This is what I was referring to. I’ve found that there are very few truly bad filaments, just bad calibration. If you scour these forums, you’ll find a lot of complaints about the uneven quality of Bambu filament, which was supposed to be the gold standard, wasn’t it? We were told that this filament was made to uncompromising standards—until it wasn’t. There have been complaints, particularly from those who unfortunately based their business on the certainty of consistent supply, where white was inconsistent across batches and many more reports of inconsistency in filament performance from one identical spool to another.
Here’s a post I made about two very different manufactures who weren’t so different after all.
I estimate that I return about 10% of first-try filaments that I purchase from Amazon thanks to their no-questions-asked free return policy and I get it the next day with free shipping and no mins or strings attached other than the Prime membership I already have for my routine purchases.
I’ve now compiled a list of a dozen or so PLA profiles alone. It should be noted that even for the same PLA, I often have two profiles: one for aesthetic builds where I want nice smooth lines, and a second one for strong builds. That’s the power of mastering manual calibration. It’s a learning curve as you train your eye on what to look for, but it’s worth it. After you’ve mastered it, it’s empowering to know that you determine what is good or bad, not some marketing hype.