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Multicolor purge waste: what it costs per part

In Bambu Lab's own example, a four-color cube at 0.2 mm layers needs 153 filament changes and throws away 83 g of filament. Enter the grams your slicer reports to see what flushing and the prime tower add to each part, and what a lower multiplier or more parts per plate would save.

Last updatedOct 17, 2026

MethodBambu Lab Wiki, Reduce Waste during Filament Change (edited Feb 11, 2026), accessed Oct 17, 2026

From your slicer

Values marked example are illustrative. The waste and change counts default to Bambu Lab's published cube example; the model weight is our example.

Per plate
Filament
What if

Waste per plate

Purge waste calculation
Waste cost per part$0
Filament cost per part, with waste$0
Other results
Waste share of all filament used0%
Grams per filament changen/a
At your multiplier, per part$0
With more parts per plate, per part$0

To price it, add the waste grams per part to "Grams each" in the quote builder, or to the filament grams in the cost calculator.

How this is calculated

  1. Waste per plate = flushed filament + prime tower. Per part = waste ÷ parts on the plate. Cost = grams ÷ 1,000 × price per kg.
  2. Share of filament = waste ÷ (parts filament + waste).
  3. Multiplier estimate scales only the flushed grams by your multiplier. Bambu Lab says the multiplier changes the flushing volume for every color pair (0.90 is 10% less), that the defaults "tend to be slightly higher than necessary", and that 0.8 or 0.9 is worth a test print. Too low shows as discolored layers. The prime tower doesn't change.
  4. More parts per plate assumes the parts share the same color changes, so flush grams stay the same and the parts filament scales up. That holds when the parts are the same height and colors; slice it to check.

Where to find the numbers: slice the plate and read the filament use and filament change count from Bambu Studio's sliced-plate summary, as Bambu Lab's guide does in its examples. Bambu Lab's guide also covers flushing into infill, support or a separate object, which turns waste into part material.

Sources

Bambu Lab Wiki, Reduce Waste during Filament Change (last edited Feb 11, 2026; accessed Oct 17, 2026): the cube example (153 changes and 83 g at 0.2 mm; 111 changes and 61 g at 0.28 mm), the multiplier guidance and the prime tower example (14.76 g, down to 9.05 g with color changes moved to the bottom).

Filament price: Bambu Lab PLA Basic, MSRP $15.99 per 1 kg roll ($12.47 each for 10 or more), Bambu Lab US Store, accessed Oct 17, 2026.

The model weight (40 g) is an example; Bambu's page doesn't state the cube's own weight.