I’ve noticed that the different colors of BBL Matte PLA seem to have different print quality. I typically use BBL Matte Ash Grey PLA, but I recently purchased rolls of Scarlet Red, Dark Blue, and Grass Green (all Matte PLA). The blue printed alright, but with some slight banding towards the lower part of the print. The red and the green had terrible stringing issues, the green more than the red. I used the same settings as the grey. I dried them out the same length of time in my Sunlu dryer box (not in the X1C), and ran them trough the same box with the dryer running. I’ve used different brands of other filament with different colors and never had this issue (i.e Overture PLA Pro in different colors, etc). Is this common with BBL PLA or is it possible I got bad patched of these colors of filament? For the record, the BBL Matte Ash Grey PLA ahs always printed with not issues and great quality.
Could also be multiple suppliers. Ive noticed even the internal packaging is different between colors.
Regardless of manufacturer, different colors are made using different ingredients, which can cause differences in printing characteristics. That’s why the first thing I do with a new filament type or color is run the OrcaSlicer calibrations. I start with the settings from a similar filament, but if I find I get better results from a different setting, that spool gets it’s own profile. And then automatic calibration is turned off, which saves time on every print.
A recent CNC Kitchen video covers this topic.
Short take is yes, color does make a difference due to the additives used.
I typically see this with white vs all other colors due to the large amount of TiO2 used to achieve the white color resulting in a thicker fluid when heated.
I typically have two different calibrated profiles per brand and material to control for this. If I notice another color is causing problems, I’ll make a third and a fourth as needed.
Example is below (merely to illustrate the potential differences between colors)
White profile:
Flow rate: 0.95
PA: 0.011
All other colors (in this case, black, gray, and tan):
Flowrate: 0.98
PA: 0.017
My whites show up the same as other colors besides black. Black is like .028 while white and other colors of pla are .018ish.
It may be an ever changing target with bambu as the last i heard, they use multiple 3rd party suppliers.
I’m Not sure about difference in quality as I haven’t tried different yet. but what can I say about Bambu’s matt Filament - I’m quite disappointed at a moment. Got my X1 Carbon for about a week now. And on purchase I added to my order a roll of Matt Dark Red filament. Have to say I haven’t used a Matt filaments before so was blaming myself, but anyway story is: Printed few things with included Bambu Basic PLA green - very good result, and then I went printing 6 sections of Honeycomb wall with Creality Ender black filament (4 panels) eSUN ePLA-HS (2 panels borders) and both filaments went out flawlessly. And as it took some time I decided to to print red inserts on my old, but heavely upgraded Ender 3v2 printer (added Sprite extruder Pro, Sonic Pad, Dual Z axis and filament sensor). So I took this new MATT DARK RED filament from package and… first surprize was quite strong popping sounds coming out from nozzle. Filament is not very dry at the start…bit of disappoitment here but ok, left it to dry overnight and yes, popping sound is gone, but…what ever I tried, I just couldn’t get quality print with this filament. It is dropping some incosistent … drops or I don’t know how to call them. kind of flakes and strings. it’s kind of ok on higher layers, but they are ruining first layers greatly. and no matters what I tried to do. Flow calibration temp changes, nothing works. but what was a last nail in the coffin lid… when I was in next room , big bang happened in room with printer. And what I saw when got there? Spool was on the ground. I even was tangled. So I gave up here. Only thing yes I won’t put in on another printer, but I’m Trying to print it exclusively with X1. after first print it looks X1 manage to get this filament a bit better (but far from perfect as well). Those flakes/dripplets are there as well, but is it speed or perfect flow calibration or whatever, result is good enough for not aestetic prints. Maybe very long story but I just tried to explain all as it was going. So in result, MATT PLA are going pass me for a while. At least Bambu’s ones, at least until I’ll get some information is all this a quality problem or I’m doing something very wrong here.
Every spool of Bambu filament that I’ve tried has been wet enough to have some sort of issue. Usually it just drives the AMS humidity off the chart and spoils the desiccant but every now and then it also has print issues. Drying it has always fixed it for me.
Always dry. A good trick is to watch the humidity while drying. It will start low because its cold. It will then slowly rise. While its doing this, open the dryer every so often to let the humid air out and also spin the roll 180°. After a while, youll see the humidity drop back down. When its stable, its dry.
Ive found that even dryers with fans still need opened every so often to clear out humid air that has evaporated but is stuck in the dryer. Every time you open it, youll see the humidity plummet and then rise again after closing.