I ordered Sunlu Rainbow PLA filament from Amazon Prime and received it at my door in 2 days with free shipping. It is a standard 1.75mm 1kg spool of PLA filament with a ±0.02mm accuracy. However, further down in the description, it states ±0.03mm. Either way, this is much better than the typical ±0.05mm you get from most brands.
There isn’t much to the packaging for Sunlu’s Rainbow PLA other than the plain brown box you see here and a little opening on the side to identify the roll and sticker advising what it is. The roll came nicely vacuum sealed with one silica packet inside the sealed bag.
Sunlu Rainbow Filament Fun
My immediate first impression is that this is not like the other rainbow filaments I have used in the past. They have all been in what I would classify as a “silk” style PLA. Whereas this roll seems to be more of a traditional type PLA filament. I was expecting a conventional “rainbow’ filament to be brighter and louder in colours, but this rainbow has a softer, more muted tone to it. Compared to the other more garish colours I have printed with in the past, I thought this was a nice touch.
Is Sunlu Rainbow PLA up to the challenge?
I ran several prints on my Prusa mk3 with this Sunlu Rainbow filament with the most extended print totalling over 24 hours with zero issues. The first print I worked on was Link and Epona by artist Ismael Panadero. You can see his work on Artstation, his personal Facebook profile and purchase this file at the special stls group on Facebook. I chose this model, well because it’s freaking awesome and I also wanted to try something more challenging with a rainbow filament to see how it does and handles, and it did a fantastic job.
In a review on my Link and Epona print, the main issues were not that of the file or the rainbow filament, but that I tried to print it much too small on FDM. This ultimately resulted in some holes in my print. This entire model was printed on my Prusa mk3 and sliced on PrusaSlicer with mainly default settings. Print temp at 235c because my printer tends to run colder and 65c on the bed. The layer height on all pieces was 0.01, and I used a 20% infill for Link and Epona and 10% on the base.
Well, naturally I wanted to print something else Zelda themed and found this new file of Princess Zelda made by Jukka Seppänen on Myminifactory. I love this guy’s work and have printed a ton of the items he has made and posted on Myminifactory.
Zelda was printed in 2 parts. I printed her at 50% scale so she wouldn’t seem like a giant standing next to Link and Epona. Both top and bottom files were printed with no supports, the same settings as the first model, and 20% infill.
Finishing up with a pretty vase
At this point, I felt pretty satisfied with what this Sunlu Rainbow filament could do and decided to switch gears and printers altogether. I decided to print the Curved honeycomb vase found on Thingiverse by Eggnot. I loaded the file into Cura and used the stable version of the model to start. Then in Cura, I selected spiralised outer contour (vase mode). Then I adjusted the wall line count from 1 to 3. The layer height was set at 0.016mm, print temp at 215cc and bed heated to 65c. The rest of the settings on Cura were left at default. The vase was printed on my Creality CR10S Pro.
My only complaint and this is not just to Sunlu, but all the other brands of the rainbow I have tested. Make the colors change more often. I shouldn’t have to set crazy infill percentages to get more than one color on the print. In my point of view, this is wasting filament. I would prefer to see a more rapid changing option on the rainbow filaments. As you can see on Princess Zelda and Vase prints, there are no color changes at all. This left me feeling instead, “meh” at the end of a 10-hour print.
Sunlu Rainbow is awesome
I put this rainbow filament through some sturdy prints, and it did fantastically. Crazy supports are used with gravity-defying orientations. With the Sunlu Rainbow PLA filament paired with my Prusa still managed to work miracles. I do highly recommend this filament. This is a delicate filament that can make amazing finished pieces, but if needed, can produce some high detailed prints.
15% Off sunlu products Enter code LEHI1VGQ5G
Interested in more reviews on Sunlu filament then head over to, back to the basics article.