Question for the group. Why buy Bambu filament over Amazon vendors

Yeah this test for wet filament isnt correct. Brittle =/= wet. In my opinion brittle just means old filament.

What’s interesting is I was having a hard time wrapping my head around WHY does wet filament become brittle and no one I talked to was able to answer me the way I understood (like a kid in basic chemistry :joy:) when I was asking and googling many many months ago.

I knew nothing about ChatGPT at the time I although it was out it wasn’t as mainstream as it is today so I decided to ask that question “Why does Filament become brittle when it’s absorbed moisture?” today to hopefully better understand it a bit more and it did not fail.

ChatGPT 3.5 - “ Filaments, especially those used in 3D printing, are made of polymers. When these polymers absorb water, the water molecules insert themselves between the polymer chains. This disrupts the attractive forces between the chains, which normally provide flexibility.

As a result, the weakened connections between the polymer chains make the filament more prone to breaking, just like a weakened chain in a necklace is more likely to snap. The absorbed water essentially acts as a barrier between the polymer chains, reducing their ability to slide past each other smoothly and making the filament brittle.

So basically, it’s like adding water between the building blocks of the material. This weakens their connections, making the filament more likely to break easily, similar to how wet paper becomes weaker and tears more easily.”

Thanks ChatGPT I understand now!

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You’re legendary for this write up. Although unfortunately seems less applicable in the UK. Even the amazon own stuff runs around 20 quid. :smiling_face_with_tear:

They are in Miami, FL and sell through their own web page.

I adjusted the post and deleted the video - thanks for the opinion :wink:

I buy Bambu with the membership discount and do so mostly for the spool. I should have plenty of spools by the time the membership ends and don’t plan to buy from them after that. I tend to watch the sales on Amazon and buy well known brands in bundles and discounts and can pickup name brands around $12US. Creality PLA prints like butter!

Maybe I shouldn’t say this on an official company web site! :slight_smile: But I haven’t ever ordered a single spool of filament from Bambu Labs. Their sample filaments that came with my X1C and P1S printers were great. But this hobby gets expensive with the price of the consumables. As someone fairly new to it and trying to build up a nice collection of filament colors and types for a “library” of sorts? I just can’t cost-justify paying more than whatever the lowest prices are I can find for given spools.

I did buy an assortment of Inland/Micro Center filament because I grabbed them at the same time I bought the printer from their local store. Even with those? I picked and chose carefully and bought at least half of them on sale prices they had marked on the boxes.

But going forward, I’m just buying when I can find a useful filament color/type on sale for a good price and stocking up that way. I’ve ordered several spools of TPU on Amazon and it’s all been “off brand” stuff like “Kingroon” and “LGT Longer”. I recently got some Snow White PLA from “Yuaneang” for about $10-11 a spool, and it’s making excellent prints for me.

I also ordered a 10 pack of all the basic colors of Sunlu filament off Amazon on a “flash sale” they did. I guess it worked out to maybe $12-13 per spool, total, in that deal. It was a good investment to get my collection of colors going and it prints pretty well for me too.

Honestly? I wish Bambu Labs would just start selling the RFID tags needed for an AMS to identify the color/type of filament spool and let us stick those on/in whichever spools we use. I feel like it’s just something the company is hanging onto as the excuse to pay a premium for its own filaments. Nice feature, but I’ll always do without before I pay more to print things.

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I know it’s getting a little off-topic, but since you brought it up? I actually worked for Amazon for a while in their I.T. group. (I’ve since moved back to the midwest where I was born and raised, and I’m happy to be out of the high cost-of-living rat-race of that DC and Northern Virginia region!)

There are a few things probably worth noting about Amazon. First? Most people don’t realize it, but their cloud VM hosting and web application hosting services earn the lion’s share of the company’s profits. They could literally end everything having to do with customers buying things online for delivery tomorrow and would STILL be doing quite well.

The other half of the business technically functions as the “world’s largest logistics company” these days. The main reason that’s not a 100% fair comparison to other logistics businesses (like one I work for currently) is the fact that MOST logistics companies simply earn a cut of transportation costs involved in getting goods from point A to B. Amazon facilitates other sellers/manufacturers getting their goods from A to B as well, but they charge those entities a cut of the SALE price of the products vs some pre-negotiated delivery costs. They also make a distinction where you can opt to let Amazon get even more involved as the transaction processor so they handle customer returns for you too.

The thing is? Despite all the concerns about Amazon becoming the ONLY one left you can buy from, etc. etc.? It’s realistically never going to play out quite like that. For starters? You have a growing awareness and interest in global players like AliExpress who ship you Asian products direct from the manufacturer for pennies on the dollar vs retail pricing for the same goods. Even in America, you also have WalMart, who was never one to take a challenge like Amazon lying down. They have enough resources to compete with them pretty much head to head, except they choose to invest a bigger chunk of their money on retail stores instead of trying to do it all online.

The struggle of “not enough jobs” really boils down to not enough low-skilled/low-knowledge required jobs that pay what people expect as a “living wage”. I think that’s unavoidable as the world “levels up” in ability to automate things. The revolution we really need isn’t the one many people keep predicting or hoping for. It’s not about people getting angry and smashing all the machines, tearing down the government or the big businesses to achieve a “reset”. The revolution we need requires re-evaluating our priorities and goals to align better with the modern world we live in. We’re going to need a lot more people who learn how to do maintenance/repair on these machines, for one thing. We’re also going to need a lot more people encouraged to start their own small businesses instead of being too risk-adverse and believing their only option is accepting employment with others around them.

The big corporations become lumbering giants. They have very little agility. They may become an “unstoppable force” when they go all-in on something and get their momentum going in that direction. But that’s exactly where the little guy can defeat them, by throwing new, unexpected ideas out there that they didn’t predict and can’t easily change course to compete with. At least in America today? Too many people have become complacent. They’re happy to sit and whine that “nobody is paying me enough”, but they didn’t bother to learn new skills. They just want more than the job is worth to flip a burger or ring up a sale.

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3 rolls of color changing pla (changes by heat) for under $26.37 after discount

I usually only buy extrudr filament (extrudr.com) which is high quality stuff from Austria, afaik made from Covestro (www.covestro.com) polymers produced in Germany, so no China stuff.

Their PLA and ASA is perfect and constant quality and color.
Other than that, I only use Polymaker PA6-CF for high quality mechanical parts. Never used Bambu filament, other than the 200g or so that came with the printer.

Happy Extrudr Cyberweek, I’m currently preparing my order… :wink:

I have ordered 40kg. :wink:

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Well done :metal:

Mine order is out and confirmed too, but only 27 spools… However, from 9 rolls on, free shipping to Switzerland… so there’s still enough time to order more :thinking: That should be enough for home :thinking:

Let’s see how much I order for the company tomorrow…

When I ordered my X1C last week, I ordered a fair amount of Bambu filament. I got four PLA Basic filament on Tuesday and the rest today (haven’t opened today’s yet)

The sample filament that came with the printer was very dry, it made very clean prints. I have been making swatches of each plastic using this swatch:

https://www.printables.com/model/147518-filament-swatch-re-remix
Longer version for key chain
https://www.printables.com/model/268008-filament-swatch-with-printer-tests

It is a good swatch to print to verify the filament’s performance and dryness. The sample filament was so clean, I was very impressed, while all the PLA filament I bought (including one the same color as the sample) was stringy even after 8 hours of drying. I have printed a swatch for the sample filament again to confirm that it wasn’t a printer issue, it was still clean. I am drying the other ones again, I have been drying two of them since 10 pm last night, I am keeping them in the dryer until this evening.

Looks like Bambu doesn’t dry their filament at all unless it is a sample in their printer box. It is quite annoying since I only have 2 dryers and I don’t want to use the printer to dry.

I know this issue isn’t unique to Bambu, but some companies advertise that they dry their filament for 24 hours before vacuum sealing it with dessicant. I wish Bambu would do that.

I have seen many posts of people confused why their print was so bad, and when you look at the print, it is obvious that it was not dry enough. Bambu should realize that many people don’t research so don’t understand the need to dry filament, and their filament guide stating that drying PLA is optional doesn’t help. It is only optional if you don’t mind stringiness and imperfections.

Bambu needs to consider that many people who have not spent time to learn about 3D printing will buy their printer because it doesn’t require the tinkering and expertise needed for other printers. The printer would be even more impressive to them if the filament was dry.

This is also helpful in the beginning. The world was twisted quite a bit but also in a meaningful way :thinking:

Defined Fillament on the printer - which will than mirrow into the slicer. Actually good and works even without Bambu Lab filament, but the first spools from Balmbulab help to understand it… :thinking:

The Calibration is commissioned on the slicer to the printer and the slicer then takes over the settings and saves them. How many times have I read here that the printer loses these settings too often… it actually makes sense that the printer loses them and the calibration values ​​are saved in the filament slicer settings :thinking: It’s a bit sad that it still depends on the extruder as well, but basically the lidar is a little help for my Criality printers (TPU) settings… which now also impruve a lot since fillaments can now esaly analysed :thinking:

I dried (Filadryer S2) two of my new bambu PLA filaments(after already drying them for 8 hours). After 11 hours the black lost 1 gram and the brown lost 2, after 11 more hours the black lost 1 more gram and the brown lost 2 more. So a total of 2g for black and 4g for brown.

I needed to dry some other filament so I stopped drying them and put them in the AMS. I only tested the swatch on the black and it is just as stringy as before. It is not a an extreme amount of stringiness. It would be easy to clean and the print don’t look damaged like really wet filament. But the sample PLA had no stringiness. I will try drying it some more at some point.

So despite the recommended drying times it took 30 hours and will need more. I used a multi probe oven thermometer to check the Filadryer temperature and it pretty accurate.

As I think @Olias mentioned before, just keep on drying it until it stops losing any more weight.

I have to corect some staitments becouse of a hugh surprices.

Formfutura High Precision PLA: First time PLA has ever come onto my radar:

includes thrue a online database acceseble thure a QR code by getting: order number, spool number, RAL color, filament length, material, and weight.

Technical Data Sheet they also give a staitment in regards of UV resistance. Not the cheapest choice but the fillament can easily keep up with Bambulab fillament not membership prices.

On there ReFill PETG, they also have also a Statement of compliance with food contact regulations… and is probably right up to par with the Bambulab membership chip prices… and also a lot of documents were i always loking for :slight_smile:

Well done :+1:

I just tried to see about purchasing some filament, some PETG to be specific and no “membership” price was applied to account even though I have 2 printers that put me in the “membership” for another 4 months. I tried PLA also and no dice. I think the most disturbing fact is that you cannot get ahold of tech support, there are no working links, and the bambu site has a bunch of links that do not work… and/or when going between filament, do not change to a new product page for the selected filament. You come in off the main page onto a “blue PETG”… you can’t just click the green and order it, you have to go back to main page and come in from it for it to work… not good.

So, besides Bambu, I have used
eSun ABS and PLA Pro/+
Sunlu (not my top choice at all) High speed- NOT high speed when you look at the details
Voxelab (made by FlashForge)
Flashforge
Creality HS

I have Voxel PLA coming today.

Here’s my experience.
eSun
Provides all the recommended parameters for their filament on BL printers on their website. They have all worked well. Their Mystic filaments make incredible looking prints.

Creality
Appears to be the same as eSun

Sunlu-
Too slow for me. The “high speed” I ordered was limited to 100mm/s
I have a roll of silk from before I got the BL printer. The silk prints well but they told me to keep the speeds below 60 mm/s

Voxelab-
Used the Bambu tough setting and got excellent results, but could use a little tweaking

FlashForge-
I got the color changing filaments. Had to run a calibration on them and they look incredible. Have the preset saved. Also used the same preset on their plain black high speed because BL was out of black. Have to print a little slower, but I had the BL black PLA warp on large parts and the FlashForge didn’t (same bed temperature). So will keep it for large parts.

Voxel PLA recommends using the BL tough PLA settings on their filament with no changes. Will know tomorrow how that works.

Forgot about them. I haven’t used their filament for a couple of years. Don’t know why, as I had good success on my old printer. I like some of the options they have on their site. Will have to give them a try again.