I ordered some filament in the refill packs to try out Bambu filament. Now I need to print some spools for it. The link for the Bambu spools has about 40 different choices. Is it best just to print the one from the designer Bambu, or is there a good reason to select one of the others? Just curious as the print time saved on the other options is only about an hour or so.
Thanks
I have been using the one from Bambu Lab.
If you have an A1 series printer you can benefit from the one @Henlor designed, it is great. It works with the AMS lite, but, not the AMS.
@Josh-3D just released his take on the reusable spool.
They all take an age to print, they all use a lot of filament, but, far cheaper than the extortionate price BL charges and they are often out of stock.
If you buy 8+ filaments they cost ÂŁ12 each for refills or ÂŁ15 for one with a spool, yet a reusable spool without any filament costs ÂŁ11, I guess the actual filament then must be ÂŁ4!
That is a big oversimplification of course.
Keep in mind that some filament ps require high-temp spools, that usually means you can buy them as refills though. Just make sure which your refills need and you may have to use something other than PLA to print the reusable spool.
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Thanks Malc,
That is all the info I need to start printing some spools. I have 2 AMS Lites and 2 regular AMS units so I will be able to print both designs and make good use of them.
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Thanks for the shout out, Malc! 
I thought I’d do the salesman thing and talk up my spool a little. I use refills a lot! If I could, I would go all refill all the time. After awhile, the normal Bambu refill spools started to hurt my hands though.
The winding on the refills isn’t perfect, and there’s enough variation in the width that you can get jams because the filament will fall to the side and well, get jammed up. The way around this is to work the filament once it’s on the spool, to work it into the empty spaces. This has personally been rough on my hands after awhile. I have carpal tunnel syndrome, and so, yeah.
I did just release my spool. More officially now! I did a screw together design to try and address that one major issue. A few people have tested it and have provided positive feedback. The main idea is that it’s not a fixed width, so you can clamp it down. It has been working awesome for me, and has made refills a lot easier to deal with.
When I’m in the middle of a really big project, I might be putting in new refills 2-4 times a day.
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@Josh-3D Looks great. I may have to print one but I have never used ABS yet so I will have to get past that part first. What material are the Bambu Labs filament on spools and also the spools you can buy? I just noticed they have some black ones that are high temp on sale right now that are made with ABS+PC so that made me curious what the white ones are made of.
Thanks!
So my idea making a threaded one is now a remix before even starting
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The disclaimer in your model.
This is a soft-semi-beta release
I should have used this in my dating days, essentially, don’t judge me at the start, give me time to disappoint you later.
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For most filaments PETG should be good enough and your power bill will thank you.
If you never dry your filament, even PLA should work. I personally print my refill spools in PETG, because my filament dryer only goes up to 60°C (which is enough for drying my PLA/PETG/ABS+/TPU).
Regarding your question: Choose whichever one you like. There are people who care about print times/filament efficiency and others like myself who want something that looks good. I personally print my own model that looks almost like the bambulab spool that you would get when you buy one.
I would recommend printing the ones which have holes for respooling, in case you ever want to get started with that. Makes your life so much easier when you have a hole in the spool. (If it is too much work, don’t worry, this is nothing that a drill/dremel couldn’t solve later on).
I was surprised about how many people are respooling! Why?? Anyway, I got that requested a lot on my spool design so I updated it to have two places to put the end of the filament in and people really seem to like it!
I personally like my design most (go figure), but indeed, get one that you like most. I would refrain from designs that just copied the bambu spool with a different side pattern because it is designed for injection moulding and not for 3D printing, so they generally take longer to print and are less functional. Other than that there are wonderful spools out there with novel ideas!
I haven’t respooled, but, not for the want of doing it (my disability limits my abilities).
I can explain at least one reason as I suffer from it a lot.
The refill is too thin for the reusable spools when in the AMS, the filament gets trapped between the remaining spool and the edge of the reusable spool. This is sufficient enough to trap the filament and stop the print, OFTEN.
It can take a while before enough material has been used before the problem stops, this can take the majority of the spool.
Incredibly annoying.
Throw a link in here.
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Yeah, I figured as much, but respooling is a lot of work and getting it neatly enough to not have the same issue again is kind of hard as well.
In my design I combatted this by having the walls curve inwards slightly, so there is more tension on the filament. But the flip side is that it is harder to press and lock together which some might struggle with as well. I really like the screw spool ideas as well but I’m weary of how well they stay put.
Okay, okay, I will. But I stand by my words that people should print the one they like most! Even though I am very surprised by how well my design is received past month:
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I am one of those guys with a respooler (technically I am even developing my own one based on an existing design). I buy my filament from many different places, sometimes dirt cheap, sometimes expensive. Most filaments are either cardboard spools or plastic spools. The plastic spool ones are a mixed bag, some work really well, some kinda work and some are awful (like the reusable sunlu spools).
Well what do you do with a spool that doesn’t work well with the AMS? I can’t be bothered to help the AMS with loading a spool, especially on a print with thousand of filament changes. The solution for me is to spool it onto another spool.
The respooler I have tried work really well, and do a great job. Sure it is not prusament level winding, but it is good enough. I am going to recommend the pastamatic or the vspooler. I tried the vspooler, but because of their licensing I switched to another one.
The other one switched to a standard license to get extra points, so I refuse to recommend them.
I really like this spool design, and I have printed several of them. I didn’t even notice the re-spooler option on it until you mentioned it.
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I am truly amazed by their winding and it has zero issues. The sad thing is that this kind of winding is possible, even on refills, but most manufacturers send out a messy pile of filament anyway.
“Das filament” is a good example, I have only ever gotten very tightly wound, immaculate refills with a square profile from them. Even without a (cardboard) core! I don’t know how they do it, but it proves that it is possible:
I have only ever had 4 Bambu refills and they all worked, but none of them were nicely wound
I only dried filament once in my life so far and that was a spool of Hatchbox black PLA that had been on an old seldom used printer for years. That said, I am in the process of building a different spool winder that seems like it will work ok but it does not have the automatic guide that moves back and forth. If I have to build another I will. I just printed up 4 spools in PLA and I will be careful what type filament I use for refills to avoud any problems. In fact it would not be a bad idea to dry the refils before putting them on the spool. 
That Pastamatic one looks pretty cool and easy to assemble. I watched the video. Maybe this will be my second spool winder build. I was going to bookmark it and I already had it bookmarked.
Edit: This is the one I am currently building.