eSUN eSilk PLA Filament - 1.75mm Rainbow

Please Note: eSun has recently changed their filament spool material. You may receive a cardboard spool, instead of the plastic spools depicted above. This move means a more environmentally friendly design to their 3D filament spools which comfortably sit on your 3D printer's standard spool holder for smooth filament feeding.

If you enjoy experimenting with new polymers and colours in your 3D Printing adventures, but aren’t eager to learn a whole new set of printing specifications for different types of plastic, eSUN’s eSilk PLA Filament is an exciting addition to our filaments that may certainly pique your interest. Designed with the easy-printing base polymer of PLA, and enhanced with polyester-like additives eSUN’s eSilk filament offers very cool aesthetics features while still maintaining the great properties that make PLA so easy to print with.

While it’s quite obvious to most 3D Makers that eSUN eSilk is a damn awesome filament, eSUN knows exactly how to step up on it by taking all of the best colours and adding them all into a single, colourful and excitingly vibrant spool. This is typically known as Rainbow Filament, and when complemented with the beautiful sheen and smooth surface appearance of eSUN eSilk Filaments, adds a whole new dimension of fun to the aesthetics, allowing you to enjoy some of the cool benefits of multi-hotend or multicolour 3D Printing, as the spool changes colour every few meters with a smooth blend between each of the colours on the spool. So, while 3D Printing with Silky Filaments is certainly an awesome way to create funky and vibrant prints, if you want to step up the funkiness even further, there’s no better way to do it than with eSUN eSilk Rainbow Filament.

What Are the Best Features of Silky PLA Filament?

When talking about Silky PLA, the best features are quite subjective, and will depend on what your favourite factors are. However, the first and obvious amazing feature of Silky PLA is that the prints produced with this filament immediately look a lot nicer than standard PLA prints before any post-processing is done. In addition to this, Silky PLA also offers some unique benefits that many people don’t yet know about, and these include the following three distinct advantages that we’d like to tell you about:

• Despite looking somewhat soft and fluffy at first glance, Silk PLA actually offers less shrinkage than standard PLA. This is in part because of the polyester contained within the polymer, but is primarily because of the low glass transition temperature, which allows the filament to set for a slightly longer time before hardening into a defined shape.
  
  
• Again, despite the soft aesthetics of Silk PLA, it actually offers better toughness than standard PLA, which is due to the polyester additives providing better layer adhesion, flow capabilities and reduced stringing – resulting in a better overall polymer structure that can be bent, flexes or stretched more than standard PLA before it succumbs to permanent deformation.
  
  
•  Finally, and this doesn’t quite pertain to structural aspects, Silk PLA Filament offers the distinct advantage of maintaining near-perfect colour after printing. And whilst standard PLA often changes colour slightly depending on a variety of factors, from print temperatures to print speeds and even uncontrollable factors during the polymerisation process, the natural glossiness of Silk PLA directly translates through to the printed object, offering almost the exact same colour integrity before and after printing.

Of course, as with any 3D Filaments or other materials from other industries, there are also negative factors for Silk PLA, although the only real noteworthy negative factor is that Silk PLA has a lower temperature resistance than standard PLA. This means that Silk PLA is likely to start sagging and eventually melting when left in hot or sunny environments, although this factor is somewhat negligible since even standard PLA will do the same, but may just a slightly longer time to do so.

Please Note: The colours that appear on rainbow filaments are pseudo randomised, and as such we can’t guarantee the exact colours or the order of colours that will appear on your spool. However, after opening and “testing” many of these spools (we’ve got a fond spot for rainbow filaments) we’ve thoroughly enjoyed each and every one and the unique colour combinations they’ve each provided.

Helpful Tips for Printing with eSUN Silky PLA Filament:

As many experienced 3D Makers will know, PLA has gained global popularity due to its ease-of-use and relatively easy-to-achieve printing parameters. In fact, there are very few 3D Printers in the world that are unable to print PLA, with the exceptions being the highly specialised metal 3D Printers and similar massive setups that extend into the hundreds of thousands of Rands. This is why so many 3D Makers get excited with Silky PLA Filaments, as they are in fact even easier to print than standard PLA Filaments, while also offering what is arguably an even better surface finish as well as colour consistency from spool to print.

However, even though it is very easy to print with compared to many of the other polymers, there are still some handy tips to help you get to a good level of quality from your PLA Prints, and this is why we’ve taken the time to provide what we feel are the Top Three Tips for 3D Printing with Silky PLA:

• PLA Printing Tips – First Layer Adhesion: When 3D Printing with PLA, or pretty much any other polymer for that matter, First-Layer-Adhesion is arguably the most important factor to get right, as it acts as the foundation for the entire print, allowing the print to be printed tall or wide (or both) without any major problems. However, this factor also happens to be one of the more difficult parts to get right for beginners, so we’re here to help you out with our three top tips for first-layer-adhesion, which can also be used on other polymers as well, and they are as follows:
   
  • The first step to a great first layer is to ensure that the bed,  the X-Axis and the Y-Axis on your machine are all perfectly aligned, and this can be achieved by ensuring that all four sides of your crossbars are angled at exactly 90° from the base, while simultaneously ensuring that the gantry is exactly perpendicular to both side bars too. This is relatively easy to identify with a simple right-angle tool, and dramatically improves your chances of levelling your bed perfectly, as the nozzle should now be the same Z-height at all points on or above the bed.
     
  • The second step is to drop the z-height down so that the nozzle is ALMOST touching the bed, with a tiny air-gap below the point that’s just barely visible. Then, take a piece of standard (2D) printer paper and slide it gently beneath the nozzle. If the paper slides through without causing any scraping or tugging, you need to drop the nozzle by the smallest amount possible on your machine, before sliding the paper and testing it again. Conversely, if the paper grips too hard, and you struggle to actually move the paper or even slide it under the nozzle initially, then the nozzle is too far down, and you want to raise the nozzle by the smallest increment possible, until you can slide the paper beneath the nozzle with some light “scratching” or grip between the nozzle and bed.
     
  • The third and final step is then to move the nozzle to different points on the bed, with a primary focus on the four corners and the middle of the bed. And once you’ve gotten that perfect grip on the paper in all of the points you’re checking, you will then have your bed levelled and are pretty much ready for printing!

• PLA Printing Tips – Becoming One with Your Slicer: Although it may not seem obvious at first, after starting with 3D Printing you will soon come to realize that a good print actually begins before the filament is even loaded. In fact, a good print really starts within the software that you use to slice the model, as the slicer is essentially a translator that turns a three-dimensional model into what is known as “G-Code” (No, not the Gangster-Code, the Geometric-Code), which the 3D Printer can then read as instructions on how to build the object. With this in mind, learning the in’s and out’s of whatever slicer software you’re using is fundamental, and the more you get to know the fine details in your software, the better you will be able to translate models into G-Code for awesome results. So, regardless of what Slicer you choose to use, whether it be Cura, Simplify3D or even lesser popular options like MatterControl, you need to master and become one with your slicer, so that nothing will hold you back from turning great designs into effective G-Code for your 3D Printer.
  
  
• PLA Printing Tips – Practice & Patience Leads to Perfection: Although there are certainly a lot of things you can do to help enjoy great success with 3D Printing, it’s important to realize that 3D Printing is not easy, and will require a fair amount of patience, practice and learning to get just right. So don’t be scared to experiment if you’re struggling (or if you’re not) so that you can learn even more about your particular 3D Printer, as well as 3D Printing in general, and while not every print will come out perfectly each and every time, remember that each failure is just another step towards success, and every success is another notch in your Maker’s toolbelt of experience.

Additional Resources for 3D Printing PLA:

Although we like to believe that we are masters of 3D Printing, after spending a good many years enveloped in the industry, we have to admit that even we learn something new from time to time, and as such we always recommend getting out there and doing your own research to develop your own opinion and grow your knowledge from multiple sources!

As such, in addition to the above PLA Printing Tips, we’ve also gathered an awesome collection of what we feel are great resources to start with when getting into 3D Printing, so be sure to check these out if you’re looking for more insights and information on PLA Printing, or if you’re just curious and eager to see more opinions on one of the many facets of this still-fresh industry:

• This is a relatively general Guide on PLA Printing by Simplify3D, world-renowned experts in 3D modelling and Computer Aided Design. It offers so great tips for troubleshooting minor problems, while giving some good general guidelines on how to “dial in” your 3D Printer one step at a time.
  
  
• The next awesome resource we have to share is the Awesome Rigid Ink PLA Guide, which offers a mountain-load of insights into the chemical and material composition of PLA, with a slew of great tips and tricks on how to get your PLA looking good (and behaving properly) for every print.
  
  
• Because first-layer-adhesion is one of the trickiest factors to get right for beginners (and also veterans sometimes), we feel that this 3D Printer Bed Levelling Guide is a good addition to this collection of resources. It does a great job at explaining why bed levelling is important, what you can expect from a well or poorly levelled bed, as well as some tips on how to make the entire process much easier.
  
  
• Finally, this is just a great General 3D Printing Quality Guide, that is designed to help users troubleshoot various quality-related problems, while giving some great tips on what to do when certain problems arise. If you’re struggling with an issue, this is a great place to find out what is actually going wrong, as well as how you can remedy it, with good explanations of why certain remedies work to fix certain problems.

Shenzhen eSUN Industrial Co., Ltd was established in 2002 in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and has rapidly become one of the leading international suppliers of 3D Printing Filament. They specialise in research, development and production of degradable polymer materials, and have grown their catalogue of filaments to include PLA, ABS, PC, PVA, and a wide range of other polymers and copolymers.

Their list of exclusive filament formulas include unique materials like wood, aluminium, bronze and other materials to create highly specialised filaments that can stretch, bend, be moulded or otherwise behave in very unique ways. Their filaments are also commonly characterised by their absolutely round shape, extremely low diameter tolerance, uniform colours and impressively stable melting points. These characteristics, in combination with their long-term insistent policy of “Best Quality, Reasonable Price” has garnered them a large share of the market, with their reputation commonly preceding them within knowledgeable online and offline 3D Printing communities.

eSUN’s popularity in the industry has also helped to produce sustainable partnerships with many internationally famous 3D Printer manufacturers and distributors, with DIYElectronics having sole distributorship rights to provide their 3D Printing Filaments to South Africa and neighbouring African countries.