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Category: The best PLA for 3D printing
There are countless brands of plastics… which offer countless plastics… Find the best PLA for 3D printing here.
What is PLA?
PLA plastic or Polylactic acid (Polylactic acid) is a plastic material of plant origin, biodegradable. It is the most commonly used material in 3D printing because it is cheap and easy to use.
Be careful, yes it is biodegradable, but only in industrial composting, that is to say under high heat. In practice, I have not yet found a solution to recycle it.
Moreover, you have to be aware that the plastic you use is made of PLA…and many additives.
Finally, it is possible in theory to grind the scraps and rejects, and to melt them into a new filament. Unfortunately, there are not many companies that perform this operation.
PLA or ABS?
ABS has many advantages in terms of strength and temperature resistance. However, it is more difficult to print because it requires higher temperatures. It is made from petroleum, and gives off harmful fumes when printed. For all these reasons, I have never tried it, PLA being sufficient in all cases.
Which PLA?
And here’s the question everyone is asking: which PLA to buy? Personally, I always buy from Sunlu, because for me it is the best value for money (especially with the discount codes available here).
For a long time I ordered the cheapest PLA I could find for two reasons:
- It’s the cheapest…
- If a low-end PLA gets me my projects done, it’s an assurance that everyone else will manage to do the same with any plastic.
(I avoid Amazon Basics PLA, which comes with more packaging than the others).
Effectively, if I make a pedal, but it only holds up if I use a high-end, hard-to-find, and expensive PLA, that doesn’t make my projects accessible.
Before buying in quantity, or buying several colors at once, be aware that :
- PLA dries over time and becomes brittle. A spool that has been out of its packaging for 3 months will become brittle: the wiremay break at the extruder if the bend is too important.
- Changing PLA is always risky: even with very reputable PLAs, it sometimes happens for mysterious reasons that our 3D printer does not accept it…
1kg, 2kg, 3kg?
The amount of plastic is an important factor when purchasing. Except if you want to make a specific print with a specific color, I think that spools of less than one kilo are to be avoided.
The smaller the roll, the quicker you will have to ask yourself the question: is there enough PLA left to start a print? You will then be obliged to monitor the printing more frequently, which may be possible during the day, but is impossible at night… unless you wake up in the middle of the night…
So, ideally, we would prefer one kilo spools…or even more? Maybe not, as mentioned above, PLA dries so you shouldn’t take 3kg of PLA in one go, and then let 2kg dry…
Finally, the choices when looking for coils of more than a kilo are very limited.
The PLA+
PLA+ is a PLA…only better! There is no specific standard that controls the designation, and I have only tried two references, to which I have been faithful ever since. See for yourself the print quality (0.2 resolution):
Some might argue that the print quality of this plastic is a consequence of the printer setting, and that you can get the same quality with a cheaper PLA by setting your printer perfectly. Perhaps. That’s just my experience.