I ordered PETG-HF the first day it became available, and has since made multiple prints for red and black. Although I haven’t done any testing as such, it’s pretty clear to see that PETG-HF must be dried, but provided it’s dried sufficiently as described on the product page, it’s also clear that it does indeed perform very much like PLA in terms of surface quality and printability.
Yesterday, I made this print with the white PETG-HF, and the result speaks for itself:
This used a print profile with speeds up to 300 mm/s. There’s a lot of z-hops too, steep overhangs and of course, a lot of very small details that my 0.4mm nozzle has only been able to deliver with PLA in the past.
But now PETG-HF is also an option, and I’m beginning to be hard pressed to see why I should order PLA at all, except for the colors not available in PETG-HF.
So here’s a wish to Bambu Lab: Please make more colors available in PETG-HF, so more things can be printed in it - because although PLA is most often a good choice for non-functional parts, with PETG-HF we don’t have to worry about placing our stuff in places where the temperatures may get high.
Any and all moisture issues that people experience with PETG-HF, is their own fault, since Bambu states very clearly on the product page that drying is a must.
I realize that not everyone have filament heaters, but 60 ºC in a household stove is fine too (I suggest 60 to avoid heat spikes becoming an issue).
I just got two rolls of PETG HF, one black, one white. I tend to dry all the filament I get regardless (I have the Sunlu S4 making this easy) and my experience with the PETG HF says drying following the drying directions and temperature from Bambu is necessary.
I dried both rolls for 12 hours at the same time and ran a test print on each, the black looked great, the white had tell tale moisture bubbles in the surface. I put the white one back and realized I had the dryer set to 60C instead of the recommended 65C so I upped it and did another 6 hours. This time, the white test print had no bubbles.
I have not been a fan of PETG in general, with the exception of PETG-CF (which I tend to use TINMORRY brand) however I’m going to give a thumbs up to this new PETG HF filament as the results are both high quality and less shiny (I prefer that, if I want shiny I’ll use silk)
I ran my own Orca Slicer profile and the only change I made to the Bambu profile was the flow ratio which I ended up with as 0.9875 and increased the volumetric speed to 25 as the flow test showed it had no problem hitting that (it went higher but I don’t want to push it)
In comparing to PLA, the area I notice the biggest difference is in overhangs but it does seem better than regular PETG. If anyone has tweaks to improve PETG-HF overhangs I’d love to hear them.
I go very, very slow with overhangs. As in 10-25 mm/s slow. I also try to place it on the build plate, so I get the overhang part close to the chamber fan. It gives me pretty perfect overhangs.
