General Notes on Colours

I bought some PLA recently in several different colours but all from the same supplier and I sort of expected it all to behave fairly similarly. However I have been amazed at how different they are. I have read various comments on the effect of colour elsewhere but thought maybe it would make sense to have this information somewhere easy to find and also to see if the results are consistent or just random.

So far, I have found Yellow to be "the best" but with a tendency to form lots of thin hairs between extrudes, seems to need a higher temperature though.

Black has been the worst, I am really struggling to get a good result, big bulges on corners and lots of lift at edges and corners especially if even slightly overhanging.

Do people have colours that they have found particularly good? I sort of expected the black to be good as it often is with injection moulding, but my (admittedly meagre) experience so far makes me think that "natural" might be best...

George

Where did you buy it from? I have tried 3mm PLA from several different suppliers, and they are very different. The last rolls I bought from supply3dpla.com behaved exactly the same across three colours, but I know these colours were from the same batch at the factory. Other PLA from the same shop behaves different and extrudes at other temperatures.

As I understand it the colour is done by mixing pigment into clear plastic, so with stronger colours there are more pigment material which can alter the filament slightly. This might be why your black PLA is different, since if a batch of colour is botched it's common to just colour it black to save the batch.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

Kind of hard to compare with so many different vendors (and resellers) out there....my green PLA is likely very different. Every batch can also be different.

I have two spools of 'nuclear green' ABS that are quite different, likely made 4 months apart from the same source.

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[johnbiehler.com]

I think natural PLA and natural ABS print better than any coloured ones. The pigment can have big effects, but I don't think any are positive.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

I have printed PLA with the same settings in 14 different colors without any problems. But then I print at 210°C (uncalibrated) so maybe printing at a higher temperature than necessary negates the differences due to the variations in formulation for the color...

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Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

I had black, yellow, blue and red PLA from mendel-parts.com and while the others were pretty much the same, the red was a lot softer than the others. So much that you could feel it immediately when trying to cut the filament with blunt(ish) cutting tool.