 It's time we talk about the bamboo lab refillable filament spools and how they can save you money no matter what 3D printer you're using. My name's Jim and this is the Edge of Tech. If you didn't already know this, when you order filament from bamboo lab, you can order with a spool or without. When you order it with a spool, you get something like this. And when this is empty, you end up with a spool like this and it's refillable. You simply just buy a refill like we have here, drop it on and you're ready to use the spool again and best of all, it saves you money. Now, I know what you're thinking. This is too tough. It's going to take too much time. What if the spool goes crazy and unwinds? Well, I'm here to tell you that it's actually very simple to do. If you stick around towards the end of the video, I'm going to show you how to save a bunch of money ordering filament from bamboo lab as well. Let's jump into it. So when you get your refill, it's going to come in a box that looks pretty much just like any other box you order. With a spool included. The difference is on the front of the box, this one does not say with spool and the other ones will. So you want to open up your box and take your refill out like this and right away you'll see that it's wrapped nicely and it has some instructions. We're going to set those aside because I'm going to show you how to do it here. And I'm going to set the packing aside as well right over there. Now you want to take the spool and remove it from the plastic. Don't worry. It won't go flying everywhere. It is held together. So you can remove it from the plastic just by cutting into it and peeling it open or cutting it with a scissors or whatever you want to do to open it up. That's fine with me. If you're a crazy person like me, save your desiccant. You can use it in other things or or in dry bags, that kind of thing. For now, I'm going to toss mine over there. It's very important that you do not cut the straps you see. There's one, two, three, four straps. Don't cut them at this time. We're going to get there. Just remove the filament from the packing and let's go to the next step. Now grab the empty spool you have like this and simply twist it apart and it'll come apart like that. This one, I actually removed the cardboard from the center already. A lot of times there's going to be a cardboard center and you want to take that out. This one didn't have it in there. So there you go. Just make sure you get the cardboard out before you put the new spool in. Now, before we go any further in the center of your new spool, there'll actually be a little label. This is a brand new label for the spool. We'll talk about this in a minute, but for now we're going to set that aside. On the new spool, you want to look around the cardboard until you find the little notch and you'll see it notched out in the cardboard right by the RFID tag. And on the actual filament spool, you'll want to find the tab that looks just like that notch. Then we're going to take our spool. We're going to press it down on the tab. So the tab and the notch meet up and it should all just fit together. You might have to twist it a little bit to make it fit in, but it should line up with that notch and you'll be good to go. Now that actually was the hardest part. So don't worry, we're almost done. Now is a great time to jump in and tell you about today's sponsor, PCBway. They offer custom PCBs, CNC work and 3D printing services. That's right. They offer a ton of different materials and filaments that you can't do at home. Maybe like metal. I can't wait to check out metal 3D printing. It's coming, I promise. They have an awesome website and their customer service is always on standby to answer any questions you have. So if you want to check out PCBway for your next project, hit that link in the description below and check them out. I promise it's going to be a great experience. You're going to get some amazing parts and PCBway will not do you wrong. Thank you so much PCBway for sponsoring this video. Now back to it. Now what you want to do is grab the other half, set it on the plastic spool and spin it till it locks in just like that. Once you spin it and secure it, your spool is good to go. It's not going to go anywhere unless you take it back out. Now it's time to get your new spool filament free on the plastic spool. So what we want to do is kind of look around and find the end of your filament right here and hold on to it. You don't want to let that go while you're pulling any of the straps out because it could just go flying and get tangled and we don't want that to happen. Then you want to look for the plastic straps that are holding everything together and there should be a little tab you can just pull. And once you pull that tab, the whole plastic strap will just come apart. There we go. So once you pull it, just simply pull it out from the spool like that. I like to take the end of my filament and put it in the edge of my spool. That way I know it's not going to go anywhere when we take the last three straps off. So repeat the steps on the other three straps by simply pulling them and pulling them out. Your filament is good to go. You can drop this on the printer and it's like it came like this from the factory. It's really good. It maybe takes two minutes to do. It really is super fast. I think it took longer for me to film this than it did to actually do it by a long shot. Something we didn't talk about yet is the sticker that came with it. You're going to use this sticker on the side of the spool if you're changing types of filament. So in this case, this is PLA basic. The spool was from PLA basic. I don't have to change the sticker. But if you put a roll of PETG or something like that on this or maybe some PLA mat or something like that, you want to take your sticker and put it right over where it says what kind of filament it is. And then you can use it from there and you'll be able to identify your filament. Now let's talk about how you can save money no matter what printer you're using the bamboo lab spools on. If you jump on the bamboo lab website right now, you can see that the PLA basic is $27.99 a roll. And if you buy the refill by checking the little refill button there, you'll notice it drops $3 down to $24.99. That's a $3 roll savings if you already have these spools and why not save some money. But it gets even better if you own a bamboo lab printer. Then you're eligible for the bamboo lab filament membership program, which actually saves you a ton of money. This gets you some great benefits and the biggest one is how much money you save on their filament. If we jump on their website and look at the membership program, you can see here that if you grab two rolls of PLA basic, it goes from $27.99 down to $21.99 a spool. That's right, that is $6 difference and you get the whole spool for that. But if you just order the refills, that $27.99 spool goes down to $18.99. And that's just to get the refill to do what we just did today in like two minutes. Why not save yourself almost $10? Was that $9 a spool and order the refills? I mean, actually, that's a huge savings. But there's a catch as there always is. You can only order eight rolls of filament under the membership program. But I mean, eight rolls is pretty much more than a normal person is going to use a month. And why not save yourself what is that $72 a month? The difference between ordering eight of these spools and then eight just refills and using the membership program. I think it's $72 a month you could save. That's actually a pretty significant savings just for having a bamboo lab printer. Let me know what you think of the comments. Do you like the spools? Do you like refills? I think it's great for the environment too. Do you have the bamboo lab membership program? I'd love to hear if you're using it or if you're going to sign up now because I really do think it's going to save a ton of money. I believe you get like six months free or something when you buy your printer. So if you haven't signed up, jump on that because you should. You could save yourself money no matter how many spools from two to eight you buy. That's either real spools or refills or whatever you want to buy as long as it's two or more up to eight. I think it's super easy to do this. So why not load them yourself and save the extra money? I mean, like I said, nine bucks. That's a pretty significant savings for a spool of filament. There is a link in the description below and probably in the pinned comments. It'll take you right to their filaments. Check out that membership plan. And if you haven't seen this video, you definitely have to watch that one next.