Customising Filaments Isn't User Friendly

Bambu Lab Software Bambu Studio
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Customising your choice of filaments in Bambu Studio isn’t straightforward or user-friendly. It’s cumbersome, counter-productive and a chore.

1. Unable to Create a new Filament from Scratch

There is no option to create a new filament from scratch, instead, you must copy from an existing filament. This means it’s very easy to accidentally copy over settings you don’t want/need and not have a desired configuration.

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2. Unable to Specify Type or Vendor

This has been moderately solved in v1.8.2 but it’s still unintuitive. When editing or copying a filament, you should be able to change the ‘Type’ or ‘Vendor’ at any stage - like all the other fields. But instead, it’s greyed out.

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3. Custom Filaments - an Organisational Nightmare

The introduction of custom filaments, whilst appreciated, is an overly cumbersome way of fixing my previous complaint where the vendor field should really just be plain text.

Sadly, it’s not been properly thought through and creates more issues than it fixes.

Type field: Unlike the ‘Vendor’ field, you cannot specify a filament type that isn’t in the list. That means that filaments such as ePLA, PLA+ or PLA Blend are not available and instead have to be entered into the ‘Serial’ field.

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Serial field: This field should not be mandatory. Not every brand uses the same naming convention as Bambu Lab and so you’re forced to create filaments with silly names such as ‘Prusament PLA PLA’.

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Filament preset: This goes back to my first point where you’re forced to copy another filament at every stage. You cannot create a new filament without copying the preset of another one which again leaves room for error. Furthermore, if a filament type doesn’t exist you have to enable a system filament to be able to copy from it.

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Custom filament naming conventions: The fact that you cannot edit the name of the custom filament is a huge oversight. The options you pick for the ‘Vendor’, ‘Type’ and ‘Serial’ create the name which is then trailed with ‘@Bambu Lab X1 Carbon 0.4 Nozzle’. This is hideous. Any attempt to change the name creates a new filament which makes the aforementioned one redundant. Leading to my next issue.

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Unable to delete a filament which has been copied from a custom filament preset: If you copy a custom filament, the filament you create is nested under the filament you copied it from (even though the tree diagram doesn’t show this). As a result, if you try to delete the filament you copied from your newly created filament will also be deleted.

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4. AMS Filament, Project-inside presets, User presets and System presets

This one speaks for itself, there are far too many options for filament types, leading to a really clunky UI.

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Would love to see this interface improved to make everything a bit more fluid and user-friendly.

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Best is to fill separate issue for each reasonable thing at Issues · bambulab/BambuStudio · GitHub

Not sure if developers read this forum but they do read issues.

Edit: I see it was filled: Customising Filaments Isn't User Friendly · Issue #3252 · bambulab/BambuStudio · GitHub

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Thank you, I will do that now!

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I agree with you. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was on purpose to get people using their filament.

On the flip side, I have been able to create them by changing an existing filament and renaming on the save.

Did this with eSun filaments as they give print specs specifically for the X and P series on their website.

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I used the “Custom Filaments” some days ago for the first time. And I have to agree, that they’re not user friendly. I stumbled about exact the same points, mentioned by @daniel82749. But I have another point for the list: Why I have to enter all the material data (density, costs, temperatures,…) for all nozzle sizes? The material data are relying on the filament, not the nozzle. So I would prefer to be able to create a generic material profile (template) and then based on this I can create the specific profile for the required nozzle size.

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Better question is why cant our currently created custom profiles from Orca and Bambu be direcly synced. They could have made the whole thing much easier instead we have to (re)create yet another set of filament profiles. I tried but have way too many custom profiles to copy them over and virtually no benefit, except saving a few drop down menu selections in slicer. Ive given up and just doing the same “Generic” + PA on printer and choosing the profiles in the slicer as before. I dont print directly from iOS app so its not a big deal if the printer not having the right profile settings as its never used without the slicer which overrides all those stored on printer anyways.

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Just a head up, creating custom filaments on latest version of Bambu studio on macOS does not currently work BUT if you use beta version of Orca you can in fact create custom filaments, and they show up on AMS though slicer as well as direct on printer.

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I have been trying to use the custom fillament function and it won’t load my printer into the dialog to even choose an existin profile to start with. Click “Create” and it tells me I have to pick a printer (understood), but it doesn’t load!

I have been trying to use the custom fillament function and it won’t load my printer into the dialog to even choose an existin profile to start with. Click “Create” and it tells me I have to pick a printer (understood), but it doesn’t load!

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Try Orca slicer, was not working in Bambu for me either. Orca was working.

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I too 100% agree with the above, the most seriously bad one for me is why do I have to do this per nozzle size.
If I create new filament profiles for each type/roll of filament, given that we are advised to calibrate the filament every time we introduce a new one - this will lead to having almost a filament profile per roll as they are calibrated we have to give it a new name.

When creating the filament profile it gives it that really long name, however when we calibrate it there is a restriction on the name not being over 40 characters (of which it already is) so we have to cut the name down adding calibrated at the end etc.
This then leads to a 2nd filament profile.

What a mess this soon gets to.
And then… if I ever choose to change to a smaller nozzle, ALL my custom filaments are gone! like WTH! that is so insane.

I do look forward to the day that this gets sorted out.

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You may(?) have to do it for each layer height as well. When I look at the “high speed” filaments, a number of them recommend printing at a higher hot-end temperatures the faster your speed. But with a 0.6mm nozzle, I can’t reach the higher print speeds (mm/sec) unless my layer height goes down.

I don’t yet have a grasp on whether this is a real issue or a non-issue. I used to think that flow rate is all that really mattered, but I’m finding contrary evidence where higher speed printing fails even when it’s well under the calibrated flow rate.

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I swear to god that wasn’t showing up before

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It probably wasn’t as it is hidden for “New users”. Once you move to “Basic User” status the button is enabled.

Welcome to the forum.

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Well, I’m developing the opinion that BL doesn’t want you to have this ability. They’ve already given warning that a future update of BS will not allow saving customized filaments until a later firmware version comes out, with no estimate of the time frame differences. No explanation as to why they can’t hold off the BS release that will do that until the firmware is ready, and then release both simultaneously.

Personally, as often as their filament stocks run out, this is an anti end user policy

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We received our second X1-C today and I’ve noticed a new issue with customising filaments.

Any Flow Dynamics calibrations you have saved are saved to the printer. That means for every printer you setup, you have to re-create the Flow Dynamics calibrations from your previous printer.

Is this expected behaviour? With the same printer and material surely the results should be the same.

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Yeah I agree this needs to be re-thought as the current system is a relative mess. I get it makes you more likely to just buy the Bambu stuff for the ease of NFC tags, but a lot of the time the popular colours are out of stock on their website.

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I’d settle for it literally working at all; for me, it simply does not work in any way.

I also agree that it seems the point is to have this feature not work at all, given the fact that no one seems to be interested in fixing it.

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I concur with you 100%

Custom Filament Management is terrible and detracts from what is otherwise, an excellent user experience.

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For me getting a Bambu was a huge step forward in terms of printing speeds.
Before I preferred a dual extruder printer but it was time to retire it.

The amount of options in Bambu studio are quite extensive and for someone starting with 3D printing certainly coming with a steep learning curve.
For me though calibrating literally everything from scratch is second nature…
Same for creating matching profiles and using the grandfather principles to create them.

I could not care less about an options to put in a filament maker - I just name the profile accordingly.
Don’t care about having to define a new filament or profile based on an existing one - because I only use my own profiles and calibrations anyway, which give me a good starting point.
Too much hassle to calibrate for various nozzle sizes individually?
Well, how else can you ensure the results are as expected ? :wink:

Bambu created a system to BIND the customer after they bought a machine from them.
A commercial model best suited for commercial customers printing in high volumes.
If you have to change filament rolls a lot and for multiple machines than those RF ID Tags make a lot of sense, save a lot of time and with that enough money to justify paying the extra.
After all - the customer pays for the model and it IS best to reduce the time and labour costs for printing…
A hobby or low volume small business user however might prefer to grab cheap filaments, or to buy them from companies offering a good bulk discount.
Sadly setting up new filaments without RF ID Tags is quite a hassle in the Bambu world…

Let’s assume you have no issues accepting that you have to calibrate a new filament and also that you might have to adjust things or at least confirm them from time to time.
How then can you create a working system to keep track of your rolls, their print setting and various print profiles you created ?

One of the worst thing to happen is you running low on a specific filament or just colour, trying to place an order and seeing it is currently unavailable…
You try a different manufacturer, create a new profile and all that…
Does not take long for your list of user and custom profiles to be so long that you loose track…
The time required to properly calibrate a new filament roll is nothing compared to the frustration when this overload results in you selecting the wrong profile and ending with an unacceptable print that took half a roll or more to create…

My creative need for having at least 20 different types/colours of filament around is long over…
My need to have my own profiles for various task not so much.
Here is how I still hold on to the ‘good old days’ :
I use three characters for the filament maker, like BAM, ESU and so on.
Followed by the type, e.g. PLA, PA6, …
Of course there is need for a colour…
All up I get something like this - BAM-PLA-WHITE-XXX
Where XXX is a number based on the roll count for this filament.
A matching sticker goes on the roll.
In Studio this has the usual GENERIC in front and if available a matching colour selected…
For the process settings I start with the nozzle size and then a few generic base profiles for the various filament types I use.
E.g.: 0.4-PETG-DRAFT or 0.2-PLA-SLOW and DETAILED, you get the idea.
Those are than edited, adjusted and saved with the nozzle size and details on the sticker on the spool.
0.4-BAM-PLA-WHITE-42-DRAFT for example.
To not loose track I also have a little spread sheet holding this data.
I know, old school but than again, I am an old fart…

By the way, your filament profiles are stored here:
C:\Users\Me\AppData\Roaming\BambuStudio\user\XXXXX\filament
XXXXX is your Bambu user ID.
So profiles you know you won’t use for a while can by removed from there and placed into some backup folder…

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