PLA colours (colors) and print quality

So far I have bought some sky blue PLA as well as some chocolate brown PLA from a popular NZ supplier. I have been printing a lot with the sky blue and it is a real joy to print with for a noob - flows clean and smooth and printed products look nice when finished.
I haven't got my heated bed running yet by the way.
Anyway, yesterday I started printing with chocolate brown and it is a lot harder to get right. The first few prints I have done have gotten caught up with the printer head and a couple of times have caught the x-carriage and caused it to slip the x-axis belt. Adding a fan hasn't helped although I am still refining my fan arrangement so maybe if I get this fixed it might harden before it catches the hotend.
So I have ordered some yellow PLA now which is described as having "great print quality" so I am hoping it will print like the sky blue.

Is there some trick to printing with certain colours that I am unaware of?

And what other colours have you used that are either easy to use or a pain in the butt?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 10:09PM by Wired1.

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Richmond, New Zealand
Thingiverse ~ YouTube

So far the only colour that gave me trouble was a roll of dark green, every other colour has been fine. I haven't tried another roll of that green since so don't know if it was a one off. I only buy from the source you are using and have used 600m of red 300m purple, 300m dark blue that I know of so far with no problems.

So it could be a simple bad roll

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

Might be my setup too I have increased the layer height to 0.4mm and it has fixed the print head catching so I might just use it up for quick projects and use the nice stuff for precision. I need to make the Z-axis limit switch a bit more accurate and set the head better.

What is the relationship between print head height and layer thickness? do you need to adjust z-axis height to allow for thicker layers?
I was printing at 0.3mm layer height and set the z-axis at the two layers of printer paper you suggested. Now I'm thinking it needs to be at least the same as the layer height so should be 0.3mm? and to print at 0.2mm could be less. I suppose the extruded filament will flatten out slightly too.

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Richmond, New Zealand
Thingiverse ~ YouTube

All colours do behave slightly differently

I love the way Amber tint behaves.
blue tint I never got bridges to work very well.. But I didn't get a lot of time to test.
red tint, orange, yellow,black, glow in the dark, dark blue and green where all very good
Purple was slightly rougher, but that was early on, so was probably me.
White is fine, but boring.

Silver I found difficult to print with..


All PLA, haven't tried any others (yet)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2012 02:02AM by Dust.

you are re measuring the filiment thickness when you change colour and updating your software with the new value? they are all slightly different thicknesses.

Dust Wrote:
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> you are re measuring the filiment thickness when
> you change colour and updating your software with
> the new value? they are all slightly different
> thicknesses.




I used too but for what i have been making it didn't matter.

Project is on hold now while we get this move to Chch sorted. I'm here and off house hunting in the morning so family can follow at the end of the month

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

I've printed in Natural, Black, Kiwi lime, and gold. I found the gold to be a little more troublesome than the rest, I think it's a little harder and more likely to slip on the hobbled bolt.

That sounds like the brown problem I was having. I increased the feeder tension and it worked a little bit better but it still globs out and catches the head. I have gone back to sky-blue and it is printing perfectly again.
I might also have something to do with how much it warps - ie brown might warp more than the blue and as I still haven't gotten my hot bed working it may go away when I sort that out.

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Richmond, New Zealand
Thingiverse ~ YouTube

This week I got in some awesome yellow PLA which I haven't printed with yet, but with it they sent me some samples of ruby, clear, white, black and a new one called IMPLA which is a tougher version of white. I have tried all of the new colours except the IMPLA (I'll save that for something needing toughness) and the black and white are excellent, and the clear and ruby are almost as good. I am still printing on a cold bed so I will try then all again when I get the heating on. At this rate I will have a spare set of printer parts in harlequin colours in no time.

I slightly buggered my x-axis idler end when I was building my Prusa so I have been intending on printing out a new one but I want to wait for my hotbed to be working as anything over 50mm warps and on something that high I think it might be an issue.

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Richmond, New Zealand
Thingiverse ~ YouTube

Hot bed up and running today and a noticeable improvement in printing. I am building a reel holder for multiple rolls of PLA and the end caps are about 100mm in diameter and previously the four end caps I had made all warped slightly and a couple of them snagged the printer. This evening I printed out a perfect un-warped end cap in the troublesome brown and it looks amazing.

So some colours shrink more than other colours and so warp more if you are cold bed printing. I suspect the successes I had on a cold bed were due to the printer being in a warm room as a lot of the failures happend when the printer was out in the cold shed.

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Richmond, New Zealand
Thingiverse ~ YouTube

Humidity seems to make quite a difference too. My build quality took a noze-dive when it rained heavily outside.

I have only been printing in plain white PLA so far. I figured that I would get used to printing in just the one colour first, until I understood what I was doing.

Printing in yellow PLA today - smooth stuff.
[youtu.be]

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Richmond, New Zealand
Thingiverse ~ YouTube

Yes humidity makes a huge difference, just follow what the Americans say about this especially the ones from California or Florida

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

oh yeah, heat bed makes a huge difference. I was going to try build one, but then just bit the bullet and ordered a pcb one.