Dollars and Cents, Bambu Lab's Filament Waste True Cost.

What started as a curiosity between Prusa XL vs X1C in filament usage, ended in a rabbit hole of settings, tests, calculations and I think I bit off more than I can chew.
Join me in a topic I probably should have left alone.
Models shown
Flexi Panda
makerworld.com...
Stringing Test
www.thingivers...

[@kerrysteed1189]

Thanks for putting this into real numbers visually. Hype and headlines often overtake reason without understanding.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you very much for watching and I truly appreciate it. Something felt off when I started researching this topic as I felt like I was going against the grain of other creators but the commenters math really stood out to me.

[@meawayfromhome]

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this, it must have taken awhile. Much appreciated the information.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you very much for watching and commenting. It took more time than I wanted to spend on the topic but we got some valuable results at the end so it was worthwhile. 😀

[@cbgslinger]

Very interesting video! Most of my prints are one color. When I do use more than one color, I avoid designing where there is a color swap on most every layer. Those color swaps really slow down printing! I could benefit from some settings changes, but I probably don’t do enough color changes to justify it. Especially after seeing your numbers on the cost of each change! You did your homework Ashley! Well done.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Time is my biggest issue. If I can run a print overnight I wont stress over it but many vertical color swaps are the bane of my printing existence. Thank you very much for watching and commenting.

[@tonymarreiros3186]

Ashley, once again a great video, thank you for taking the time to explain to some people that make things petty and complicated. The way I see it is that for 5 years I used a creality cr10 and the amount of wasted filament through bad prints and time wasted trying to get the printer to just work with all the changes and tweaks is nothing to compare with the X1 poop when printing multi-color. The frustration of before is now the satisfaction of knowing, that when I do a print is laterally 99% success. for me, it is just the time that matters but again you can't have it all. Thank you again for your hard work.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Hey hey. Thank you very much. I admit I wasn't prepared for this one. Started easy enough but became a mess of settings and printing. 😅 At least we have a better understanding(with math!) how costly or inexpensively filament swaps can be. While I didnt have the CR10 I did have the ender 3 and between just getting a decent print off of it ,I wasted a ton to filament running small test prints before setting up a large print. I do not miss those times. lol

[@S1n3at3r]

I'm starting my adventure with bambu ams lite and that video just gave me an idea on how to approach it. Easy to setup up solutions explained perfectly. Thanks!

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you very much. I am always unsure how these longer deep dives are received as my channel started with quick and short videos. All the best with your AMS lite.

[@dsemolian3071]

🤘BITCHIN🤘 Thankyou for this info! The purge waste never bothered me, cost of business. But i do take measures to conserve. There are projects where it can be used, ive been making spinning tops with a mold someone designed, and also use a t-shirt heat press to make wall hangings👍👍

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Great point! The end result is most important. This topic has been nagging me for a couple of years. Make adjustments that make sense but dont stress on small amounts of $$$. Thank you for your continued support.

[@epb613]

Thank you so much for doing this testing and sharing your results. I really appreciate your videos because you don’t take anything for granted! Every one of your videos adds real knowledge to the community. Keep up the good work! Pinny

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

"Every one of your videos adds real knowledge to the community." No pressure. 😅 Thank you a bunch for that. I still feel like a small fish in a big ocean of creators but my watchers, and subscribers are the best hands down.

[@Chad.The.Flornadian]

Thank you for bring science and logic to this issue. I do a lot of multi-color prints too and I've often wondered how much $ I was really "flushing" down the drain.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you very much for your kind words. Probably should have stopped when I brought out the scale but the topic has been nagging me for years. Ironically, the title also showed me stepping of dollars to find out how many pennies I was (potentially) saving.😅

[@aeonjoey3d]

I keep seeing this weird false equivalencies about it from people who don’t even own either printer. We made our choice, and thank you for the list of “waste” items - people seem to forget that list when throwing around the “poop” mention as if they’re running a free nationwide PLA recycling service.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Your comment speaks to my SOUL. lol. All 3d printing has "waste" it is inevitable and you can be smarter about it but we all have made that choice in the end.

[@aeonjoey3d]

I didn’t realize I had the “old”‘profiles from before Bambu instituted the purge feature, and my option was *unticked* I about died lol. Thanks for this!!!

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

I had to double check a few of my profiles now that you mention it. 😅

[@monster2slayer]

i've owned it for two years and never printed a single multi color print. i use it as a filament changer and for multi-material prints. doesn't really produce much waste, especially since the retract before cut feature.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

The first year of printing on the X1C was mostly single filament as I disliked many vertical color swaps. Now that some of my clients know I can do multicolor I have been leaning to what they want. I need to dig deeper into that retract before cut as the results were well outside of what I was expecting. Thank you for watching and your experiences.

[@nathanfordham920]

nice video!

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you very much. Appreciate the watch and comment.

[@ScottLahteine]

I have a little side project going to see if I can get filament extruded through a printing nozzle and into a silicone "sphincter" to be formed into a 1.75mm filament, so that purged filament can go directly into a usable form. There are a lot of challenges to get this to be reliable, but it's looking promising. Eventually it can be implemented as an add-on for many models of FDM 3D printers.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

That is an awesome project. I can see it being extremely useful for fdm printers. Thank you for sharing that.

[@SquintyGears]

Honestly the people parroting that it's wasteful are just bambu haters. They're going to get the creality AMS or Prusa's Mk4 solution as soon as it's on the market and it's going to purge just as much. Bambu did many things dirty but filament swaps isn't one of them.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

I hear you. In the end there will be unused, wasted filament somewhere in the process. I know for me if I see an issue, my first thought would be how can I correct it or at least mitigate it. I do think as more and more solutions come out from other brands the issue wont be a major sticking point. Thank you very much for watching and commenting.

[@epb613]

I wanted to share a video request for the future. I would love to get your take on the various ways to speed up prints. I.e, flow rate vs enabling sport mode. Or perhaps boosting individual speed settings. Is there a good method to tune your settings depending on your print? For example, I feel certain that Gridfinity boxes (hollow boxes, little infill) need to print slower than something with more infill and internal structure, but I don’t have a good way to quantify this. Thanks! Pinny

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

That sounds like an excellent idea. Aside from just pressing sport or luda modes there are a few things we can look at. To truly unlock the speed it may be model dependent too. I would have to do some investigating on how far we can push vs leaving things as default.

[@epb613]

I played around with this for a bit today and did a bunch of experimenting on my own. It seems to me that the things that make the biggest difference to speed are 1. Profile speed settings (layer height and wall/infill print speed) 2. Model design (whether the components are large enough to ever reach full acceleration) 3. Filament settings (max volumetric speed, min layer time) and 4. Enabling sport/luda. These seem to be the most important components to control speed, but I did not yet come up with any framework for how to select which settings are the best for any particular model. Need to give that some more thought.

[@Crazy_Dave]

Thank you so much for your time and effort in making this video. I'll be honest and admit I'm going to have to watch it again to fully understand your findings. I'm new to AMS and just in my first year of P1S ownership so this is a bit advanced for me lol. Question: Is it really necessary to purge the exact same filament every time I do a single colour print without the AMS? It seems so wasteful, is there a way to skip the purge or at least reduce the amount of waste.

[@radish6691]

“…so wasteful”? 🤨 If priming filament wasn’t going out the back it would be going onto the bed in the form of a skirt because your nozzle ain’t ready to print without extruding something first. Prior to buying my first Bambu Lab printer I used a Wanhao i3 Duplicator Plus, a single color printer, for 6 years. A skirt was a necessary addition to every print to ensure the filament was flowing before the printer started printing the print itself even if I hadn’t changed the filament. When a print is finished filament still oozes from the nozzle as it’s cooling, likewise as the nozzle is heating before a print. Without any priming, out the back or as a skirt, the first extruded bit of the print will be missing (no filament) or spotty which is inadequate for good adhesion to the bed (i.e. no squish). Getting a good first layer is key, whether you’re printing on a fancy schmancy PEI-coated spring steel sheet or on a manually-leveled aluminum bed that bows up in the middle when heated (because it’s screwed down at the corners) and is covered with blue painters tape and purple glue stick. I also used to print uphill in the snow both ways but that’s a story for another day. 🤣

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you very much for watching and the potential rewatch. 😉 This is a bit outside of my normal videos as I tried to, unsuccessfully, simplify things but it was a very dense topic. As for your question I just weighed the pre print purge and it avg 0.3grams. If your filament is less than $30 a KG it is less than a penny. I typically run a fast startup which still purges out the back but reduces the prime lines to 1 instead of 2. radish6691 has an excellent answer and these types of "prechecks" and printer quirks have been around since fdm printers have been around.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you very much for your answer. The newer printers handle so much of the "ease" of printing we soon forget why the printers need to do what they do.

[@AndrewAHayes]

Have you experienced any clogging with the long retract?

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

So far no clogging. But I went back to my cool plate and ran it at 35C since those pandas were run over night with the door closed. YMMV

[@Bastyyyyyy]

i used a custom profile i made myself, that retracts the filament like you can do in the settings. 700 print hours on AMS, several thousand swaps and so far. not a single issue, besides 1x clogged nozzel from a metal shaving that was in the filament :p

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

@@Bastyyyyyy excellent to hear. Which plate are you using?

[@Bastyyyyyy]

@@ashleys3dprintshop Some Aliexpr textured PEI , that is a bit more rougher then the stock one from bambulab I just clean it with IPA before every print that is longer then 30 mins :p - not a single failure so far ^^

[@Bastyyyyyy]

Rly good video! defently going to sub to not miss out future things :)

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you thank you. I may break up some videos in to smaller topics to keep things simpler to follow.

[@gloriousapplebees]

I'm a little confused. It seems at the end you were still wasting almost as much as you're using, and only really losing quality to save filament. I am not going to speak on anyone else's claims of this VS another printer, just purely on a this as a process. It still seems wasteful to me, I guess it's not crazy but if this isn't for a business (where you can charge to make up for it) I find it very hard to justify, personally at least.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Thank you for your question. There are a few ways to look at it. 1. If you are trying to save filament the(from the panda perspective) you can go from 148g(tada3dprinting) of waste down to 44g or $1.48 to 44 cents. 2. If you fit more of those on a plate the purge is the same. For instance the long retract 44g. Could net you 4 pandas for the same 44 cents in waste which avg about 11cents a panda. If your model could fill a build plate with clones it's all the same purged amount. With some creative positioning you could fit a 5th panda. 3. The dark to light change requires more purge unless the colors are dark and the color changes were nearly imperceptible. So you can lean into less flushing. The transparent/black filament was supposed to be the worst thing you could print without a full flush. 4. The long retract option worked well with light and dark colors for the panda (a little too well I have to investigate why it was much lighter in mass.) 5. The prime tower seems to be the greediest in terms of filament usage and it can be removed or shrunken. But I recommend at least a small one. In the end I like showing options and making a single panda in this case was not a good use of time or filament but the experiment needed those as a baseline. Personally I don't like printing multicolor items in the z axis. Not because of waste but because of the time investment. I mentioned the other printer as a comparison because you would need to burn through 100-250 rolls of filament to make the waste loss an issue with or without the filament waste reduction. The video started as a comparison because the savings on filament was supposed to be the reason to get it. But the amount of filament needed just to break even on the initial cost was startling. And this is *filament loss* not filament in general. I pulled back on any criticism of another technology because it is good for a different reason not because of filament loss. And lastly you will always have waste in some form. It is inevitable for FDM printers. Your wallet, tolerance to loss, will be your guide. Also single color is always the fastest option to push a part out. That panda takes under 2hrs on a single color and 7+ multicolor. 4 pandas multicolor take 13 hrs. Again thank you for the question and allowing me to explain further. I hope it makes sense. 😊

[@gloriousapplebees]

@@ashleys3dprintshop Thank you! Yes that makes a lot more sense! I think my tolerance for loss is just very low and causes a bit more shock than is reasonable at any losses, but I'm sure that will change with time. I don't think I've gotten through a full KG yet, certainly not 2, so I'm very new to the hobby. I also appreciate the context, I haven't even heard much about the other printer mentioned and wasn't aware it was being touted as a way to save money on wasted filament, thank you for the practical experiment showing that in fact it probably isn't worth it for that at this price. I've seen one other video on mitigating waste and I'm very curious about the extent to which 'purge into infill' can be used, when I first saw anything about 3d printer poop from color changes that was the first thing that I thought of. Thanks again, I really appreciate the response!

[@radish6691]

At the end of the day we’re mostly printing with food that’s been turned into plastic which will inevitably end up in a landfill so whether we’re printing wastefully or not, let’s all enjoy and celebrate our contributions to the downfall of humanity while we still have time on this Earth. 🤣

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Go POLLUTION! 1:29

[@kitchenbriks3685]

The Bambu is still the best printer on the market. The waste is not a big deal. It’s not like every single print is multicolor and when you do multicolor fill the entire bed the waste is the same regardless of how many you print.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

Very true. Even the multicolor prints I typically perform are a couple of filament changes overall and with proper planning, like multiple (cloned) prints or a dozen or so other options it stops being an issue.

[@LilApe]

Bambu lab is far from being the "best printer on the market". Looking at reviews they're some of the worst. trustpilot & google is at 2.6/2.8 wile prusa is at 4.6/4.4

[@RollerCoasterLineProductions]

I do need to address this, but since I printed my colored T800 I haven’t done many multicolor prints

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

That T800 model makes me want to come up with a bunch of different ways to print it. 2 color changes(base and model) and paint the rest. reduce the infill and place in weights/washers. Or just seeing how fast I can cut down the print time. Thank you very much for watching and commenting.

[@paytreonsuhks]

Got an A1 recently and what a disappointment it is. All the hype for Bambu products is lies

[@Xanthroid1]

What part is a disappointment? I just bought the x1c and haven't looked back since. Love being able to focus on designing and creating rather than debugging my printer and it's prints. Also the speed to get my functional print is absurd.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

I dont have the A1 personally so I cannot speak on it directly. Is there any flaws you wish to share? I only have the X1C(going on 2 years) and it basically launched this channel as I am more focused on the prints and slicer than the actual printer...if that makes any sense. Thank you for sharing.

[@ashleys3dprintshop]

We are of the same mind. The X1C has been great. Solid, fast easy...and reliable. It has become the baseline of what I expect from other brands.