It’s not the cheapest at Amazon, but it is on the cheaper side of things. I’ve been getting 1 kg rolls for $17.99 and often they have a 5% coupon checkbox you can click to lower the price further. I’ve used several rolls of gray and black and also a roll of white and have yet to have a bad experience. I would say that it is as good as Prusament and Atomic both of which are about x2 or x3 more expensive by the time you add shipping. I’ve also found Duramic a good bit better than eSun. Duramic also always seems to be in stock and often arrives the next day.
I know how frustrating & expensive it can be to find a filament you can trust, so I just thought I would throw this out there if anyone is in that search for a good PETG.
FYI, I added 1 of the Duramic amazon pages to my Wish List so I can find it again easily. I noticed they’ve got a bunch of colors and even some 2-up packages that sell for about $5 less per spool.
Being new to 3D printing, I am not sure if the wider tolerance band advertised for some filaments is significant or not. I see that the Duramic is +/- 0.05mm. Some advertise +/- 0.02mm or +/- 0.03mm. Your post states that you have had good results with the Duramic, so I take it that you do not see a difference in print quality. Is this true as an overall statement, that the wider tolerance does not impact print quality? Or at least to a significant degree?
The main thing is you don’t want the filament jamming in the Bowden Tube (or the PFTE in a direct extruder) because it is 1.9mm rather than the 1.75mm it is supposed to be. I’ve never had that happen to me as far as I know–I have accounted for all my previous jams due to Bowden tubes that were burnt/worn out. But I have seen others complain about it happening to them. Prusa is selling a cheaper orange PETG prusament with wider tolerance and I’ve seen a review from someone saying it caused a jam.
Beyond the jamming issue, it is a matter of wanting uniform extrusion. If the filament is 1.68mm when it is supposed to be 1.75mm, then your printer is only extruding 1.68^2/1.75^2 = 92% of the material that it is supposed to be extruding. At some point, you might start seeing gaps between lines that should be touching. Again, I haven’t ever noticed this issue but I haven’t been looking closely for it either. But you certainly want a quality 1.75mm filament when you are doing a first layer test specifically checking for proper z-axis offset. It would really be frustrating to attribute a bad z-axis offset due to a filament that is way out of spec.
As @mochalatte said, thicker of thinner filament can affect the extrusion rate. That said, calibrating the extruder to the filament being used can correct for any under or over extrusion. You might even want to add a label to your spools to show the extruder E-steps needed for each spool.
I put a digital caliper on the various filaments I have amassed so far. I have one spool of Prusament that came with my printer, five spools of Hatchbox, one eSun, and one from a company called HZST3D. I bought that one because I needed pink silk to print some flowers.
Interestingly, the first spool of white Hatchbox I bought seemed to vary by +/-0.06. I would blame that on my poor skills at applying a caliper except the others seemed to be okay (~+/-0.03). Thinking back, I used that first spool of white to make some very flat prints (about 60mm x 80mm), and I recall adjusting the live Z quite a bit on the first layer, even with the auto bed leveling set on the 7x7 mode. I wonder if the wider variance could have been part of the issue. On the other hand those were some of my early prints. So it could have just been my inexperience.
From what you are saying, the issues I would have with too wide of a variance is either under/over extrusion, or jams. I haven’t had any problems with jams. But this is good feedback. If I get a spool that gives me issues I will know to check the filament.