The story behind Prusament
We always strived to make our 3D printers as reliable as possible. However, we never had a chance to influence something that has almost the same impact on the quality of 3D prints as the printer design itself – the quality of filaments. Deviation from the declared average, color consistency or source materials… quality can vary not only across different manufacturers, but often even across a single filament brand. There was only one suitable solution for us. Let’s buy our own extrusion lines and other equipment, so we can start manufacturing our own filaments directly in Prusa Research factory. We are the very first 3D printer manufacturer with its own filament production lines! We have even established a new subsidiary called Prusa Polymers.
– Josef Prusa
MANUFACTURED IN-HOUSE BY JOSEF PRUSA
Whenever you heard about the “Prusa filament”, it always referred to a product made for us by an external company (it is a common practice for all printer manufacturers). However, the new Prusament is manufactured in the very same building as our Original Prusa i3 3D printers. Twelve filament production lines are currently installed on two floors of our factory! In the manufacturing process, every detail matters – and we are paying great attention to every step. Every product is checked by our strict quality control. Filaments are shipped perfectly wound and carefully packed, so they retain the best possible properties when we ship them across the world. Plus, we do more than just manufacture. Our research and development teams are working on new colors and new materials, so we can expand our lineup with many new and interesting products in the future. We care, of course, about the environment as well – we have designed our own spool, which is not only durable and light, but it also needs 50% less plastic compared to commonly used spools.
PREMIUM-GRADE MATERIALS AND THOROUGH TESTING
As a 3D printer manufacturer, we obviously print a lot! You can take our word for it – just check out the video from our print farm. All our filaments go through a long and demanding testing process before they hit the market. It’s difficult to produce a single high-quality spool, but it’s much more difficult to retain a consistent quality in mass production. The whole process is closely monitored and everything is properly tested – string diameter, color consistency, and mechanical properties – to make sure that every spool that leaves our factory is perfect.
± 0.02 MM MANUFACTURING PRECISION
Most filament manufacturers use a ±0.05 mm diameter tolerance when producing 1.75mm filaments. It looks like a tiny number, but we must not forget that this kind of deviation can in its extreme values increase or decrease the expected flow rate by 11.4 %. We decided to set our own manufacturing precision standards. We guarantee ±0.02mm precision for the vast majority of materials (±0.03 mm for blended materials)! The diameter is measured in both axes several times every second, so we can guarantee the maximum precision and best possible circularity of our filament. As a result, increased manufacturing precision leads to a lower percentage of unsuccessful or low-quality prints.
QUALITY YOU CAN CHECK YOURSELF
Pretty much anyone can write a good looking marketing text with plenty of superlatives. However, only Prusament gives you the option to inspect the properties of every manufactured spool. Just take your cell phone and take a picture of the QR code on the box, or enter the spool ID on Prusament.com website. You will instantly see when was your filament made, how much it weights and how long the string is. But that’s not all! We will show you the maximum deviation of your filament, its standard deviation value and ovality. Plus, you can check the diameter data visualized using a graph. We are allowing our customers to see the results of our manufacturing tests, plus you can also see a graph preview and other values directly on every box of filament!
