BambuLab PolyCarbonate (PC) - Does it matter if it is black or white? (or transparent?)
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- Опубліковано 4 лют 2025
- BambuLab PolyCarbonate filaments in 3 different color: Clear Black, White and Transparent. Is there any bigger difference in Mechanical Properties? PC filament has great mechanical properties, but is there any difference between colors? All test objects are printed using the same gcode with BambuLab X1C 3D printer.
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The inspiration for the intro joke, the music from my childhood: • Michael Jackson - Blac...
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:44 Specifications
1:14 Unboxing
1:57 Slicer, settings
2:18 3D printing
3:01 Transparency
3:17 Shrinking
3:45 Tensile test
4:04 Layer adhesion
4:24 Shear test
4:54 Torque (twist) test
5:22 Bending test
5:50 Temperature test
6:19 Creep test
7:31 Impact test
8:09 Results
11:00 Conclusions
#3dprinting #polycarbonate #bambulab
As a fellow "big gravity man" I appreciate the joke 🤣 Also, thank you for all the testing that you are doing on all the materials.
I switched from ASA to Mix Polycarbonate with PETG, it doesn't smell at all, excellent interlayer adhesion and prints perfectly. (with a heat chamber)
what brand?
great video as alwyas. looking forward to the paa-cf video
Hey, do you see a noticeable more interest in PC? Not everybody has a printer that prints near 280ºC
I printed in the P1S for mechanical parts using Polymaker PC, and it was a struggle. There was shrinking and adhesion issues, I had to use glue otherwise it would not stick to the bed.
Most of nowaday printers can print up to 300°C and for example a very popular P1S don't need upgrade for printing with PC (unlike for those PA6 CF, GF filaments)
@@ingGSDropping layer height to
@@iemozzomeiI have read that for PC it's super helpful to print with *very wide* extrusions, like up to 0.75 mm line width. (E3D Mk6 0.4mm nozzles have a flat tip that is 1.0 mm across, so 0.75mm is still entirely squished into place.)
ever since i started printing it became clear to me the color matters to!
nice to see tests proving that.
Thank you for the video. Very interesting to see how the different color affects material properties, I haven't seen any tests on youtube about this before. And it seems color indeed does affect it! :)
i wish you had a big chart comparing all the materials you've tested so far!
Would be interesting to see the VOC / Particle emissions of these filaments. There have been a few videos on this but no one with as much of a scientific approach as you. Plus more data is better :). Many filaments get doped with chemicals to print faster or to look glossy etc. One filament that we think is "safe" may end up being not so safe to be around when printing.
I am waiting for two testing equipments for this. Soon...
It will be far better than ABS and ASA and other styrene-group polymers. Perhaps just as importantly is what lingers in/on the printed part after it comes out of the printer.
I'm actually building a Nevermore Mini VOC recirculating enclosure filter with particle and VOC sensors right now before I start printing PC! I was inspired to make one when I found out that polycarbonate is literally polymerized bisphenol A, aka BPA.
The recommended print setting from Bambu Lab is 0 to 60% fan. You need higher fan speed for higher print speeds and overhangs. For higher impact resistance , stick with zero fan or as little as possible like 10%.
This applies to every PC blend I have tried.
I believe the stock Bambu PC profile uses 60% fan.
Same experience here. You can get pretty prints with fan on, but interlayer stress is horrible and you're prone to layer splits during use. If you have a stress annealing oven I suspect this is a non-issue, but I haven't had time to test it.
I am curious because I never printed with Polycarbonate 🤫
I have the feeling, that BL will soon have CF version too. That would resist fantastic to bending. (They have ASA-CF now) They are faster with publishing, than I am with testing.
@@MyTechFunAny opinion on the ASA-CF based on Bambu’s website? It seems to be a very odd in-between material.
hi, I was waiting for this one :) ok so they have very low impact resistance, same as polylite PC but that one has higher tensile and lower cost, interesting :) thanks and can't wait to see pa and ppa :)
Pretty impressive material. Crazy how brittle it is though!
Woo! I'm excited to see the results here. I'm looking to start printing PC, so this is perfect timing. Was part cooling used at all for any parts of the prints? I think you can open up the gcode in the viewer, and one of the options in the menu, that defaults to "Feature type," I think is "Fan speed." Thanks as always for your videos!
2:51 the white version can be seen lifting off the print bed whilst printing. I've had adhesion and shrinkage issue when printing Bambu PC
PC is in some aspects a very strong material, but often also very weak. I read somewhere that the impact resistance is highly variable depending on notch size. PC also develops very easy cracks under dynamic loads (e.g. vibrations) as I can see on my motorcycle rally windscreen. Therefore, for parts on my motorcycle I use now Nylon or ASA.
This is going to depend on additives. At least for billet polycarbonate I've used the notched impact was very good compared to alternatives. Used for mechanical elements of an EV battery.
Add "mouse ear" brim on sharp 90° corners to prevent that lifting ;)
PC is great, its one of only a few materials I'm interested in printing. The odour is low compared to ABS and ASA and it doesn't deposit PAH residue in the printing chamber.
Had to go back and check your old prusa pc blend test, i dont find it very brittle, and i use it for all kind of mechanical parts
Idea: add another torque test where you measure the torque required to permanently deform a 3/8in square hole in a 5 or 10mm thick plate. PolyLight PC Transperant currently holds the record in my books at 42Nm. I can gladly send you my testing STL
If I understand correctly, I have to place the object in a vase and I have to use a torque meter and rotate it until it skips in the square hole (probably I would like to use 1/4 inch version). Are you using solid objects or with some infill? Send me the STL, so I can understand it correctly. My email you can find on About page (YT channel).
@@MyTechFun You understood correctly, only that i don't turn the torque meter a full 90° for my testing. I only turn it about 10-20° to find the maximum torque this material can take without a plastic deformation. I mostly used the factory 0.2mm "Strength" setting on a 0.4mm nozzle.
This testing originated from trying to find the best material for printing a torque adapter to tighten a wiper seal on a hydraulic cylinder. Email is send
Its weird that the colors have such a dramatic effect on the heat test
Yes, first time that I can see this kind of difference between colors.
I think that filaments should be dried to provide a comparable baseline between various products
bambulab filaments come dry.
I don't understand what companies are doing with their PC blends. I have seen a lot of inconsistencies in PC impact strengh. The highest impact strengh I have ever tested was PC (and it should be) but I also encountered a lot of brittle PCs. I suspect PC is also very sensitive to printing temperature for it's toughness.
That irritated me as well.
From the tests I've seen Polymax PC seems to be the best when it comes to impact resistence.
Other PC filaments act like a completely different material.
Polymax is explicitly a blend I believe
PC always seems to be some "blend", but nobody seems to say what they blend it with or how much other material is in there.
That reason is that pure PC would not print very well so all the manufacturers have to add their own blends of additives to make it printable and usable. Its a bit like all the PLA varieties but more extreme because PC is a much more difficult polymer to make cooperative and practical for FDM printing.
@nucleochemist The toughest PC I have used wasn't harder to print than others, so I still don't understand why some decide to sacrifice the main characteristics that justify the use of PC over other plastics.
The Bambu Labs filament guide says that drying before use is REQUIRED for PC.
Yes, it says. But I know that 95% of users will not dry it. And this is the state I want to test.
And it should be dry fresh out of the sealed bag, correct? If not I would question the value @ usd$40
it comes dry
Could you test the new Prusament Woodfill filament?
I could, but I can see it's mostly for the looks. I don't think that mechanical testing makes sense here.
Have you ever tried printing the new Bambu PETG HF on a non Bambu printer like the Qidi x max 3? If so, did it print with a similar result?
Is the black one transparent? can i make a lithophane from it?
I'm obviously watching your videos out of sequence. I'm glad you discovered scientific rigor or at least the idea of controlling variables eventually.
But how did you get a PhD without understanding this concept?
So brittle! Much more brittle than Pollymaker’s PC. Do you think drying the filament or turning down the fan would improve impact strength?
Love your channel!
That is some exceptionally brittle material! That really limits the use in some cases, but I suppose that is what PA and PA-CF is for.
We will find out soon (next week probably PA6 videos)
@@MyTechFun I will await your excellent testing before I go for a specific PA6 then! As always, good work
PC can also be really different, Polymaker for example even has different ones where the transparent is very stiff and brittle and the solid color one is very impact resistant.
Good to know Bambu is always the same pretty much, just sad it makes it useless for me.
Less shrinking or warping than PA though. I have found PC works for some mechanical situations where PLA will clearly fail and PETG is also not good enough. I personally dont like working with ASA and ABS due to the smell so I dont compare it to these 'typical engineering materials'.
@@nucleochemist I use a Qidi machine so I have a heated chamber as well as an enclosed printer, making warping far less of an issue.
Nylon is just a wonder material and I feel like most blends of PC don’t stack up.
The purer PC blends that print at 300C or higher are pretty insane though.
I got PLA+ from Jayo and the black is incredibly strong... but the Silver SILK PLA I got from them is extremely weak in comparison. It looks really nice, but it crumbles compared to the Black PLA+. It's hard to believe that the same kind of plastic can be so strong, but so weak at the same time. Now I'm afraid to try all the different colors, because I have no clue how strong they'll be in comparison.
How does the strength of pc and pa compare to pla
I hope this answeres your question: ua-cam.com/video/vKNCV-blJzI/v-deo.htmlsi=OTahk1twAZ1EDNvw
I just bought 18 rolls of Creality value PLA ... at $9 per roll, delivered !
Haven't tested them yet. I'm hoping they are OK :)
That's nearly 40lbs of filament lol! Great deal though! I guess this was a flash sale that recently went on? I saw kingroon was recently doing a deal of 10 1kg rolls of petg for $9 a roll and I nearly jumped on it.
@@AtomicBleach Yes flash sale. I'm a sucker for a good deal.
I received them yesterday. They look fine. Vacuum seals intact an all.
I won't be able to test them just yet. But in the coming week I guess.
@@ZappyOh at this point I've been burned too many times with wet filament right out the vacuum sealed bag that I just dry all my filament first. You see such a boost in quality and stringing that it's worth having at least one half decent dryer. Think I picked mine up on a Amazon flash sale for like $30
@@AtomicBleach I agree ... I got 2 dryers and a big dry-box for half-used rolls. So the moisture problem is fixed for me :)
I love watching your videos, as you are very thorough in your testing. In this case I'm however unsure if the conclusions of the video is correct.
I just watched CNC Kitchen's review of Prusament PC Blend, which concludes that their PC variant completely beats ABS - Especially in impact strength, which he measures to around 200% of ABS. I was therefore expecting the Bambu Lab PC variant to be somewhat similar - and definitely not much worse than ABS in impact strength, which was your conclusion.
I'm wondering if the decision of not drying the filament, even though Bambu Lab writes that it must be dried for 8 hours at 80 degrees celcius before printing, in fact is the reason why you got so bad impact strength results.
If so, the conclusion should not be "This PC blend is extremely brittle", but "This PC Blend is extremely brittle if you decide not to follow vendor recommendations for drying prior to printing". Printing with 60% cooling instead of 10-20% probably also make the issue worse, even if it's the default in the Bambu Studio profile.
Any chance you could do a small follow-up video - or just write a follow-up comment - regarding the impact strength, to ensure that the Bambu Lab PC Blend in fact is so bad as you concluded in this vodeo? That could very well be the case, but right now it feels like they are getting blamed for a bad product, but based upon a testing method that isn't really fair (or useful for assessment of the filament properties or comparison with other filaments).
I hope you will consider it. Thank you in advance.
To me the conclusion is that the color has little impact on mechanical properties. The variation you showed here is not significant compared to what I have seen in other materials. The only thing that I find significant is the shrinkage, and it makes so much sense now why I always have more issues with clear PC vs black PC.
Every Coloring acts like some sort of filler. So the most "authentic" values you would get with "natural" color of the plastics... In theory... In real life every company blends something into their Material. And so the named Filamenttyp is only "the main" component... That is why all brands behave different in testings. AND the next question is. Is the brand really the manufacturer or are they only seller and do they source from different manufacturers... Then every testing is useless... It even is important where they source there granules...
@@Haunter1982 Seems true, for example many PCTGs are advertised as odorless, which mine is definitely not. Sometimes it's advertised as food safe and suitable for medical instruments, sometimes there is asterisk that it's valid only for transparent (natural) one. When I will run out of transparent PETG, i may try transparent PCTG from Filalab which someone said is completely odorless, atm I have black one from Extrudr. And about color, I feel like white vs black matte PLA from Bambulab are almost different materials with different layer adhesion and break type.
Thanks for testing the color differences. 4:38 And please wear eye protection when you're shattering plastic, so you can continue making these videos. :) ua-cam.com/video/NfW_uNDZUb8/v-deo.htmlsi=M7u9CV6dlnld9XBx
Hmm.. printing out of box destroyed the test, they should all have been dry as can be.
they were dry, otherwise you would see bubbles.
Hee hee!