New high speed TPU. A bit too expensive for me, especially when:
“Bambu TPU 95A HF needs proper drying before printing, recommended drying temperature is 70 ℃ for 8 hours in a blast drying oven, or 90 ℃ for 12 hours on a printer’s heatbed. For more details, please refer to Filament drying cover on WIKI.”
Question for BBL. Why can’t you dry the filament before vacuum sealing, which would negate the user having to do this before printing?
For $65AUD I’d expect to be able to unseal your filaments and start printing straight away.
Oh I know that it should be dry before printing. But my question is, why can’t BBL dry it before vacuum sealing? They’re charging a premium for a filament that prints faster but then you have to dry for 12 hours before you can print with it.
All filament I got from Bambu was dry (or dry enough) to print with right away. But it will absorb moisture whenever you handle it, whenever you open the bag where you store it. whenever you print with it (unless you’re printing from a drybox, but even then a little). This just tells you it needs to be dry. TPU absorbs moisture very well, close to how much Nylon aborbs moisture, and because of how stringy it is, it causes a lot more problems than a dry PLA, whence the warning.
Also, stuff hapens, no packaging is perfect and no manufacturing is perfect, there’s nothing wrong with always drying the material first.
I might give it a try. Going from 3ish max volumetric speed up to 12 for tpu is impressive. That’s pretty much the generic pla speeds.
I do wonder though what was mixed into the formula to allow it to print faster and why it has to be dried at such a high temperature. Doesn’t normal tpu dry at 55c? We’re all used to tpu being relatively non toxic like pla but the higher drying temp makes me wonder if there’s any toxic additives and if we need to take any special precautions.
High speed TPU isn’t new, it’s been around for a while now from Overture and Polymaker. Normal TPU prints ok at 15-20mm/s but as with most things, slower usually results in better looking prints. And I find TPU to be one of the most difficult to post process. But it’s an awesome filament, so tough and versatile.
I know it’s not new and I print normal tpu all the time with good results, but 15-20 mm/s is SLOWWWW! lol. Bumping the max volumetric speed up to 12 should allow for speeds in the range of 120-150 mm/s (147 according to bambu).
Yeah and like I said, HS TPU is already out there and prints at 10-12 speeds. It wouldn’t surprise me if BL is using re-packaged Overture or Polymaker. Overture HS is 35% cheaper though.
Every spool (9 or 10) of Bambu filament I have used has pushed the humidity level in the AMS up to at least 40% from the base level of 10%. I got tired of replacing the desiccant bags in the AMS so I now dry every spool as soon as it arrives and repack it in a vacuum bag. Overture can go straight from the bag into the AMS with only the slightest bump up then it returns to base. I did dry the Overture PA before use, it really likes to absorb moisture.
Thanks for the heads up on Overture selling HS TPU, I’ve printed tons of Overture filament without issues and the 35% cheaper HS TPU looks mighty attractive.
Not sure why Bambu’s TPU is so far out of the normal price range when compared to their other filaments. If it were $30, that would seem more inline. But $40+ is significantly higher. I’m gonna get some and try it out, but I also have the Overture HS TPU to evaluate the difference in a $42 TPU and a $30 TPU. But it must be said, Overture suggests print under 90 mm/s where as the Bambu profile is set higher (approximately 61%). So if it works cleanly 60% faster, the extra money doesn’t hurt so much. I haven’t tried printing my Overture yet, but I will see where its basic limit is with a max flow test. I’m expecting both to be similar, but we will see.
Yeah, this sucks, but it is what it is. Its possible they set up shop in a high humidity area and that is the limiting factor. If they only sold filament, I would expect them to make processes the remove the humidity from the filament, but this is a side hustle for them, so I don’t really expect the world (but probably should at these prices).
I’m sure they dry it, but if it sits in a batch waiting an hour to be sealed, its very possible the filament took in a significant amount of moisture. Can’t say for sure, but drying filament is pretty much a fact of life. I have some BBL filament that was perfectly usable out of the bag, and others that weren’t. But I can say that about Polymaker too.
I probably won’t crack open a third TPU roll right now, but the HF BBL TPU is capable of 15mm3 max with a little stress showing on the Max Flow test in Orca Slicer. I’d say it’s still flawless at 14mm3, but I’ll stick to the profiles 12mm3 rate. My basic TPU prints at around 5mm3 but things start to fall apart so there is a substantial difference. Just for reference, at my normal layer height that puts a 35-minute print down to 19 minutes (roughly 45% faster). If the Overture can get in that ballpark, it might be worthwhile. After all, the real reason for paying the premium for BBL filament is wasted on TPU, no AMS use (or automated profile recognition).
Well from the responses, it seems that people are more interested in defending the product, not the manufacturer. But anyway, I guess coming from a highly regulated military background, there is a big difference in terminology between “must do” and “should do”. And to try to put a simple mechanics spin on my argument, can you imagine buying a Ferrari and the first time you had to do an air filter change, after paying a premium price for it, that the manufacturer says “before installation, you must blow out your new air filter with compressed air. This job will require you to purchase a special air compressor capable of doing 200psi and the job will take between 8 - 10 hours. If you fail to do this, your air filter will not work as the manufacturer intended”. I know it’s an absurd analogy but I believe similar to buying filament that the manufacturer says you must dry before use. If they had written something like “while all care is taken to ensure this filament is dry for use immediately after removing from the vacuum sealed bag, due to manufacturing techniques, it is not possible to guarantee that all moisture is removed prior to packaging. Due to the inherent hygroscopic nature of TPU, in order to provide the best possible print performance, it is recommended to dry the filament before use and after storage.”
In general， TPU needs to be dry at 70 to 80 ℃ in a forced-air oven which offers relatively even temperature distribution inside of it. While as for the X1 Series printers, the heat is provided from the heatbeds, and the temperature distribution of the printers’ chamber is so uneven, and I think that‘s why they recommended 80 to 90 ℃ of the heatbed and turning the filament spool over to get the whole spoll of filament got hot enough to desorb moisture.
After drying a roll of TPU 82A for 48 hours, when I removed the filament roll from the dryer the outside plastic of the filament roll had water dripping from it. It appears the filament dryer is not getting rid of the moisture to the atmosphere I may need to make a larger hole at the top of the dryer to release more of the moisture out of the dryer box.
It doesn’t matter to me who it comes from, even if it’s vacuum sealed if I’m printing TPU I’m still going to dry it before I just shove it in the printer.
I use weight to gauge filament moisture and I dry every new spool. Regardless of material or manufacturer, EVERY new spool of filament that I have used since getting a digital scale has lost at least two grams of moisture after drying, four grams is common, and some have lost 6-8 grams.
My Eibos dryer works well, but may be slower than a dryer that provides a higher temperature. Like all the humidistats, the display indicates the humidity of the air, not the moisture content of the filament. Once the humidity reaches 10%, I can often lose anther gram or so with another hour of drying. I stop drying when the weight stops dropping.
My problem with the Eibos dryer is the hygrometer does not work properly. It always reads 10% no matter whether the thing is on or not. It even reads 10% when I take it out and lay it on a table in a room that is 40% humidity.
