My first ever matte filament. In June 2021 BIQU, part of BigTreeTech in Shenzhen, sent me their Navy Blue Matte PLA. It took some tuning, but once dialled in, the finish was exactly what I'd been looking for.
Tuning it in
I'll be honest: I had some trouble at the beginning. A few prints failed because of stringing, so I had to play with retraction, and some early vase-mode prints didn't turn out well. I also had an adhesion failure, with a print detaching from the bed.
My sweet spot was 215 °C with the bed at 60 °C, and a slower fan for the first 10 layers to help adhesion. I ended up printing this filament on four different printers before finding the perfect combination of filament and printer.
The matte look
My 3D Print Geek maker's cube at 0.2 mm came out decent, and you can see the layer lines. I think that's the matte finish: a shinier, slightly translucent filament would hide them more. But it can be a nice touch.
In vase mode I got a strange stringing-like effect I couldn't quite figure out on a couple of prints. Then, with the right printer, one vase came out brilliantly. That vase is the maximum expression of this filament, and that matte navy blue really adds something to a print.
Other prints
A fidget star still had some stringing, and I think I got the settings wrong, but it works. The MatterHackers filament astronaut, which I print in every filament I test, came out really nicely. I find it better than a calibration test for seeing how a texture handles curves. A little plankton monster had a bit of stringing on top, nothing a heat gun can't fix.