In all fairness, you don’t actually trust these filament makers do you? You shouldn’t.
There’s only one way to get an accurate filament profile, that is to do you’re own testing. If you’re not already using it, try out Orca Slicer which is a fork of Bambu Studio. What it has that Bambu does not have is calibration utilities along with a great tutorial.
In my experience, are the top 3 tests I perform to not only verify the box but to also create a “Trusted Filament Profile”. I test every new filament out of the box and I record this in a spreadsheet for later reference as well as on the spool.
- Weight out of the box. I use a $12 kitchen scale. I write that weight directly onto the spool and then I weigh it when it is empty and wright that weight as the TARE on the spool.
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Recording the TARE is very important. Because it will not only verify the amount you were shipped but it will also later allow you to record moisture the next time you purchase that brand. If you know you got a spool a second time around that is 20g heavier than the dried spool you used before, I can tell you that extra weight is likely not more PLA.
If I decide to dry it, I do a before and after weight. I generally don’t dry PLA but when I do, you would be surprised how much moisture is in a vacuum packed spool.
- Temperature tower. This is a must and it will highlight just how wrong some of the information printed on the box is.
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Once I identify the temp I feel is the best compromise between curling and stringing, I mark the tower with a paint pen and also write the filament maker on the tower for later reference. If I store the spool, I keep the tower inside the bag.
- PA Calibration using Andrew Ellis’ PA Pattern tool. This is a hard tool to use in my opinion on other slicers because of the amount of parameters involved. But Orca, makes this just a couple of clicks.
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If you’re not already doing this PA test, you really are cheating yourself. What’s amazing is how easy, fast and accurate it is to calibrate Pressure Advance using this technique.
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(HINT) Use a cell phone camera in Macro Mode and zoom the image on your computer monitor to get an unambiguous view of what’s good and what’s not for really great dialed-in.
There are even more calibration tests that will allow you to dial-in some pretty amazing accuracy but unless I am doing structural parts that need to fit together, to be honest, that’s overkill.