Best PLA for everyday 3D printing

PLA, or Polylactic Acid, is a biopolymer used in FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) 3D Printing amongst other things, and the reason it is used so often is for two main reasons. One is that it is quite inexpensive for the base resin, and two is that it is incredibly easy to print with compared to other thermoplastics used in 3D Printing.

While plain PLA can be printed incredibly easy and gives you a stiff, weighty part, that might not always be what you are looking for, so companies can modify the plastic for other uses. You can buy PLA+ filaments that are a little less stiff but are therefore more impact resistant, you can get matte filaments, stone or metal-filled filament even ones that glow in the dark or have carbon fibre in them, and we're looking at a few of our favourites here.

The best everyday PLA needs to be something that is consistent batch to batch, relatively inexpensive, and is available in a wide array of colours for whatever you need to print, and I cannot think of a better material that embodies this than Jessie PLA from Printed Solid. At $20 a kilogram for their standard colours, and just a dollar more for their glitter filled sparkle filaments that they make on site at their facility in Newark, Delaware.

Made in the USA, with great repeatability and quality control, Jessie PLA has fans all over the US and it is no wonder why, the colours are great, the prices are woth it and the company is always happy to talk to customers in case there is an issue, and more comapnies could learn a thing or two from David at Printed Solid.

Matterhackers is a force to be reckoned with in the 3D printing world, not only are they a retailer for machines but they make and distribute filaments as well, from their "Build series" lower cost range to their higher-end "Pro series", and what we're talking about here is an offshoot of that higher-end Pro series.

Pro Series Tough PLA is a modified PLA that has been designed to take PLA to the next level and effectively act like ABS in many ways, whilst you don't get the heat resistance or chemical welding abilities of ABS, you do get the ability to drill and tap 3D printed parts, they're more ductile than standard PLA and closer to ABS, which means a drop is less likely to end in a cracked or damaged part.

You can also anneal Tough PLA, what does that mean? in layman's terms, it's about slowly heating a material up to a point wherein it releases the built-in stresses, this makes a stiff and brittle material more ductile and more impact resistant, in 3D Printing it also enabled you to increase the heat resistance, and Tough PLA can withstand temperatures or up to 85c after annealing, very neat.

Value means a lot of different things for different people, for some it is the cheapest item possible, for others its the best mix of price, performance and availability, I happen to fall into the latter, which is why I think that Jessie PLA from Printed solid is the ultimate value PLA in the US.

Made in Newark, Delaware onsite, Printed Solid have 38 colours of Jessie PLA, 31 of which are standard colours and 7 of which are high glitter content fancy ones, and the difference between them both? A DOLLAR. A kilogram of PLA for $20 is already cheap, a Kilogram of US made PLA is insane, what is even better is the batch to batch reliability of the colours and diameter accuracy of Jessie PLA. Printed Solid even offer Jessie in the much less popular but still used 2.85mm format, so those of you rocking older Lulzbot machines or the stuff from Ultimaker and BCN3D you're still covered.

Flexibility isn't really what you think of when you initially think of PLA, in fact, it is one of the stiffest printing materials outside of carbon fibre-filled materials, but maybe you can't print TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) on your printer but you want something with a bit of give, that's where Flexible PLA comes in, and nothing does it better than Ataraxia Art's PLA+

Flexibility is measured on the Shore scale, either Shore A or Shore D, they aren't directly comparable but they both go by the rule "the higher the number the stiffer it is" therefore a 95A TPU is much stiffer than a 60A TPU, and the softer it is the harder it is to print, imagine trying to push wet spaghetti through a straw that's only a little bit bigger than the spaghetti, it's very difficult.

So what if I told you that Ataraxia Art's patented PLA+ is 89A, softer than most standard TPUs, and EASIER, to print. the rule of thumb for printing with flexible is that you turn the speeds really far down, up until a few years ago, printing TPU above 25mm/s was unheard of, you were a crazy person. but Ataraxia Art's Flexible PLA+ is able to be easily printed at up to 90mm/s, our own Chris Wedel has printed parts using it at 80mm/s on His Flashforge Adventurer 4 and it came out a dream, in fact, the images here are from Chris and printed on the Adventurer 4.

Whether it be phone cases, impact absorbers for doors, rubber feet for your furniture or heck, maybe you just want to try a 3D Printed wallet out, Ataraxia Art's Flexible PLA+ is so newbie friendly, it offsets the higher cost, with 12 colours, you're likely to find something that is your taste as well.

One thing people don't think about with 3D Prints is weight, if you're printing props, a 50g hand plate, a 300g shin guard and a 500g helmet, that adds up quickly. On the other hand, RC planes are a popular thing to 3D print, but you want those as light as possible, any extra weight is more stress on the motors and then you need a bigger battery, its a vicious cycle, so in comes colorfabb LW-PLA, or Light-Weight PLA.

LW-PLA is embedded with a special foaming agent that, when it hits a certain temperature starts to create bubbles and expand, whilst this is usually a bad thing, in a controlled way you can foam up the filament and trap air to take the place of filament that was once there, leaving you with a print that, at full foaming can be 65% lighter than an unfoamed part! this also means that a single 1KG roll of filament is roughly equivalent to 2.2 rolls of 1kg filament.

not only is it significantly lighter, but LW-PLA also sands incredibly easily and is easy to paint and prime, another real boon for Cosplay and props. The one major downside, outside of cost for LW-PLA is that because of the nature of the foaming, retraction doesn't really work, meaning there will be little strings and boogers for you to clean up, thankfully they just pop off with your finger.

What is amazing about LW-PLA is that you don't need a high-end printer or extruder to print it. I printed helmets on my Anycubic Kobra Max. the Kobra Max has a Bowden extruder and a PTFE lined hotend. I printed it on my Voron V0.1 with an all-metal hotend with a direct drive extruder and both printed flawlessly. Something that is traditionally a problem with bowden extruders, namely oozing and stringing is unavoidable with this material anyway, so it opens you up to using it in more places.

Bottom line

So for me, the bottom line is that for most people, for most things, picking up some Jessie PLA from PrintedSolid is the best thing you can do. A great mix of low-cost, high-quality filament, with good consistency, so you can rely on buying 5 rolls that the colours will match between them, something I have experienced not being the case with other manufacturers with more expensive filament.

Printed Solid has a truly expansive swathe of colours available, but they also recently bought the rights and recipes to a fan favourite, Polyalchemy Elixir, the original "silk filament" with my favourites being "Emerald City", I can't wait for Printed Solid to bring it back and maybe introduce new colours.

So that's why Jessie PLA is my best pick for the ultimate PLA for most things, it's ludicrously cheap at $20 per kilogram for USA-made filament, and the company is always ready to help the customer in any way whether it be on social media, their customer support line or more.