This is a question for the Handy app users since I don’t use it.
If a print profile for multi-color printing has been provided, is a single-color profile still needed for the same model so users can print in single color if they want? How easy is it to print in single color using a multi-color profile? Are users provided with clear instructions for printing in single color using a multi-color profile?
No, it’s not needed - you can just pick the same color 4 times to make a multi-color print single color.
Bambu recommends against this practice in their profile guidance Print Profile Upload Guidance | Bambu Lab Wiki
(last line all the way on bottom)
You can also just remove the 3 other colors & click save to have the .3mf file remember the change.
Are these steps obvious to users who are brand new to 3D printing using the Handy app? In other words, should the designer provide some instructions on how to do it?
Also a followup question: If the profile is for a 4-color printing, and the user only have 3 colors, so one of the colors has to be assigned to two of the colors in the profile. In this case, is it easy to know in the Handy app which two colors in the profile is being replaced with one color?
The fix I posted above can’t be done in Handy, you would have to open the file in Bambu Studio on your computer.
Thanks for clarfying. This question is more concerned with how to present the profile(s) to users who only use the Handy app to do one-click printing.
It’s pretty simple. Here’s an example with my AMS loaded with only 1 filament, but it’s easy to assign that single filament to all 4.
Thanks for the sceenshots. That looks intuitive.
In some cases it makes sense to upload a single color profile. If you have some text on the model you can engrave it for single color. And on Multicolor it could be a flat surface (looks cleaner).
In this case you could make two plates with names like “Text version” and “No Text Version”, same profile.
Yes, that is possible! But than its not clear for rating the profiles. Look at my Tic Tac Toe, there i tuned and tricked to have more visible lines in Single color or my little counter with engraved/colored numbers.
Another aspect is the shown print time in the profile overview. If you offer 2 profiles in one it looks to long for users.
There are always exceptions to the rules.
For example, BL recommends placing variations of the same model on different plates of the same profile. While this is convienient for users, if doing so doubles or triples the print time, then it can have the effect of discouraging users to even consider downloading it in the first place.
Also BL should not automatically treat having separate profiles for different materials/filament as making duplicate profiles. Different materials may need different design, such as having thicker parts, or the same thickness in design but more wall counts and infills, etc in print setttings. for a weaker material to have the same strength as that of a stronger material. Here again, putting different materials on different plates of the same profile is possible, but it will at least double the print time.
I think the goal is to have the mimimum number of profiles possible while not sacrifying the quality and appeal of the model. In the case of single vs multi-color, it seems that in most cases, having a multi-color profile is good enough.
I have tested some of my own files from bambu lab handy. As other mentioned, you can select all the color as single filament it will still print okay.
But the prime tower still exist on the build plate from what I have tested a month ago. That said at this point, the cloud slicing will not detect if you are select four same filaments and remove the prime tower automatically.
So, If I put color setting for my own design, I still put single color file sometimes as a option for people for my own design, just I don’t like the non-functional prime tower there.
Definitely no prime tower in my experience, just tried it out today 4-color ->handy->1-color.
It could be that BL improved by removing the prime tower recently. Anyway, some of those rules were erected back when some creators intentionally created duplicate profiles to get more download counts. I believe BL has fixed that loophole. Now if a creator mistakenly creates more profiles than needed, it only hurts the creator - having to download many profiles just to finish printing a model is not appealing to users.
