As I keep looking here, I see more options for refills only, at least for PLA. Has there been an announcement, or is it just being quietly implemented?
I get that some people love refills, which is fantastic. I’m not one of those people. While I don’t buy a lot of Bambu filament anymore because I’m impatient and want it ASAP, it’s getting harder and harder to buy when only refills are available.
It may be a short-term issue, but because many of the listings only show refills, I’m guessing it’s not.
Thanks
EDIT From my calculations, it looks like 13 out of 30 in the PLA basic have the option to have a spool.
People generally only have problems with not having enough spare spools when they first start printing. It doesn’t take long and you have stacks of empty spools.
Yeah, from what I’ve seen the custom designed ones you can print are better than the ones BL sells anyway. I read somewhere that something about injection molding makes it hard to do the built-in filament end holder thing… but with a printed spool, no problem.
The built-in filament holder thing is enough to sell it for me. Unfortunately I already have plenty of BL spools…
@JoshFink If you never do refills, may I ask what the heck you’re doing with all those old spools??
Oh! It does seem like they removed the w/spool option for at least a couple of filaments.
I’d speculate that they’re going to keep leaning into refills. It looks like only the most common ones get a spool option (with the basic filaments, the fancy filaments are spool only) With the jump in speed of modern printers, I think refills are becoming a much more attractive option, as dealing with used spools is a bit of a pain.
I use refills a lot. The decrease in price is nice, but it revolves a lot too around faster print speeds = more filament usage = more left over spools to deal with.
Believe me though, I do not love them. I’d rather just cut the package open and throw the spool in. Bambu’s spools are okay, and get the job done, but if you print enough, it gets exhausting. I have carpal tunnel syndrome, so properly loading a refill is painful on my wrist if I’m having to do it a lot. The refills aren’t exact fits for the spools, so it’s always a big task to make sure you work the filament into the gaps. This is why I designed my own, which Jon mentioned.
And what about refills turns you away? Is it just the extra steps, or is it the sometimes dodgy performance vs a filament wound directly on a spool?
I’ve thought about ditching the refills, but I personally print enough that the cost and waste of extra spools kind of offsets the annoyance of refills.
Uhhh. Refills don’t COME with a spool. You can purchase it extra and pay a lot more (in this case $3 vs $10.99) than if you bought it with a spool. That’s totally different.
I wouldn’t call it ‘funny’. I would just say that different people have different use cases for what they need and desire. It’s as simple as that. If BL wants to become a refill only shop then that’s fine. It just means I won’t be purchasing any more filament from them. I’m a drop of a drop in a bucket. It won’t matter to them at all. It’s just my preference.
