Good rule of thumb is to have all the supplies you need before starting a project. This applies to anything not just 3d printing.
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Some people (not me) run print farms and when fulfilling large orders based on customer choices additional stock is required.
This is how most businesses run, it is called Just-in-time (JiT) as you likely know.
Having a consistent supplier is a must. BL pitch themselves and their services as premium.
People are annoyed when BL premium prices and pitch do not always meet their obligations. This is disappointing as smaller companies do not appear to have the same issues.
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I have to assume that you havenāt spent much time in the other threads because it appears that youāre missing out on a lot of good data.
However, I have to tip my hat to @MalcTheOracle In his post above. He kind of nails it in a nutshell.
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Sure. Thatās fair advice, but one well-known project here got caught out by an unannounced filament change and thatās how most of us found out there had been a silent change.
On the other hand, I had some projects I was working on and did buy filament in advance and received two rolls of the junk white PLA since Bambu had said nothing about that silent change.
Many donāt have room or money to buy everything they need in advance. In the electronics industry, if any parts Iāve ever bought from DigiKey are announced as going end of life, they send me an email so I can do a final buy.
Itās just a courtesy. Bambu knows our complete order history. It would be trivial to send emails out to everyone who has bought a filament that is being discontinued or reformulated.
But knowing that Bambu waits to announce this stuff after supplies run low or out, yep. Anyone buying Bambu filament ought to be aware it can disappear or change at any time and plan purchases accordingly.
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ā¦ am I blind and missed it? Whatās HF stand for?
How Fast?
Heated Filament?
Hollow Filament?
Harmonious Fabrication?
Guessing āHigh Flowā but could not find anything confirming that.
BL have used the HF as shorthand for High Flow in other filaments and profiles.
Annoyingly, the industry is using different terms to mean the same thing.
- HF = High Flow
- SS = Super Speed
- HS = High Speed
- Fast = Fast (that one was easy)
- HF = Hair & Fur ā
Even though other sub-types gained industry common terms like PLA+, this one is up in the air.
ā That may or may not be a joke, you judge.
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My bigfoot print doesnāt think itās funny, heās HF = Hella Furious about it.
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Yeah that may have been a slight exaggeration itās more like every two and a half weeks
It seems some of this PETG-CF is already out in the wild.
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in my experience returns to Amazon are not free. unless you lie and say quality sucksā¦ if you just want to return often the charge is like $7 or so.
As was already stated above. This is for members who subscribe to Prime.
PERFECT! Just like a Par 3 hole in one.
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I think that you misunderstand marketing. I am sure that one can find good useable tools at Harbor Freight, yet there is a large segment of potential customers who would never consider purchasing a tool at such a store. It is more than mere price or convenience. Perhaps one fails to appreciate the nuances. Currently one can buy four rolls of Elegoo Rapid PETG on Amazon for $40. It doesnāt speak well for its quality. Not long ago I bought some turbo PLA, mostly because of the incentive of an enticing introductory offer and a great deal of curiosity. While it prints just fine at breakneck speeds, its quality falls short of my preferred premium PLA professional filament.
The fact of the matter is, Bambu Lab printers are premium consumer 3D printers. They are top of the line. The standard by which all others strive to emulate. The challenge is to produce a next generation machine before their competitors catch up.
While I will not dispute that point on their hardware, on the subject of filament, there is enough anecdotal data in these forum threads that hold a different view. In my case, itās empirical data I gathered myself, not something I read here or on Reddit.
The only high-end option of Bambuās filament appears to be the price, itās certainly not the quality. I have six partially used Bambu spools: 2 are matte, 1 silk, 2 PETG, and the last, ABS, that sit collecting dust. Why? Because Iāve found better alternatives. I keep this silk around as a test subject for when ideas are presented here about remediating bad filament. There are enough threads that show the same problems I have experienced.
Since Iāve owned the printer, I have gone through over 60 spools in the last year, according to my Amazon receipts and, more importantly, over a dozen vendors. The fact is, I have Bambu to thank for this from the start. They were out of stock, as usual, of PLA Basic Black when I was trying to print an enclosure for my P1P, leaving me no choice but to go out on the open market. I should add they were stocked out for almost two months of either black, white, or red. And guess what? Thereās a whole other world outside of the walled garden they pretend exists.
People can defend Bambu, but how many have tried alternatives? For me, finding great deals has become a competitive sport. An Amazon membership doesnāt hurt either because as I have posted frequently, about 10% of first time vendors filament I send back with no questions asked and at no charge. Iām at the point where my filament profiles have saturated the sub-$20 vendors. From time to time, I try out a vendors that are over $20 and sometimes $30, and the supposed higher quality more expensive ones didnāt impress.
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Iād figure after weeks if not months of complaining about Bambu, you would have found a much better source for your filament needs. Especially if you are running a business like that.
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Iām at the point in life where I put a high value on consistency. If you make the 3rd best widget all the time and competitors jump around from 1,5,4,2,7 Iām going to buy that 3rd best widget to avoid the headaches when the other companies randomly provide sub-par product.
Same is true for consistency in pricing. Since almost every seller signs up for Amazon automatic ādynamicā pricing the filament you got last week for $17 is $25 this week ā¦ unless you want the triple color puke (green, brown and pink) which is only $16. I like knowing that when I need filament what it is going to cost without having to cross my fingers and hope the colors I want arenāt selling too well and had their price bumped up.
With these things in mind Bambu suits me well, itās just part of my personality. People can go clothes shopping and sort through racks and come home with prices that are a steal and Iām jealous because trying to do that just gives me anxiety.
Perhaps Iāve just been lucky, but the filament I buy from Bambu (PLA & PLA matte) have been very consistent in color and performance. I generally know what Iāll pay hitting the ābulkā discount and if the price is different itās because of a sale and I pay less but itās the same price regardless of color. That said, I find colors out of stock more often than they should be and so from time to time I check out the competition but havenāt found one that felt like it would better suit my needs.
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Is there new profiles for Bambu Studio coming soon? I have an order in the minute it was announced for a spool of each color, hopefully itās updated by the time they arrive, or do we need to update speed/flow manually?
ditto, Iām here to print stuff and enthuse, but some people in these comments are energy vampires for real. luckily the forum has a block feature
Why donāt you just stop complaining and buy elsewhere then? If you want the cheapest of the cheap filament then go for that.
Bambu fully acknowledge that other filament exists, they provide generic profiles, it is just less likely to work with the AMS and may require more tweaking with the profile. If bambu wanted to make a walled garden then they would make it so that you could only use their filament like plenty of other printer manufacturers do.
I have tried alternatives, I had a printer before my X1C and used different brands of filament then and still do, in my experience the bambu lab filament has been better than most and when on sale or with the bulk discount the price isnāt too different from what I was paying for other brands anyway. Now for basics like PLA I tend to stick to bambu. I mainly print functional parts now so mainly use bambu PC but I use other specialty filaments from other brands or just filaments I find interesting, like PC-PTFE, Varioshore, lightweight filament, wood filament, HIPS, PCTG, PP, etc. With the basic materials in my experience bambu is above average in how they look and work and in āengineeringā materials they are decently priced for what they are, not the best performance you could get but they print fine.
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