What is your experience in mixing PLA from different brands while doing multi-colour prints?
Checking the prices I can get Sunlu PLA+ (black & white) much cheaper than the BBL PLA Basic.
Can I mix the PLA’s or is it recommended to stay with one brand during a multi-colour print?
If mixing is not recommended, an option could be to use the Sunlu filaments during single colour prints only.
Price difference is big when ordering 4 rolls. Sunlu PLA+ is around €12/kg (incl. re-usable spool) and BBL PLA is €17 or €20 for refill or with spool. 5-8 € in price difference per kg.
If we disregard the pricing for a moment, can I expect getting similar results when printing with the Sunlu PLA+ and is it as simple as using the PLA Generic profile in Bambu Studio or will it require tinkering and fiddling with the settings until I get something useful?
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So far, so good. I’ve mixed 4 brands in one print, and it worked out well.
I’ve probably done 30+ prints that mix 2 and 3 different brands (especially for Christmas ornaments).
The only failure was when I accidentally mixed PLA and PETG (oops, forgot to update the AMS status after changing filament).
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Yeah, those two don’t bond 
That much I do know.
Any insight in Sunlu PLA+?
I want a hassle free experience, think “plug & play”, or in this case “put in filament and print” experience. I don’t want to spend days doing experiments and a tonnes of test prints.
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I’ve used dozens of brands and not had a problem with different PLAs mixing. I think I’ve used Bambu Lab, Overture, Inland, eSun (great translucent PLA), SunLu, Kingroon, 3DHoJor, Ziro (nice glitter), JAYO, ELEGOO (galaxy), and a few rolls of stuff leftover from 7-10 years ago (some of those were not usable, but most were). All have worked well together so far.
And the only one I had to recalibrate for was the Kingroon.
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Sounds great!
Have you tweaked the settings for each filament or used the generic profile as is?
If you have tweaked them, what is it you mainly have changed? That is, any common parameter for all those different brands?
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I’ve used the Bambu PLA profiles for many of them (some translucent, some silk, most just Basic).
Kingroon was the only one that needed specific calibration (and for $9 a roll, that’s fine).
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Thanks for the update/info Chris!
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.postdeletedinprotestofdangerousgoods.
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As long as the filaments won’t require different calibrations you can even replace an empty spool with a different colour or just keep feeding lengths of different colours.
I totally abuse this when getting rid of leftover filament on spools.
Setting up two slots so one will backup the other and once a spool is empty I put the next leftover in and the print just keeps running.
I usually make some special needs kids happy by printing a bunch of fidget cubes and such in object mode.
I since made it a habit to not assign a colour to my custom filaments.
Makes the calibration work easier and I only need a hand full of custom profiles.
And well, if the colour does not matter and I happen to run out before a print finishes I just change the colour of a different slot to match and continue…
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I printed a poop chute with a bunch of partial spools I had lying around (same color). Everything stuck together just fine: SunLu PLA+, SunLu PLA, Bambu Basic PLA.
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I’d you don’t assign colours, what happens to the automatic calculation done for flushing filaments when changing colours?
Or do you manually pick a colour in the slicer and hit “re-calculate”?
I set the colour in the AMS settings, so no problems.
I meant no colour assigned to the actual profile and profile names.
That way I basically switch rolls on the fly even if they have different colours.
E.g.> I start to run out on white PLA on slot 1 and just change the yellow PLA in slot two to white …
The colour, not the rolls…
The flushing matrix gets updated by studio accordingly, never had a problem.
And I don’t abuse this too often for multi colour prints.
Wouldn’t swap from white to black like this just to save the last few cm of filament on a roll…
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