Not sure whether it’s “high speed” per se that makes the difference, or just cheap filaments, but I’m noticing that in a number of brands the high speed PLA filaments are much less color saturated than even PLA filaments from the same brand that aren’t “high speed”.
Is this generally true in you all’s experience, or am I just experiencing a sample bias?
Take, for instance, this current print, which is in progress:
It is nominally red, but it’s also rather washed out, almost like a pastel. This one happens to be a Kingroon HS-PLA, and as far as I can tell, all of Kingroon’s HS-PLA’s are washed out like this, regardless of color. Similar with Sunlu. I just tonight ordered a “fire engine red” from 3DHOJOR (another cheap brand) to see whether it might be any different:
In general I prefer Sunlu over Kingroon, because it has higher volumetric flow rate, and because the prints do come out better overall, but I can sometimes buy Kingroon at close to $8/roll of high speed filament, so I’m willing to compromise for the lower cost and still get higher speed prints. However, I’m still wondering whether the lack of saturated colors in “high speed” filaments holds true for even more expensive brands, or whether this is simply an area where the cheap brands economize in order to be priced inexpensive. If so, then I might still prototype using the cheaper brands but then pay-up for more saturated colors in a more premium brand for the final print.
In the cheap brand category, I generally prioritize Sunlu and Kingroon, which use plastic spools, over brands like 3DHOJOR that use cardboard spools, because the cardboard spools necessitate longer drying cycles in a filament dryer, and because some of them can “shed” bits of carboard and cardboard dust all over the filament, which increases the likelihood of a clog. Likewise, cardboard spools tend to be less reliably AMS compatible.
Which high speed filament brands do you all prefer, and why?
With the passage of time I’m becoming more organized, and now whenever I try a new brand or type of filament, I also print off a filament swatch (and label it) so that I have a record of the exact color I can expect from make and model in the future, though with some brands that can still vary from one batch to another. I wish now that I had done this from the very beginning–as color memory alone isn’t reliable months or years later–but going forward that’s what I’m now doing. Now that I think of it, I should collect a filament swatch for every new batch of filament I receive, so that I can compare color consistency over time and figure out for myself which brands are good at that and which are not.