Hi there, I’m new to the world of 3D printing and am looking for some guidance on how to stock up on supplies. The reels are sold by weight but that doesn’t indicate how many items could be made from a reel. Is there a volume-reel reference table or some such basic information?
Hi again, I found a lot of information about materials on the site below:
https://www.simplify3d.com/support/materials-guide/properties-table/?highlight=petg
Back to my information gathering 
After Luban slices a model, it will give you an estimate of how much length / weight of filament the print will use. I’m assuming it’s about as accurate as the print time estimate as (which isn’t terribly accurate). It’s in the lower right hand corner of the model window.
The amount of filament and time depends on the print settings more than the size of the model. A 100mm cube with 5% infill and 0.4mm walls will use much less filament than a similarly sized complex model with 1.2mm walls and 25% infill.
I don’t print a lot, so I find my filament goes bad before I finish it. I’m ok throwing away ~100g of filament one a year, so I haven’t bothered to assemble a filament protection box. I do get a lot more prints than I expected when I started.
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Ah ha! Thanks for the feedback. Some excellent points there. The chart I found (link above) gives the density of the filament, however, your point regarding the print settings gives context.
I’m interested in your reference to the filament ‘going bad’. I assume this is due to U/V, I’ll look for this among my research. Key points for me will be; don’t buy more than needed and I probably will protect the filament rolls between use.
I went back to the website from ‘simplify3d’ and viewed their materials guide… a lot to digest!
Moisture is the thing you have to watch out for most in terms of filament “going bad”—most types of filament absorb water from the air over time, and that messes with extrusion. It’s possible to dry it out after the fact, but that isn’t necessarily worth it for small quantities. You can package it up in an airtight container with some dessicant when not printing to avoid water absorption.
I don’t have issues with print quality when the spool gets old, but the humidity here rarely exceeds 30%.
For me, the filament starts to get brittle, and breaks off inside the print head. Then when I try to load more filament, it keeps breaking. After about a foot / 25cm breaks off, I just pitch the whole spool and open a new one. I think that means it’s a UV problem rather than humidity, but I don’t actually know. Nor would I do anything to fix it.
It looks like my situation is more akin to ‘clewis’ with very low RH (20-35%). I’ll be careful not to buy too much to begin with and to store the roll(s) out of UV and monitor the RH of the room before doing anything more.
Regarding my original topic, I need to understand the difference in nozzle size options etc. Back to my research