Is 4 Color Printing + Support for PLA with AMS possible?

Bambu Lab AMS
1

I have a 4-color model, and one of the colors is white. There isn’t very much white, and it’s only on the top half of the model. I’d like to use the Support for PLA filament to make the supports release cleanly, and supports are only needed on the bottom half of the model.

Could I just use the Support for PLA to print the white color, since it will be sandwiched by other PLA layers? Would it be possible to remove the Support for PLA after the supports are finished printing, and replace the spool with a Basic White PLA spool? Will that cause an issue, since the filament is being removed during a print when there’s no runout? If I can change spools in-flight, will the AMS tell me that I have the wrong filament in that position or will I have an option to ignore the error and continue?

2

To minimize the usage of support material use it only on the support interface. Depends how much layer with support material are used, you can try to use the external spool for the supportmaterial and feed it manually. The printer should request the manual material feed and unfeed from external spool.

Attention: I haven‘t test it. It‘s only an idea.

3

Should be fairly easy to replace one of the 4 colours with the white PLA if they don’t overlap in the layers in the model.

If for example red is only used at the bottom and white at the top - then colour both the red and white as red in the slicer

Start the print with the red in the AMS, then once the ‘real’ red layers have completed and the red filament has been retracted ok, take the red out of the AMS and put the white in.

The AMS seems to not mind you swapping filament in and out in the channels it’s not currently using - and it doesn’t seem to re-read RFIDs etc. mid print.

If you don’t want to have to keep a close eye on the print - then you can introduce a pause in the slicer once the real red has finished - that way you won’t miss when you have to change colours.

3 Likes
4

This was my concern. I did a quick test swapping the support filament with Basic PLA and it worked just fine. Thanks so much!