best colour pla to setup my frist printer

Hi all. Building my first reprap and i was just wondering what is the best colour pla to get for setting it up.

Thanks!!!!

... every colour acts differently with the different pigments and additives

I'll prefer white or green - clear PLA isn't so good as you can't see/photograph the fusing and surface, what's the most interesting points while starting ...

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Viktor
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Thanks for the reply VDX...

Silver PLA is pretty stunning, and very forgiving to quality issues and black PLA has a really beautiful lustre to it. Those are definitely my favorite colors.

Natural PLA is great as it's easy to see the colour change depending on extrusion temperature, so it's both a good failsafe and a nice way to tweak and test out various temperatures.

Black and opaque filament is great to check for first layer adhesion, especially if your build plate is white.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how well pink PLA (from diamond age solutions) works to see the details of the print. It's especially great to see the infill, while other colours blend and wash out, pink is very high contrast against itself. Might work with other opaque pastel(?) filament as well.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

I would strongly caution you on the use of PLA for the parts. The most critical area is the X-Carriage, and Extruder Bodies. If these get even a bit too warm, they will begin to warp. At least make those two parts out of ABS, if you can.

I'll tell you a story that happened at the early part of last year. It was March, and I decided to take a couple of printers to a electronics swap meet, to show off, and maybe get some orders. The weather was nice. A bit cool, but sunny. On the drive I hit some traffic, so I was in the car for a good 45 minutes. When I unpacked everything, I found that a spool of green PLA had fused to itself in places. What I didn't notice was that the machine I had printed in white PLA, with IGUS bushings, had warped slightly. When I tried to jog it during a demo, I found that the X-carriage had seized against the smooth rods.

Regards,

Wildseyed

I absolutely agree that the x carriage and extruder bodies should be printed in ABS, I lot both of my PLA originals due to warping and haven't had problems since remaking them in ABS. However, the entire rest of my printer is made in PLA and I have had absolutely no problems with any of it. Other people have mentioned hot motors affecting the motor brackets but in my experience if your stepper driver pot is tuned right the motors should never get that hot.

Once you have your printer up and you are turing it and running through the filament - I recomment an opaque filament. With the transluscent filament it is a lot harder to see how well the layers are matching up and if you have ooze.

thanks for all the help lads ordered some transluscent white and solid black..