What happens to the filament left over at the end of a production run? AzureFilm winds it into "mix" spools of PETG and silk PLA and sells them for less. You never know which colours you'll get, and that's half the fun.
What is an AzureFilm mix spool?
Back in mid-2021 I bought a few of these. The idea is simple: AzureFilm takes what's left over from its normal spooling and combines it into a 1 kg spool of PETG or silk PLA made of three or four different colours. It's not a proper rainbow filament, which would need much more care in production. You just get one colour flowing into the next. I paid around 17 euros instead of the usual 23 or 24, so more than 30% cheaper.
Lucky and not-so-lucky spools
The catch is that you don't know what will be shipped to you. My first PETG spool started with a very dark, vivid blue, then turned clear and then green. Another one went from red to orange to yellow. Those two were beautiful. The "unluckiest" one was a caramel colour that fades into an opaque grey and ends as transparent PETG. Honestly, I still love it and I'm using it right now.
Print quality is the same as AzureFilm's regular PETG, which I already rate highly. I didn't use any special settings, just my normal PETG profile on the Artillery Sidewinder X1. Most of what you see in the video was printed in vase mode with a 0.8 mm nozzle at a very low speed, and the colour shifts look amazing on those shapes.
The silk PLA mix
My fourth spool was the silk PLA mix, and here I got lucky: every shade of blue, from a very bright blue that slowly gets lighter and lighter until it's almost clear. On a vase it looks stunning.
The vases in the video are designed by Ivan, a Russian designer who releases a new one every week. They're modern, easy to print and look great in different colours. Thank you, Ivan, for letting me try them.
My take
If you buy a couple of mix spools you might end up with colours that probably nobody else has. Just keep in mind that you won't be able to reproduce the same colour in another print. To me that makes every print unique.