Filament: what 3D prints are actually made of

What filament is

Filament is a thermoplastic drawn into a thin strand, most often 1.75 mm in diameter, and wound on a spool. The printer pulls it into a hot nozzle, melts it and lays it down layer by layer. This way of printing is called FDM.

There are many kinds of filament, from everyday PLA through engineering plastics to flexible ones. Wikipedia has an overview, and the Prusa Research materials database has practical advice on the individual materials. Most filaments are also hygroscopic, meaning they draw moisture from the air, and damp filament prints worse.

The filaments we print with

We print on Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 printers with a 0.4 mm nozzle and use two materials. One part can have up to 4 colours.

• PLA, a material at €8 per kilogram. It suits most things for indoors, figurines, small boxes and prototypes.
• PETG, a material at €9 per kilogram. It withstands more heat and suits outdoor use or parts that carry a load.

If you are not sure which to pick, see the PLA vs PETG comparison.

How filament affects the price

We do not work out the price per piece from the price of a spool or from an estimate. We prepare the model for printing in a slicer, which counts the grams of material and the print time exactly, and the price comes from that.

The strength you choose has a big effect on weight, that is, the infill inside the part: light 10%, standard 15% and strong 40%. The difference between PLA and PETG on an ordinary part is usually small, often just cents.

Other materials

Besides PLA and PETG there are, for example, ASA for outdoor parts, ABS for technical parts or flexible TPU. We do not print those at the moment. If you really need one of them, write to us and we will tell you whether we can help.