Gizmo Dorks filament has a unique backstory.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to start a business with your childhood friends? The owners of Gizmo Dorks did just that.
Together, they have built a loyal following and created one of the hottest small 3D filament companies around.
Their website alone has hundreds of positive reviews, not to mention all of the other places where their filaments are sold.
While the quality of Gizmo Dorks’ filament is fantastic, it’s their customer service that makes Gizmo Dorks unique. They go above and beyond to make their customers happy.
It might sound corny, but they treat you like you are their childhood friend too.
Introduction to Gizmo Dorks filament
With their stylish spools and range of specialty filaments, Gizmo Dorks is one of the most popular filaments brands today. They have a loyal following and, due to the wide range of high quality exotic filaments they offer, their fan base is constantly growing every month.
But perhaps the best aspect of Gizmo Dorks is that they put the customer first. When you read a few comments on their website or other forums, you notice one thing immediately: everyone appreciates Gizmo Dorks’ customer service. A lot.
But how good is the filament?
The quality of Gizmo Dorks filament is good overall. As a distributor of Chinese filaments, they do have issues with consistency in quality and color from one spool to the next since they often go with the lowest distributor they can find.
Still, these minor quality issues aside, sometimes a human touch is very nice. And combined with free shipping and frequent deals, Gizmo Dorks offers value for money that many filament companies can’t.
The Filament: Price, Quality, and Color Range
The price to quality ratio of Gizmo Dorks filaments are at the top of the industry. The quality could be improved slightly, but for there is not much wrong with it.
Gizmo Dorks offers a bunch of excellent specialty filaments as well. The price is right in line with other similar filaments, like Hatchbox and SainSmart.
And the color range is also good but they not all of them are available on third party marketplaces. Check out the Gizmo Dorks website for the full line up of colors and specialty filaments.
Color Range
The range of colors that Gizmo Dorks sells is great. They offer around 40 colors for PLA and around 30 colors of ABS.
And like any good filament company, their color range is diverse with multiple shades of primary colors and several shades of translucent and specialty colors.
One thing to watch out for is sometimes the color descriptions are a little inaccurate or unclear.
Take the multiple shade shades of red as an example.
If you order just regular red PLA, you may receive translucent red filament.
And if you order the “lava red” you may receive a more orange red.
Finally, ordering “ruby red” will get you the regular solid red that you’re looking for from the regular red PLA.
This is just one example of how the color descriptions can be somewhat misleading for Gizmo dark filaments.
That being said, Gizmo Dorks does offer one of the most diverse color for a general filament provider.
Prints: Strength and Texture
Gizmo Dorks PLA and ABS print really nicely. Just make sure you get the settings right, otherwise the PLA can give you some trouble. It’s not super forgiving.
But the settings are easy to find and once your printer is calibrated everything goes perfectly well. The PLA can also sometimes be a bit brittle. This is pretty typical for Chinese filaments.
The ABS strength is fantastic. And it is super rigid, so not much bending happening here.
The texture of finished ABS prints are glossy and smooth. One thing to note about the ABS black is that sometimes it turns white when the surface is scraped or scratched.
Quality and Materials
The quality of Gizmo Dorks is good for a (suspected) chinese filament. That being said, like other Chinese filaments, Gizmo Dorks does have some quality control issues.
Every once in awhile you will get a dud roll. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Just contact the Gizmo Dorks customer service for a refund or replacement if this happens to you.
PLA
The quality of the PLA from Gizmo Dorks is pretty good. It’s a decent PLA with good strength and a nice finish.
Like other value PLA brands, it can be somewhat tricky to find perfect printer settings for Gizmo Dorks PLA. But once you do find the settings for your printer, this PLA will deliver consistent quality results.
The ovality and roundness is pretty good and the variance is also acceptable. Sometimes the diameters of the 3 millimeter PLA will vary outside of the accepted range and go from as low as 2.81 millimeters and as high as 2.95 millimeters.
But if you’re able to measure the diameter yourself before calibrating your printer for this material, then you can adjust your settings accordingly.
Additionally, from one spool to the next, you might see some variation in quality on rare occasions. For instance, Gizmo Dorks PLA sometimes has small air bubbles in it.
Other times, you may hear some popping while printing from moisture absorption. Also, some spools of Gizmo Dorks PLA will be more brittle than other PLA filament.
But again, these rare quality control issues are not a reason to avoid this brand altogether. If you are really unsatisfied with a spool, feel free to contact them through their website and they will take care of you.
ABS
Gizmo Dorks ABS is really shiny and has really good strength. This ABS also has very good bed adhesion properties, low warping, and very little odor while printing.
Overall, for a cheap Chinese import, it’s not bad.
Sometimes this ABS will delaminate a little bit and It does have a weird tendency to produce white streaks where it is scratched. But it doesn’t always happen and these white marks are also easily fixed with minor post-processing techniques.
QUICK NOTE: Make sure that you re-calibrate your printer from one color to the next while printing with this ABS. For instance, if you’re printing with blue and white ABS the optimal temperature might be around to 220 degrees Celsius.
But the green ABS filament tends to print best for some people at around 230 degrees. So just make sure that you’re recalibrating every time you change your spool.
Wood
Wood filaments are hit or miss. Each brand sells a slightly different kind of wood filament depending on the amount of actual wood fill that the manufacturer puts in the PLA. But Gizmo Dorks makes a really good wood filament.
You can smell the burning wood when you print with it. And the prints come out really nicely. They look like would and feel like wood, and you can even sand them like wood.
Just be ready to play with your printer settings a little bit. Like their other PLAs, the Gizmo Dorks wood filaments can be tricky.
HIPS
Gizmo Dorks sells a decent HIPS filament. As a support material, this HIPS is perfect.
It breaks off easily from printed pieces with very little force applied. You can also easily dissolve it in limonene dissolving fluid.
Actually, it sometimes comes off TOO easily and simply won’t even stick to ABS. But for the most part it works really well.
If you have a dual extruder, definitely try this HIPS with an ABS.
QUICK NOTE: This is seriously one of the most popular HIPS filaments available. Check out all of the positive reviews.
Color Change And Fluorescent PLA
Gizmo Dorks makes some really cool fluorescent and color changing filaments. The color changing ABS tends to change at around 80º and looks really good. They all print really smoothly.
The fluorescent PLAs are also really interesting and are activated by UV light. Gizmo Dork offers several colors including orange, green and blue fluorescent PLA.
The brand also sells Fluorescent ABS in both 1.5 millimeter and 2.85 millimeter diameters.
One thing to keep in mind is that Gizmo Dork mislabeled their hot pink fluorescent filament as ruby red for a while there. So if you’re looking to buy ruby red, just make sure that you’re actually getting ruby red and not hot pink fluorescent filament.
Otherwise that firetruck you were going to print might turn into an ice cream truck. You can verify this either with the company themselves or by looking at the comment section of the product listing.
Website, Packaging, and Spool Design
Website
The Gizmo Dorks website is well-designed and user-friendly. It has an excellent eCommerce store shop where you can buy 3D printer filament as well as other Gizmo Dorks products.
And for a 3D printer filament e-commerce shop, this website is super popular! Customers have left dozens of reviews for each filament. That’s super unique, and while a cynical person might begin to suspect that these reviews aren’t fully legitimate, they are definitely convincing when you read them.
Gizmo dorks about page is also pretty good and they have their contact information prominently displayed. In fact, Gizmo Dorks customer service through their website is excellent and includes a chat program as well as a phone number and email address.
They offer free shipping through their website and have a generous return policy. Gizmo Dorks also has active social media accounts and a blog that is updated regularly on their website. Overall the Gizmo Dorks web presence is top-notch.
Packaging And Spool Design
Gizmo Dorks packaging is very basic. There’s really not much to it.
But The spools are very cool looking. The updated spool design is very pleaseing to the eye and projects the fun, futuristic attitude that Gizmo Dorks wants to bring to 3D printing.
The spools arrive in a unmarked square cardboard box with a small window cut out so you can see the filament inside. Other than a small sticker label on the side, Gizmo Dorks filament boxes have no logo or marking.
The labeling consists of a very basic information about the spool. The label displays the type of material, the color, the net weight, and not much more. The same sticker label is also attached to the spool.
The spool’s arrive in a vacuum-sealed plastic container horror leave. The spools themselves are well wound, with no tangling or tension issues. The center Hub hole is around 2.2 inches in diameter, which is big enough to print with almost every standard 3D printer spool holder available.
Check out Gizmo Dorks filaments on Amazon.
Conclusion: Gizmo Dorks Is A Childhood Dream Come True
Michael Hsiao founded Gizmo Dorks with his childhood friend. It’s a nice story.
According to their about page on the website, they launched the company in Pasadena California, where they were both raised. Michael and his friend established the company in 2009 after discovering that they both had a mutual interest in new technologies.
Fun, right? It’s every kids’ dream to open a cool toy shop with their best friend, and these too did it.
You can participate in this dream by picking up a spool for yourself today. It’s a great story, and hopefully your experience with Gizmo Dorks filaments is as good as everyone elses.