PLA Matte Caramel availability

Bambu Filament and Accesories
1

Hi everyone,

I’m fairly new to Bambu Lab and 3D printing in general, so I’m curious if what I’m experiencing with filament availability is normal.

I’ve been waiting for Bambu PLA Matte Caramel (11803) for quite a while now. I really like the colour and want to use it for several upcoming projects, so I’ve been holding off on placing my next filament order until it’s available.

The frustrating part is the changing ETA.

Over the past few weeks, the expected availability went from September 3rd to September 4th, and then it was moved again to September 7th.

Today is September 7th, and so far Caramel is still showing as unavailable in the EU store.

Normally I’d simply order the other colours and buy Caramel later, but because of Bambu’s bulk filament discounts, that doesn’t make much sense. I have a larger order of around 10 rolls ready to go, so one unavailable colour is effectively holding up the entire order. If I order the rest now and Caramel becomes available tomorrow, I’d have to start another bulk order just to get the same pricing.

I’m not upset that a particular colour can be out of stock, obviously that can happen. What I find frustrating is having a specific ETA to plan around, only to see it repeatedly moved when that date arrives.

So, as someone new to the Bambu ecosystem, I’m genuinely curious:

Is this normal for Bambu filament restocks?

Do the ETA dates usually mean that stock will actually become available on that day, or should I treat them more as very rough estimates?

And how do those of you who regularly buy Bambu filament deal with this, especially when trying to make use of the bulk discounts? Do you wait, place multiple orders, or have you simply moved to other filament brands when colours are unavailable?

I’m really enjoying my Bambu printer and I like the PLA Matte I’ve used so far. I just didn’t expect that actually buying the filament would be the difficult part. :sweat_smile:

I’d be interested to hear how long-time Bambu users handle this.

Thanks!

2

Yes and yes.

Most of the times the ETA is spot on, but not always.

3

Just buy esun or sunlu instead, it has the same print settings (as long as it is the high speed version)

edit Yes i know the colour doesn’t match exactly. but there’s many other brands out there, and the colour of 2 bambu spools doesn’t always match either.

4

You could also search on 3dfilamentprofiles.com for a color that matches. According to them, the hex code of bambu caramel matte is #AE835B, and if you search for that, you get literally 100s of results with similar hex colors.

5

Thank you @ElektroQuark , @Eponymous and @NomeelNoj , I’ll keep looking today for this specific spool. When I’m tired of waiting :sweat_smile: , I’ll try to get Polymaker Panchroma Wood Brown, it’s available here in NL and it comes close.

6

Check independent stores that sell Bambu, both of my local shops are showing it in stock.

7

I just have to say, this is disappointing… at 18:30 I look and the ETA shifted again, to September 15th this time. I am going to place my 10kg order somewhere else. I didn’t know that the availability and the communication around it was this bad…

Living in the Netherlands there are a couple of local suppliers that do Bambu Lab, but not the filament or it isn’t in stock…

And the refills are more 15% more expensive then the MSRP at Bambu Lab…

8

Have you used the caramel before and have any on hand?

Reason I ask is if you find a similar filament you can frequently just cut the RFID tags off an old spool and tape them onto the new spool to get full RFID functionality.

Caveat is this only works well with filaments that print well using the Bambu filament settings but I’ve found Sunlu and Elgoo do and I’m sure others may too.

I mark and save the RFID tags from Bambu spools just in case I need to do this and have an Elegoo in my AMS right now with tags taped on. Works great. No RFID tag isn’t bad but so much simpler to have the AMS pick up the color/type/settings automagically.

Only thing to watch out for is if you use the wrong color tag like that and have a spool of the real stuff run out, if failover to a new spool is enabled, you might end up with a multicolor part. Ask me how I know. :rofl:

9

Thank you for your response. I don’t have the spool yet, so no RFID to reuse.

I would like to see your multicolor print by the way :grin:

10

Here you go! I was just a bit late. I had planned to change out the filament manually because there have been lots of issues with the ways Bambu has taped the filament to the spool hub but just missed it. Luckily the tape let go properly instead of being ingested into the AMS and extruder.

Kind of a neat visual though.

IMG_4289
IMG_42891920×1603 836 KB

11

I have to say, the color combination is perfect :sweat_smile:

12

Hehe, yeah. That’s Elegoo “cyan” that I used jade white PLA RFID tags on since I didn’t have any Bambu cyan tags to use.

But it does make a nice visualization with the contrast. Harder to see that detail if all one color.