Good idea. I’m surprised no one else has checked yet. My guess: it probably has a lower HDT than garden variety PETG because, reportedly, that is true of the newer “high flow” ABS filaments, such as Creality’s Hyper ABS.
Anyhow, my point in bringing any of this up is that Bambu needs filaments that print well at high speed, and that’s why I think Bambu’s reformulated PETG will probably print better at high speed–because it needs to. Creality has its “Hyper” lineup to support fast printing on its K1 series, and so naturally Bambu needs something of a similar sort. Otherwise, some people (maybe a lot of people) will blame the printer for printing poorly at high speed, thinking that all filaments are the same in supporting high speed printing, when in fact they aren’t.
I know it’s unrelated - but MyTechFun (YouTube channel guy does an amazing job putting filaments through their paces) just did his PETG comparison by brand, and Bambu Labs’ PETG did the worst in all tests except layer adhesion. I had good luck with it and wish I didn’t have to switch even temporarily, but hey I discovered rapid PETG so that’s cool.
Also I’m excited about the rumor that Bambu may make their own PCTG!
Hello, everyone. So after corresponding with Bambu, I know this. The filament will be better and will start selling in mid-July. I hope this information was helpful.
I agree to an extent with your speculations regarding bambu labs and their filament supplier. Although it’s very hard to actually know where the filament is completely being produced from we were able to gain subtle hints in the beginning when reports of people ordering bambu labs filament were receiving the product inside “SUNLU” marked boxes.
As to BL’s PETG-Basic specifically, I found it quite terrible to be honest. I’ve only ever purchased (2) spools and both were found to be very bad. The most recent was about a month ago right before I seen they’ve stated to discontinue the line.
I purchased a spool of [Black - PETG Basic] and dried for an adequate amount of time before using. Yet no matter what even under stock settings which I typically don’t use anyways, could not get stringing or basic models to print well enough to fit my standards. Yet I was able to order and open ELEGOO Rapid PETG and literally it outperformed their filament with zero need of even drying… same settings and all.
Some of their line is great but trying to make up to investors with overpriced products isn’t the way. You can’t just enter the game after over a decade of suppliers being within it already and mark up the same type of product but it ends up being worse… a lot of inexperienced users that haven’t ventured out and used other brands are tied in when it comes to being bambu labs filament relied upon which is a terrible situation to even be in…
I’ve noticed that Prime pricing on some items with “free” 1-2 day shipping is more than non-Prime with normal 4-5 day shipping. I’ve also found that search results can sometimes vary if I change my location.
Bambu: Our filament spools contain proprietary RF tags so that only our filament will work properly in the AMS Me: Cool. I would like to buy some PETG please. Bambu: NO!
California Filament makes “Matte” PETG but for me, it printed looking very strange. Every half inch or so, the color and finish would change from matte to satin to gloss and back to matte and so on. That was just my experience and it wasn’t on a BambuLab printer but an Ender 3 Max.
Polymaker and Overture are basically the same thing, so if you’re getting Polymaker, save a few bucks and get the Overture PETG.
I’m currently waiting for BambuLab to release this new PETG because I use it exclusively for my print farm. It’s really good stuff and out of thousands of hours of prints, I’ve only had 1 failure which was my fault for not cleaning the bed before starting another print.
I’m actually thinking they might do PCTG instead of PETG or something off the sort since PCTG seems to be the next big thing.
Saw that they added Generic PCTG on the last Studio update, hoping that means there will be a future ‘Bambu Lab PCTG’ and that they’ll offer it in multiple colors. Ever since I saw Zack Friedman’s video about it, I’ve wanted to try PCTG! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weeG9yOp3i4&t=710s
So I took delivery of the Elegoo Rapid PG this week and finally got to put it through it’s paces. I did not perform any strength tests because after just some initial tests, I was convinced that this was in fact PETG and not PLA.
Using Orca’s max flowrate calibration, the product performs exactly up to 30mm³ and what was surprising is how quickly it fell off after that. I don’t mean that it started to string in the test gradually after 30, I mean it failed completely after 30. I’ve never seen a filament do that.
The product came completely desiccated out of the box. I placed it in the dryer for 24 hours and the only yield I got was 3g of moisture difference in the before and after weight. Considering that this was more likely from the cardboard spool, I consider that quite impressive.
This filament I found to be somewhat more stringy that others. I could not calibrate it better no matter what I did but all in all, I would say “subjectively” it was meh.
Conclusions
For now, this has taken first place in my PETG list. Competition is sweet!!! Thanks @NeverDie for calling this to my attention.
If it remains at or below the $13/spool price, it will win over my other PETG products. I have another recent discovery that just emerged on the 3D spool scene, 3DHoJOR, which I will post elsewhere on their PLA. They have a PETG option at $11/spool that will beat this out if it performs. I’ll report on that next week.
The product performed very well overall, and at $0.37/oz, I can’t dismiss that price. However, I was hoping that for its speed, it might be the replacement for PLA. Unfortunately, I just recently got hit with a spate of $10/spool PLA choices, which places this candidate as a PLA replacement on the back burner for my everyday prints.
Open message to Bambu Labs
If you Bambu Boys think you can win customers with high prices and bad return and shipping policies, think again. Over the past year, you’ve had too many out-of-stock items, prices 2-3 times higher including shipping, and quality problems with color changes. This is not a winning strategy for success. There are many other options out there, prices are dropping fast, and competitors are offering better service while yours is getting worse. You might keep some AMS customers who have fewer options, but soon everyone else will realize they can get better products for less money and more convenience elsewhere.
I gave my thumbs up on Olias’s post because I was glad to have confirmation regarding the Elegoo PETG performance.
As for pricing, it’s none of my business. It’s easy enough for Bambu to judge elasticity of demand by running their discount sales, which they do from time to time. When it comes to pricing, I’m pretty sure it reflects whatever is best for them, as one would expect, based on the sales data from those discount events. That’s just how the world works. Out of all the variables, pricing is probably the easiest to set.
As Chris Rock would say, you make your money on the come backs. For that, you want a good first experience, and for that you want quality. Quality filaments, and quality presets to go with those filaments. The presets are an area that seems could be vastly improved, and two years after launch I’m baffled why it seems to lag. Like I said elsewhere, if Bambu dedicated one or two summer interns to the problem, it would be done already. The most read thread on the entire forum is the one about how to modify the presets for PETG to get a good print. If that isn’t a glaring tell, I don’t know what is.
So, hopefully, when the new PETG is announced, it will come with presets that are a worthy match for it. If not, then it’s a blown opportunity.
It blows my mind that Bambu continues to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I’ve had my P1P for over a year now, and I want back the company that I purchased the product from originally. They were customer-focused and satisfaction-driven. I don’t recognize this company today; they are running out of toes.
Unfortunately, the expectation among 3D printer manufacturers seems to be that the community, out of desperation, will create these print profiles for them. And, in many ways, that has happened. Except the easiest step all–folding those improvements back into the official profiles–never seems to have happened. To me, that’s even more difficult to comprehend than anything else. The community delivers it on a silver platter, but no uptake. Go figure. I can only guess that companies in the far east are managed in a vastly different way from the west. Here product managers have responsibilities and are expected to be experts on the products and how to use them; therefore, they would take notice and incorporate improvements. In the far east, I just can’t fathom how they’re managed. Obviously, in a very different way.
