A lot of the poor ratings I get are from people printing things using Silk PLA. If you are using Silk PLA to print someone else’s model, is it up to you to customize the print profile for Silk?Should I create separate print profiles for printing in Silk? or should a single print profile be able to handle regular PLA and Silk PLA?
How do you fix Silk PLA through the slicer?! I hate that stuff. Most of the issues people seem to have with things breaking on my models, typically boils down to them using Silk PLA. I advise against it’s use for anything beyond cosmetics, and even with that, I’m still in doubt.
I don’t think the problem is the slicer or settings. I think the problem is most silk PLAs are just not that good. Not sure if the new Silk+ is any better.
I mean, in theory, if the filament profiles are tuned well, you should be able to pluck in any material you want without having to further change settings.
Silk PLA is nasty to work with. You’ve got to tune it. The default profiles make it “ok-ish” for when the silk is on the sides but top surfaces are nightmare. Silk+ is supposed to be better for structural items but it’s a gamble.
Bottom line: silk is purely cosmetic and should be treated as such. If you tune profile for your silk it’ll not work on different silk no reason to intentionally make your profiles worse
Back in the day of print profile spamming Bambu outlined a few principles as to what merits a new print profile and what doesn’t.
While I can not quickly find the list, I think I can remember a few points. The infamous “fast” profiles were ruled out and making print profiles for minor material changes in an effort to curtail profile spamming.
While I do very much like the silk for its asthetics, I am very aware of its shortcomings. If you are getting several complaints about silk, it may make sense to put a short disclaimer in the description to highlight that silk performance is worse? Or do you have too many such ratings?
I just print 5* hotter when using Silks, I haven’t had any issues over the years.
When I’ve been printing versions of my latest model, I’ve just been picking the Bambu Silk filament in the AMS and (I believe) it should automatically print at 230 degrees instead of 220 for the Basic and Matte PLAs. I still have nothing but trouble with it. So many people try to print using Silk that I wanted to try to get this model working with it but I think I’m going to give up. I think there are some models it shouldn’t be used for.
Yes, I’ve got the disclaimers in there for Silk along with the “Clean your bed” disclaimer but I don’t think they are reading that far or just ignoring them.
I read you are suppose to slow Silk down for the outside walls but the prints already take too long and I don’t want to slow them down for everyone else.
Let’s hope that it is the current wave of new X-mass printers reaching that stage of the learning curve.
If you do decide to offer a dedicated silk profile, an additional wall may help. Unfortunately, it’ll only have the extra contact surface with respect to the weaker layer adhesion to improve performance. Hotter is good but I do not think that slowing down will help that much.
I just completed another build plate of silk prints and all are coming out really well using the stock RFID parameters on the recently-discontinued Bambu PLA silk silver.
I was worried about the results since the filament had been discontinued but it printed better than a number of other stock Bambu PLA colors (non-silk).
Judging by how strong the supports were the prints all have good layer/layer adhesion, aren’t brittle, supports broke away clean with just a snap, etc. If all my prints came out as good as the discontinued silver silk I’d be very happy.
Stock printer with the built-in calibrations but no changes to the RFID parameters. The only thing I did that was any kind of different was I dried the filament thoroughly (and know it was “dry” by the hygrometer test - it pegged it at 10% which is the lowest that hygrometer goes).
The head is all PLA silver silk that was discontinued.
@MZip here showing off
I actually do this as default in my print profiles so there’s a more consistent exterior appearance. That and I’ll do 3 perimeter walls. I like that it’s a little stronger and that it helps prevent interior defects from showing on the exterior.
Thanks. I think I’ll try slowing on the exterior too. I’ve already switched over to doing 3 walls on everything.
Bambu handy recently added a feature where you can apply your filament settings to any model so you probably don’t need to add one yourself.
Note that the parameters aren’t stored in RFID, it simply contains a filament type which is looked up in the slicer.
I was just referring to all the settings for printing that get called up when the filament is identified by RFID. I forget what is stored in the RFID but think it’s only a product number.
could be a good idea, I got lots of print failed feedback by silk filament, but too bad I can’t change their nozzle temperature
You actually can now. Bambu Handy recently added the option to use your filament profile on any model. You just have to add one in Bambu Studio and save it, then you can use it on any model in Handy. I now have my silk profile set to 226 and it works on any Bambu Handy model.
.postdeletedinprotestofdangerousgoods.
thanks, thats really helpful , I kept forget the scarf seam setting for some design when I print it
I’ll admit that I haven’t read every post in this thread but here I have the same issue with profiles on MakerWorld not working well when silks are used and then people complaining or giving poor ratings.
As linked above the issue is that silks need to be printed hotter and/or slower, so I guess the workaround is to upload a profile specifically for silks, but it seems silly, since there are countless other filaments that could need their own profiles as well. I remember buying a ton of Duramic PLA Pro and finding it had to be printed slower than PETG (7mm/s³ instead of 21mm/s³, which I found doing a max flow rate test). But how can we account for every filament?
I think people need to choose their own filament profiles when printing, but maybe it’s not obvious enough that they can do that (or why they should do it). Maybe Bambu Handy should be hinting to users to do this more instead of happily assuming that the user has the same filament as the author. I am not even totally sure how it works in Handy - people seem to think that it changes things based on what’s loaded in your printer, but I don’t print from Handy myself (prefer the control of using the actual slicer).