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What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: February 20th, 2016, 3:03 am
by Dim3nsioneer
I guess everyone of us has his/her own favorite PLA. But why is that specific material your personal benchmark? Share it here...

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: February 20th, 2016, 3:07 am
by Dim3nsioneer
OK, I'll start. Many of you know I'm printing only with PLA from Diamond Age Solutions in New Zealand. The main reason is the excellent overhang properties. Even steep overhangs come out very nice as it is cooling down fast and not curling. The only other material for which I've seen such an excellent overhang behavior so far is NGEN from Colorfabb. But Diamond Age PLA is more riggid.

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: February 20th, 2016, 4:24 am
by Neotko
The best for me it's smartmaterials pla coral color, it prints even better than my mint pla faberdashery. To debug printer problems I use sky blue smartmaterials. It prints worse but also since its so perfect 1.75 the contrast i color shows me any error on the feeder speed change. I use them for prototype not for final item. For overhangs I don't use pla, I go for carbonfill formfutura, but it isn't a precise material since works like wood filaments expanding a lot and covering any problem.

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: February 20th, 2016, 4:29 am
by Amedee
The Ultimaker light blue demo spool: if that one works, I'm all set :lol:

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: February 20th, 2016, 9:28 pm
by LePaul
I've had good luck with MatterMaker Pro Series but I am extremely fond of ColorFabb PLA/PHA I've been wary of trying out other brands since those two are on hand and consistently do well. Why waste a 4 hour print experimenting on filament lol

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: February 20th, 2016, 10:03 pm
by Anders Olsson
Amedee wrote:The Ultimaker light blue demo spool: if that one works, I'm all set :lol:
I gave that spool another chance when I was designing the torque wrench.
Thought that if I can make it print nicely in Ultimaker Blue PLA, it will print in any material:
2015-01-18-4860.jpg
Eventually I had to give up, as you can see :-? :lol:

Regarding PLA, I agree that Colorfabb PLA/PHA is quite nice, sometimes it feels a bit sticky though (maybe because I am used to ABS).
I had a spool of IGo3D Premium PLA which printed really well too.
In general I don't like the pure PLA filaments though, they tend to be very brittle and degrade by time.

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: February 20th, 2016, 10:13 pm
by LePaul
I printed that tonight

ColorFabb PLA/PHA Dutch Orange
image.jpeg

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: February 21st, 2016, 5:33 am
by Izzy
I've been doing a little bit of materials testing with various PLA and other materials available here in the UK, using 2.85mm print head, I print the standard UM robot, the cylinder volume flow test and a temperature range test, then correlate the results on an XL spread sheet.
My two favourite producers are Faberdashery & ColorFabb, both are very nice to print, Faberdashery wins as I can order any length and not just a 5m sample or roll. And available in lots of colours, Archetict's stone being a good one.

TwoBears BioFila, Linen (a Biopolymer Lignin) printing at 175'C is also a very nice print, although is only available in one colour, I can't get hold of Silk in 2.85mm to try it out.

Proto pasta have one called 'Aromatic Coffee', and is described as a high temperature PLA, and less pro to warping in the hot sun, only available in one 'Coffee' colour but does have the benifit of smelling like roasting coffee when being printed. Have yet to try 'Aromatic Pine'

Reprapper Tech Co, have a range of 'thermotemperature colour changing and UV colour changing PLA's which are fair to print.

In the UK my main suppliers being Faberdashery, Global FSD & ColorFabb for quality filaments.

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: April 21st, 2016, 6:42 pm
by danilius
I use 3dfilaprint.com for PLA, although having just recently gotten into PETG I think I will be using PLA a lot less.

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: July 18th, 2016, 1:50 am
by Hynut
ColorFabb PLA works just fine to print out my games related scale models. So have i have no problem with printing -- pretty accurate, durable and what is not less important, very affordable price.

Re: What is your PLA benchmark material?

Posted: July 18th, 2016, 10:33 am
by LePaul
Welcome, Hynut

I'm still having good look with ColorFabb's stuff. Some colors seem to flow differently than others for me. White is very tricky (still)

Matterhacker's Pro series PLA gave good results too. But I've stuck with ColorFabb PLA/PHA since it's a bit stronger and the price is right