extruder, 97c for bed

Comparison to available filament:
I have never bought Powder Blue filament, nor have I ever seen it by any reputable filament brand.

Takeaway and comments:
As previously stated, the quality is just as good as anything provided by a Filastruder, and more reliable than most ABS filaments on the open market. The Powder Blue powder based colorant does not cling to the glass of the jar as much as the red, so if you use the same jar for mixing many powders, cross contamination with any other color than white would be negligable or non-existent.
As with the red I reviewed, there was Zero color banding noticed during extrusion or printing!
I mentioned in a reply to my first review of red powder colorant here that staining is a risk with powders. Please do not experiment with these colorants over carpeting. Over the bathroom sink is the best place to add the powder, or pour the powder+virgin pellets into a smaller vessel like I do for mixing. If you experience staining, dish soap and water or diluted bleach will clean it all off with little force. Powders provided by OS3DP.com can be used for PLA, ABS, HIPS, PC, and Nylon.

Hi.

I just bought a shredder off ebay, size 120x150 and i was thinking of using a small motor with gearbox i had.

The motor is a parvalux 1/4 hp with a 6rpm gearbox. I ran the shredder on the gearboxshaft direct.
But the motor is way to weak. It wont even shred 1mm thick plastic without bogging.

What kind of power is recommended for it to be useful?
1HP 5HP ?

Resin: Polylac PA-758 (MABS, acrylic and ABS)

Equipment used:  Filastruder 2.0, filament was produced vertically, horizontally, and at 45 degrees.  Stock except for the thermocouple which has been replaced with the welded tip kind for higher temperature capability.

Extruded temperature: 205C

Filament diameter and tolerance:  Varied with orientation.  I received the best consistency with a 45 degree set up (I imagine if I had the Filawinder the vertical would be best - but vertically without a winder resulted in the filament occasionally touching the wall causing a larger diameter section).  The consistency was 1.65mm to 1.68mm.

Drying this filament was very important (most ABS pellets don't require extensive drying - but these do).  Without extensive drying not only is the exterior rough, but it makes the filament extremely brittle with air voids.  After drying this filament remains more brittle than standard ABS (presumably because of the added acrylic.) but not as brittle as PLA typically can be.

Here are the pellets:

Here is the Filastruder at a 45 degree angle (4X4 cut at an angle, with this mounted to it: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1508688)

Here is the filament coiled on the floor:

Here is the filament going on a spool, I modified some of the Filawinder STLs to work with a stepper motor and a spare RAMPS board to wind filament after it's done being produced - unfortunately without the laser setup of a true Filawinder it doesn't know to stop pulling on the filament so I can't use it as it's being produced:

This was suppose to be more translucent than typical ABS so the first thing I tried was a single walled vase:

You can see if something is put inside the vase, but it is closer to opaque than truly translucent.  Perhaps with larger layer lines like what Taulman recommends for best transparency.

I noticed this plastic was more rigid, less flexible (unfortunately more brittle) than typical ABS so I decided to use it to make the new motor mount designs for my MPCNC  (the designer has been churning out new improved parts all the time lately).  I used a 75% infill and it came out extremely rigid (what you want on a CNC part).  I was worried it might break easily, but if you print with a high infill it seems to overcome the brittleness issue while you can still benefit from the rigidity.

I've sworn off of masterbatch and now exclusively extrude powder based colorants from OS3DP.com. It is truly great, easy, and consistent. But the only downside I have experienced is that you have to shake the vessel you use for mixing (in my case an old pasta sauce jar) for about 10-15 minutes. While violently shaking a jar for 10 minutes may save me some money on a gym membership, I increasingly have less spare time these days.

So after some contemplating on how to make it faster and easier to mix, I considered a home made and mostly printed rock tumbler to accept a 1 gallon paint bucket and a drill, but the hardware would have been close to $40....certainly more costly than a jar.
Then I realized that Home Depot sells a bit for mixing paint which uses a hex rod. While that would work, $5.97 was too rich for my blood since the head is just a plastic part I could easily print. Metaldrgn shared a paint mixer bit he designed here. I scaled it up approximately 30% and drilled the hole with a 3/8" bit and threaded a 3/8" rod into said hole. Mixing now takes 3 minutes.

In the process of mixing Indigo which is new to OS3DP

A custom bold orange for a friend, and an accidental "Autumn blend"

Indigo and burgundy. Both are new colors at OS3DP and I think I may be the first to play with these in the wild. Both were based off of private conversations with Jonathan after my mixtures with masterbatch ratios, so I will be posting reviews shortly.

Cost of printed material- $0.00 (sample roll from Coex)
Cost of paint can- $4.93
Cost of rod- $1.37
Since mixing with an old sauce jar is free, this was the best option. All colors shown were mixed for 3 minues with a drill. And while I don't have any pics of filament or prints, I can stand by this method as I am currently extruding the bold orange shown above and it is coming out wonderfully.

While I drilled a hole in the lid for the paint can, I would really recommend keeping it open for three reasons.
1) It's really cool to see how fast the color takes to the pellets
2) The lip on the can is about 8mm on either side from the internal wall and this creates a problem when dropping the mixing bit in. So while the force of moving pellets should eventually rub off onto virgins, it would be best to keep the lid off so you can angle the drill to maximize mixture. If you are smooth and steady, you will not have pellets flying out even when you have the drill power maxed out.
3) If you use the lid, the spinning rod may agitate the edges of the hole in the lid and drop some tin into the mixture. This is exceptionally bad news if you use a melt filter.

Happy extruding!

http://3devo.eu/product-category/extruder/

This one looks nice and is quite compact. A bit on the pricey side. Looks great , nice European design.
Slim on specs it gives max temp, lists a filament diameter sensor so size is adjustable but no specs on output rates.
And the winder is built in the box so sleek compact design .

Honestly if I was to spend 4 grand on an extruder system I would be looking at the filabot ex2  and filabot spooler.
A lot more industrial looking  and more bench space but made in USA and available support.

But in all reality the filastuder and filawinder are likely the most realist choice for the home. Since a filawinder and filasruder cost less than $600 may not be the fastest on the market but  affordable for the home.

Resin: Eastman EASTAR Copolyester 6763 (datasheet: http://www.eastman.com/Literature_Center/M/MBS80.pdf )
Purchased here.  Price is $2.72 a pound from this particular seller (they will not sell less than 55lbs per order though), so about the same as ABS pellets in this quantity.  Mine had a bit of a leak (the inner plastic bag developed a hole during shipping, and the tape would let some leak out when moving the box), but they include a little more than the stated 55lbs, so even with it losing some pellets in transit (and on the way from my front porch to the garage) I still got at least 55lbs according to my scale.

Equipment used:  Filastruder 2.0, vertical, with a 15V heater, and 2.2mm nozzle.

Extruded temperature and diameter results: It actually extruded at 190C, and the stock 1.6mm nozzle right on the nose 1.75mm and with little variation but it was too much for the motor.  It required average current of ~2A, and occasionally when shearing a pellet in the hopper it wanted to spike up to 2.5A which worried me too much to let it run long.  At 225C and a 2.2mm nozzle the average motor current is 1.5-1.7A, and spikes up to ~2.1A on occasion (usually followed by the sound of a pellet shearing in the hopper).  At 225C I get between 1.78mm to 1.65mm so not as good as 190C, but a lot friendlier on the motor gears.

Drying this type of pellet is VERY important.  If it's slightly wet (and this can happen just by putting a full 1Kg in the hopper and in the couple of hours it takes the extruder the top pellets have already absorbed water) you will get bubbles in your filament.  If it's absorbed A LOT of water (such as sitting out in the air a few days) it becomes unextrudable until you dry it.  It becomes runny and drips out like a liquid if it's got a great deal of moisture in it.

I also used OS3DP's green colorant from (here).  His website doesn't mention copolyesters or PETG at all, so I decided to try myself and see what happens.  It actually comes out as translucent green and looks really good.  We're heading into the season of red and green, and it definitely matches the 'Christmas' green that is so common.  I did have sections that were a little darker green than other areas but it was overall more consistent than pellet colorant.

It behaves similarly to commercial bought PETG filament - strong, more durable than ABS or PLA, more flexible than PLA, but less flexible than ABS.  Warps MUCH less than ABS, but a little more than PLA.  PETG has fantastic layer bonding - that's it's real strength for 3D printing.  Here is a Youtube video of tests done that show PETG taking almost as much to pull apart objects along layer boundaries as it does to tear them apart horizontally.  That guy has a whole series where he does similar tests with filaments, so you can compare the results with ABS and PLA.

Here are the raw pellets along with some silica desiccant:

Here it is extruding:

Here is the spool:

Here are some nut adapters I printed for a new printer build (16.5 inch by 18.5 inch printable area is the goal, Tnuts were $35 a pack, but with these printed adapters I turned a $3 pack of jam nuts into the same thing):

Here is something made for someone else, a cat pen holder:

Painted with a white base paint:

Using my minimal painting skills to add some eyes:

Made a new mount for my Mostly Printed CNC - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:724999 :

Here it is after adding green colorant from OS3DP:

Here it is extruding:

Here it is right after it started going on the spool, you can see how translucent it is by looking at the black tape under the first layer:

Here is the finished spool of green:

I'm just getting my Filastruder + Filawinder together, and after looking at the posts of the different materials, I have decided that I wish to try making composite filaments. The first I'd like to try is conductive, since I have a thing for electronics, and already have plans for a 3d design that will incorporate it.
Unfortunately, the only instructions I have found on how to mix graphite (or any form of carbon) with plastic is this video: