Today we are reviewing a popular 3D printer filament brand, ESUN, PLA+ 3D printer filament. ESUN is a popular and widely known 3D printer filament that can be ordered on Amazon or any of the other online 3D printer shops.
Our results for the ESUN PLA+ filament were very good. I would almost say quite surprising comparing the quality of the prints vs the cost of the material.
About ESun:
According to the ESUN corporation “about” page, ESUN was originally founded in 2002 and is mainly dedicated to the R&D of bio-degradable polymers. In other words, PLA and PCL. ESUN has been known for providing lower-cost filaments without sacrificing quality.
ESUN has developed a wide variety of 3D printing materials to include ABS, PLA, PVA, PolyCarbonate, and also some UV 3D printer resin. Most of the 3D printing filaments that ESUN provides is very affordable.
ESun Filament Testing:
While doing our testing on ESun Pla filament, we ran at least a dozen spools in multiple colours. Our testing was very thorough, each print ranging from a few minutes to multiple 30+ hour 3D prints, all ran on an Airwolf3D Axiom Dual direct-drive 3D printer or Creality Ender 3 with BLTouch. So the spectrum from a higher cost 3d printer to a lower-cost 3D printer in both 2.85mm diameter and 1.75mm diameter filaments. Between both printers we ran hundreds of hours of ESun filament.
Results:
Our results for the ESUN PLA filament were very good. I would almost say quite surprising comparing the quality of the prints vs the cost of the material.
Packaging:
ESUN does a great job on the packaging. Each roll is shrink-wrapped very tightly in what appears to be .5 mil plastic with a decent size packet of desiccant to keep things dry. Included is a “Tips for eSUN filament: PLA PRO (PLA+) sheet and also an eSUN product manual. All of this is enclosed in a very nice well designed corrugated box.
Spooling / Tangling
We had very little to no issues with spool tangling or unwinding. Tangles in spools can be a very irritating problem with some filament brands or plastics. Having a tangle in the middle of a long print will quickly put the brakes on your project. Not only are you most likely out the material that you have already laid down, but you are also out the print time you put into it. While some printers have a restart feature (from where it stopped), many times it will have laid a very inconsistent couple of layers so if the integrity of your part is badly compromised, this will determine if you are better off throwing the 3D print away and starting from scratch.
ESUN did a great job of winding their filament onto the spool. Out of the dozen or more rolls, we did not have one tangle.
Layer Adhesion, Shrinkage, and Stringing
The first layer to the glass bed went on smooth and great flow. We normally use a product called Wolfbite (for PLA) created by Airwolf3D. We did not have any issues printing on a clean glass bed with a proper layer of Wolfbite applied. The items we printed on the Creality Ender 3 were done on a magnetic flexible plate. Again, no issues with the filament sticking to the bed.
- The layer to layer adhesion was very good.
- There were no striations or separations.
- The models were as strong as we expected.
- We had no noticeable shrinkage.
- The models all came out dimensionally accurate vs other materials.
- No problems with stringing.
Surface Quality
All of the models looked great, including the surface calibration models. The contoured radius came out as smooth as can be expected for this type of 3D printing. All of the letterings, when modelled correctly and sized large enough with the right fonts, all were readable. We had no major complaints here.
Overall Conclusion
ESun PLA+ Highlights:
- Low price and wide availability
- Excellent quality: Prints come out as planned
- Wide range of colours 25+
- Good spool and exceptional packaging
We found that the eSUN PLA+ was one of our favourite materials when using a cost/benefit analysis. The price for a PLA PLUS material is hard to beat when comparing the benefits we reaped out of all of our prints.
Our favourite eSUN PLA+ colour to print with was the ESun Olive Green. It has more of a neutral, Army type green colour and it looked great on all of our jigs and fixtures and all 3D Print consistencies were excellent.
We realize that not all printers and print conditions are created equal but feel that we can highly recommend this material to our readers. While you may experience different outcomes, we think they can be overcome by following some simple guidelines, most issues experienced with printers are due to levelling issues, print temperatures, and print speed. If your printer is set up to get a good first couple of layers and your not printing too fast, you should have excellent prints with this material.
Favourite Pick:
As previously stated, our favourite colour to work with was the ESUN Olive Green PLA+ filament. It provides a very durable, pleasant, neutral colour that looks good on everything we printed. Overall the olive green just produces very high-quality 3D printed parts:
- Aesthetically pleasing
- Smooth surface
- High accuracy
- Very tough
- High-performance 3D printing on every level
- No failed prints due to filament
The runner up in colour was the translucent blue pla+. It produced some very cool translucent parts with interesting patterns depending on what infill settings we used.
We highly recommend Esun PLA+ Filament, it tops out in both cost vs performance every time. It is usually not hard to find and in stock at most places that carry Esun, and a very consistent material.
Please feel free to leave any comments about your experience or post any questions regarding this review or 3D printer related. I will try and post more images on this page soon!
