ultimaker filament colour and print quality

[porter 8]

Hi Guys

i have been printing on the UM2 for a while now using the standard setting and have noticed the filament colour may have an effect on printing quality. has anybody else experienced this?

i have used 3 ultimaker filaments to-date the bronze, magenta and silver grey.

any models i have printed used the standard high/mid/low presets. each filament has had different flow and quality characteristics.

the first colour i used was the bronze: overall not to bad to print with flowed well and produced decent quality prints: had some issues with the stepper chewing it, with regards print quality always had the problem of missing layers and bumps.

the second colour i used was magenta: would not recommend using this colour, flowed really badly, very tacky and messy when hot always keep sticking to the hot end. produced bad quality print which were very brittle, also encountered missing layers and bump problem.

the last colour used was the silver grey, would really recommend using this material and colour, have had no issues, printed excellent quality prints straight out of the bag with no missing layers or bumps. see pics for quality

 

[illuminarti 18]

Yes, the base materials, colorants, additives and production batches make every type and color slightly different from every other one, so I'd expect different results with different colors of filament. In a lot of cases, it will also vary between batches of the same color filaments if the formulation isn't tightly controlled.

That said, you'll get even better an faster results if you ditch the presets and set the prints up properly using the fast settings :-)

 

[trhuster 0]

This was a very nice print imo. I like it, good quality and fine details.

 

[LePaul 321]

I've had great luck with the included silver-gray

The https://www.ultimaker.com/products/pla-blue is so shiny..I've had a few good prints with it but there's something to be said for a more subtle color!

 

[cez_etc 0]

I've found optimal print temperatures can vary a lot.

I'm currently experimenting with the Ultimaker Bronze PLA filament. So far it seems that 200°C is the best temperature (at 50 mm/s print speed, 0,1mm layer height). Might even go lower than that. Anything over 210°C produces really ugly prints.

However, for the Ultimate Blue PLA (the light blue one) needs to be printed at 220°-230°.

 

[pad 0]

What temperature did you set for the bed with the Ultimaker Bronze PLA ?

For the moment I tried 210°C/75°C, 210°C/65°C, 205°C/60°C. I've got my best results with the last test but I didn't go lower.

 

[cez_etc 0]

What temperature did you set for the bed with the Ultimaker Bronze PLA ?

I'm using the Ultimaker Original that doesn't have a heated bed (yet). But I found that the filament sticks extremely well to the unheated bed. It was quite difficult to remove it, something I hadn't experienced before.

 

[theblur 0]

I started with ultimaker bronze. It wasn't great in my opinion, it made the print lines and grooves really obvious and wasn't great at overhangs.

I've just finished up a spool of blue which I would recommend, I've got some great finishes with this colour.

Starting on a yellow now which looks very promising, I also have a white to try once I've finished this one.

I'll definitely give that silver grey a go, it looks gorgeous! thanks for sharing!