On the Bambu Labs store site, it says that: “Note：PLA Tough has been discontinued and will not be restocked once sold out.” Has anyone used this filament? Is/was it any different than the normal PLA? I just ordered some a week ago and have not printed with it yet, so I was surprised to see this.
Thanks.
Interesting, it was my understanding that PLA tough was akin to other brands PLA+. The have grouped it in with the “Premium” filament and thus haven’t included it with the filament membership discount. My guess is they don’t sell enough to make it profitable to offer?
Speaking of PLA+. Now that we have sub $300 printers, this industry is poised for explosive growth. But the industry leaders need to get together and agree on what qualifies as PLA+. So far as I can see, you can put fishing line on a spool and call it PLA+ and there is nobody around to call you out with any authority.
The tech industry keeps having to relearn the mistakes of the past. We saw this with the interface wars of the 80s,90s and 2000s when the industry couldn’t agree on the term Firewire vs IEEE1394 or the later Apple trying to Patent itself into proprietary connectivity with Thunderbolt and later with Lightning. Thank fully the EU stepped in and applied some open connectivity sanity.
The point is, industry always suffers when consumer confusion is exacerbated by BS marketing fluff. Having spent 40+ years as an industry insider, I am guilty of some of those sins and I saw the damage it did to nascent technologies that could have helped but were piled onto the dust-heap of obsolescence because consumers were too confused to take a risk on a mystery technology. Anyone remember Floptical, DAT(still in use but only in broadcast), or how about QIC25?
If the filament industry continues to operate like the wild west, many promising new technologies will struggle to break out above the marketing BS.
Wow, I was just about to post about if/when the PLA-Tough would make it into the membership discounts.
I guess this answers that question. 
I’ve never really understood the need for a “tough” version of PLA. There are so many other filaments at a similar costs that would function better in a situation where “tough” was needed. I could never justify the extra cost of the PLA+/Tough filaments.
In marketing Parlance, they call that “Buyers voting with their wallets”.
If I were to guess based on Bambu’s Schizophrenic behavior, I would wager that internally, they have two factions at odds with one another. There’s that faction that cries “Upsell… Upsell… Upsell…”, those are the filament guys, then there is the faction that says, “Make it good, make it inexpensive and the customers will come”, those are the printer guys.
And I guess there is the mentally challenged faction we know as Makerworld but so far there biggest crime is running out of toes to shoot. 
which fillaments would you advice if you need something stronger then PLA and does not require a hardened nozzle (so can be printed with P1 series)
“Stronger” is a bit subjective and dependent on your application. You might look at PETG and see if it fits your application. It can be printed with a P1P.
You should be able to print PETG and ASA on a P1, though “strength” has many definitions. The impact resitance of some PLA+ is pretty good.
That being said, a hardened nozzle is only a few dollars.
Yes, you might also need an enclosure for ASA depending on which P1 you have, but an enclosure is just plastic and you have a 3d printer.
For me, the low stock of all filaments + this message about the discontinuation of this filament type rather indicates that the filament manufacturer is being changed in the background.
I used the forest green PLA Tough before I started playing with PETG and it was probably the cleanest print I have to date. Bummer that the material is going away!
Would you like USB4, USB 4, or Thunderbolt 4? Don’t even get my started on USB 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, Gen 2 or Gen 2x2.
Oh, and would you like a side of HDMI, HDMI high speed, HDMI high speed with ethernet, premium high speed HDMI, or ultra high speed HDMI?
Totally agree with this marketing BS! No wonder why some consumers are wondering why their computer is only transferring files at 480 Mbps to an external SSD … using their typical USB charging cable to transfer data could be quite disappointing.
Agree. Slant3D has raised this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S51BpxkIM6Q
Slant3d’s youtube looks like a scam. He rants angrily about the quality of filament because it does not cost $10 (so much so that it’s hard to believe he is objective) then sells filament for $20 all of which has some problem of some kind. Now admittedly they do deliver the product so they are actually a real US filament company, but you could get better for that price. I do not think they are “champion of the people, fighting overpriced filament” they market as.
so with PLA Tough going away, what is their PLA alternative? I liked the increased strength it had, and I can’t use ABS/PET-G, so what else is there on the Bambu store? (Note that I have nothing against the ABS/PET-G materials, I just cannot use them due to multiple factors.)
What kind of strength are you requiring? There is, at least, resistance to bendng, stretchin, impact damage, environment (temperature/water/UV) and layer adhesion It would help to know.
As well as PLA Tough you also have the option of Bambu’s PLA with additives (such as carbon fibre) and also the option of other brands. PLA+ generally refers to a higher strength PLA.
i mainly use tough/pla+ for mechanical things like this machines internal components: 3D file [Japanese Capsule Toy Machine]EduColon(Glow Crystal Set) 🔮・3D printing design to download・Cults
The gears in it seem to hold out fine with regular PLA, but the mechanism that is used for the coin-release/ball dispense breaks if it’s any PLA but tough/PLA+. What I require is some stretch/bendability so the mechanism works, but enough strength so that it doesn’t snap after just a few uses.
The PLA Tough Bambu Lab produced met those needs perfectly.
Voxel PLA and Voxelab brands both work with the PLA Tough settings. If you use them I’d make a profile and export the preset under a custom name in case the BL preset goes away.
I don’t know if Voxelab is tougher than standard PLA though, just that it uses those settings.
Voxel PLA claims to have 4x the impact resistance of standard PLA.
I make fixtures and have tested many brands and variants of PLA and PLA+/PLA Pro. I have to say that BL’s PLA Tough has given me an excellent finish straight out of the gate.
Fixtures get a fair bit of abuse, often dropped or have things dropped on them.
Until I got my A1 I was using a Zortrax M200, so an enclosed core XY, even with that ABS/ASA and PA12 all had bed adhesion issues, so were not really practical. Now I’m with the bed slinger I was hoping to be able to continue with the PLA Tough… hey-ho! it’s back to experimenting.
I do have a reeel of the BL PETG but haven’t tried it yet. Does it need Magigoo to be able to separate it from the bed?
I can’t see the design as it is paid. I assume there is a round part that you twist, that is failing because it twists apart. Now is this printed so that it breaks along the layer line, or is the problem the rotational deformation of the part?
If you must use PLA then have you tried printing the part solid (e.g. 5 walls/10 floors (i.e. 2mm walls in XYZ [EDIT: at 0.2mm layer height]) and 100% infill), or changing the print direction? Printing slower without the fan also iincreases strength. Otherwise I would look at the values in Bambu’s docs for the material strength of the filament, and get something simi;ar. There’s a huge range of engineering PLAs available now.