I am struggling with how to manage and be efficient with filament profiles. If I get a new filament, I perform a calibration to optimize appearance and dimensional accuracy. My issue is that if I get a new brand of filament, after I perform the calibration I have two listings for the filament.
Example:
ELEGOO PETG, PS1 no AMS
- I create a custom filament using the dialog under ‘Project Filaments’/‘Set filaments to use’. I call it “ELEGOO PETG Basic”. I have it use “Generic PETG” as a template and optimize it for my particular printer 'PS1".
- I perform the ‘Flow Dynamaics’ calibration using the New filament I created above with the line method set to 0.001 steps. I select the line with the most consistent width and set that as my K value.
- I perform the “Extrusion Test” from Thingaverse to optimize the ‘Flow Ratio’. I do this for dimensional accuracy. This is were my issue arises. In order to edit and save the optimized flow ratio in the initial custom filament I created (ELEGOO PETG Basic) I have to save it under a unique name (ELEGOO PETG Basic Calibrated). This results in two profiles for one filament, one of which I will never use. Bambu Studio will not let me delete the first profile because it is inherited by the second. If I use Generic PETG for the calibrations, when I set the filament for the extruder it is under Generic instead of ELEGOO on my printer.
Ultimately, I would just like to be able to edit the initial profile I create and save it as the same name. My list of User Presets growing rapidly.
What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way?
Thanks in advance.
Hmm, never though that something seemingly simply could be so complex…
I liked the new feature to save k-factors in a more generic way.
Since I had a huge profile mess anyway I decided to start over with the sole aim of keeping things as neat as possible.
I don’t set filament profiles for colour and such, I keep them ‘generic’.
My supplier provides good consistency in terms of colours not affecting calibration values.
Let’s play through my game>
Got Supafil and PLA as a new supplier to try.
I create a new filament and call just call it ‘Supafil PLA’ - totally ignoring the colour or being matte/translucent,…
I do the usual calibration nightmare to get the flow ratio but for the K-factor I save the values as ‘Supafil PLA - X.XXX’ - where the x.xxx stands for the corresponding K-factor.
This way I have a set of k-factors to choose from as they arise from test prints.
I note a different k-factor on the roll so when I change rolls I know right away that this one will need a different k-factor.
The key to make this mess work is consistency.
“Ok, this helps with the filament profile mess but I can’t print silk, translucent and such with such generic profiles - can I ??”
Of course you can’t and these usually require tweaking temps and speeds - changes in two totally different areas 
But we just abuse this inheritance problem that Bambu uses for everything 
Right now there is a single Supafil PLA filament profile.
We might have other types of Supafil PLA, like a roll of tri-colour silk…
It would make a lot of sense now to calibrate the silk after adding Supafil PLA Silk to your filament list…
We won’t do this…
Instead we just check the calibration using the Supafil PLA profile.
If it only requires a different print temp I just note this on the roll and adjust it when loading the roll without saving those changes.
If I use a filament often or it requires more than one setting to be changed I still start with the generic Supafil PLA and save it for example as Supafil PLA Silk.
I did not create a new filament as Bambu might like it, just a new filament profile that is based on the original.
Like this I can use the same k-factors already created for the Supafil PLA and won’t create a ton of extra profiles for no reason.
I even ‘cheat’ with the print profiles.
Having a high flow hotend is great but also means the standard profiles just won’t cut it.
Since materials comes with different properties I create profiles for my high flow hotend as custom profiles based on the type of filament.
For example PLA Fast, PLA Fix, PLA fine - Fix being a profile where speeds and such are lowered to result in the best possible surface quality at 0.2mm layers.
To avoid a total mess based on matte, silk, CF, GF and what not I actually prefer to hone in those print settings and once satisfied save it as a 3MF reference file with a matching file name.
Means rather than selecting a dedicated print profile I first load load my reference model, delete the test model and replace it with the one I want to print.
Only hassle is to not accidentally click on save to mess up the established base profile.
But that’s what another reference model that has all the base values correct is good for