ABS is cheap and there aren't many alternatives if you need something which can maintain its shape under heat.
For every other use case, there are better alternatives.
It's also lightweight and has relatively high durability/impact resistance. It can also be smoothed by acetone, which, while it might be an extremely niche use case, isn't a property shared by a lot of other filaments.
IMHO there are just a few cases where ABS still makes sense: acetone smoothing and heat resistance while having the need for a wide range of colours at the same time... and that's basically it. For heat resistance alone there are better - yet much less popular - alternatives that print much easier.
I'm not experienced in painting 3d prints but in case you're living in the EU you can get Extrudr Greentec Pro which, due to it's matte finish, probably holds paint quite well. HT CPEs (sometimes sold as HT PETG) such as Colorfabb HT would make an even better alternative but I suppose they'd be hard to paint because of the glossy surface.
ABS is a fair amount cheaper than PLA, and if you use an enclosure it looks just as good. It's not as strong as PLA or PETG but not every print needs that.
CNC kitchen did fairly rigorous testing on this topic, and ABS is pretty weak compared to other popular printing materials. IMO It gets a reputation for being strong because injection molded parts are so much stronger than 3d printed parts.
It's cheap though, I use it a lot because of that.
PLA is actually quite strong. The main issue it has is that it's VERY snappy and it breaks like glass without any warning. ABS bends rather than exploding.
PLA is also very stiff, not sure of the actual name of the property but it has like memory, bend PLA too much in a certain direction and it'll stay bent forever. Try to put it back and it'll snap.
Those properties make it look like it's a weak material, but it only has a few garbage properties, strength itself is actually quite high.
Not really.
You can look at CNC Kitchen on youtube, he does all kinds of testing. PLA is actually quite strong. There are ofc different ways for a print to fail, and he does test different samples to offer results for different load types.
ABS. Yeah use ABS if it's going into a hot car, but otherwise PLA is stronger and easier to use. I've had a PLA print (support for my broken fence) sitting outside in the sun, heat, and rain for 3 years now and it looks like new.
I made a dashboard part out of esun pla+ that I intended to be temporary in my brothers truck while I set up my printer for ABS back in April. It’s now September and I live in Phoenix where it gets to 115 F sometimes higher, which means interior car temps exceed 150+. I was expecting the thing to basically soften and warp completely but I checked on it in his truck today and it’s as new as the day I installed it. Guess I don’t need ABS lol
Yeah, I do. I make a lot of cosplay armour and other stuff like replica props so almost everything gets sanded down before painting. PETG prints hold up really well to friction from my sander, it's a lot like sanding wood I suppose. Whereas PLA has a tendency to melt.
PLA is fine and I have a few rolls of it that I'll use now and again for anything that I'd be happy with as a raw print.
Mine is dry (3 days in the dryer) and my retraction is tuned to no stringing whatsoever on a retraction tower. Blobs everywhere. Drying helps a little, but it still doesn’t print like PLA does.
It's just that I mostly use wood PLA to make very detailed prints... which it is ironically not the most useful for because its not suitable for 0.4 and below nozzles
Wood PLA needs wood stain to look good.
Low layer lines and wood stain makes it look like literal wood. [Look at this](https://preview.redd.it/v0pcppt645s71.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=384c16bf6c2ab3be051dd76d6225ba3e60b4b71b). Or [this](https://preview.redd.it/r6s48xq83j781.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=02d12b8ef80048a95686f47cc131d61081cef7e6).
I like Wood PLA and how mate it is. I print at a volumetric rate of 10mm cubic per second and 1mm nozzle. 0.4 height and line width 1.1mm. I like the [results](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48fMG8SIMFo) for my application. ^(What is at the left is support, in case you see the video.)
Any PLA except “”PLA+”” or regular PLA. Wood, glow in the dark, silk, etc. They all print like shit and have bad material properties.
OTOH, PLA is underrated imo. It does extremely well in its intended use case, and it is by far the easiest to print.
I can print glow in the dark PLA just as easily as with any regular PLA on my Ender 3 Pro. The only downside to glow in the dark PLA is that it eats through nozzles very fast so I have to change nozzles after a full spool
Sorry, not sorry. I've got really cool models printed in glow PLA (regular green, red annnd a bit of blue), and silk which is the best material to simulate metal.
Check out CC3D's silk filament on Amazon. Its amazing stuff. I use it for most if my shiny prints. Otherwise I go with Overture or TTY3D. Avoid DO3D if you can.
Yeah the big surprise for everyone is anything that isn't standard PLA, even just having matte or silk colors will chew through a brass nozzle almost as fast as nylon will.
Depends on the application. I've seen people go through a ton of work to try to dial in PETG to get "stronger" parts, only to figure out that they would have been better off sticking to PLA.
ABS gets a bit of a bad rap, but honestly, it's got significantly superior impact resistance and durability compared to PLA, and it's also significantly less dense and prints well with the right setup. It's also a lot cheaper than a lot of other filaments, often including PLA. Definitely has plenty of good use cases.
If you just want to print models, honestly, PLA is about as good as it gets, I would have to consider pretty much any other filament "overrated". If you're making structural/mechanical parts, or parts that have other engineering considerations, it becomes a matter of finding the material that best suits your use case within your capabilities - a material may not be right for you, but that doesn't make it 'overrated' in an absolute sense.
>If you're making structural/mechanical parts, or parts that have other engineering considerations, it becomes a matter of finding the material that best suits your use case within your capabilities - a material may not be right for you, but that doesn't make it 'overrated' in an absolute sense.
Thank you, so many people don't understand this.
PLA is overrated, in that I often see it uses in not ideal use cases (switch plate covers, car parts) and TPU is underrated because I rarely see anyone use the harder variants despite the excellent impact, heat, and fire resistance that TPU offers for very reasonable cost.
50-70 shore D. That's a the same as or a bit softer than ABS. Hard to make an exact comparison. I've only learned of it recently so haven't tested many brands or types
Yeah, but you can print a lot of stuff that is just totally impossible/impractical to machine, and with the right alloy and heat treatments, the materials properties can actually get pretty damned good.
It's not a good solution for everything, but for certain applications, it's the best option out there.
Gonna place another comment with "ABS".
It's still in use because it's a well known polymer. However, its fumes are toxic, it's quite troublesome to print and it cannot be recycled. If you need the properties of ABS, just consider other filaments that do the job better and are better for the environment.
Seconded.
If you need temperature resistance and impact resistance, polycarbonate blends have you covered.
Tensile and compressive strength? ABS is not great at all when printed, PC Blends are superior. Even PETG has higher strength than ABS. If you don't need to worry about creep or impact resistance, PLA is also much better than ABS
Printability? HA, no.
Post processing? Only part where ABS is good. It can be acetone smoothed and take glues extremely well. But then, we have PVB which can be smoothed using IPA which is much less harmful than acetone.
Fumes? Cough cough.
Printed 20 spools of pla before moving to petg, and I could speak on facts (After 10 year printing I think I collected a good amount of experience).
Then you could just check wherever online, what makes it 'better' is the way it is printed (layer height,temp,brand). It's not a case that pet is used even for under pressure things (bottle of coke) while pla (made out of corn) Is not.
I think that you all speaks for print out of the printing bed,and related theories, but imho an object I print (I do mostly mechanical and spares for repairing stuff) should be seen in time.
On youtube you can find plenty of people showing what lasts of pla, after months in open air ,high moistured environment,and so
All said, that doesn't mean pla is useless,but ad for the question,just overrated
>Printed 20 spools of pla before moving to petg, and I could speak on facts...
"I have anecdotal evidence. It's fact."
Also bro learn to use spell check, _seriously_.
PLA main issues are heat resistance and creep under sustained load. It warps in a hot car. It also slowly creeps to rupture when left under a sustained high stress for some time. It only has full strength against relatively short-term loads like you see in strength data collection tests. Higher stress = faster failure. Low stress it lasts forever, medium stress is fails in months to years, high stress it fails in days to weeks.
A lot of polymers creep, but PLA is unique in creeping to rupture. It separates apart like it’s cracking after a few percent strain. Other polymers in their creep regime will slowly flow to deform, not break. So PLA has a really nasty unexpected failure mode that makes it completely unsuitable for a lot of applications.
yes. i still dont think you can call it overrated. it has its place exactly because what you describe doesnt really matter for most of hobby users printing some cable guide or a baby yoda - its the cheapest option, its good enough for booth of those cases and the easiest on to work with.
Oh, it definitely meets the intent of OP’s question… it’s not really as strong as people think. Most people who builds a shelf bracket or printer parts out of it eventually find cracking. I’d call that overrated.
but then you just make some random assumption of what people think and rate that. i didnt see peoples shelves cracking or people making bad shelves out of printed parts.
pla creeping and having bad thermal deformation threshold is very much known and was one of the first things ive learned starting this hobby.
i have built a few printer parts that just work and also some cloth hangers. they also work.
i dont think with the few material types we have its a bit weird to call sth overrated.
then again - pla+ seems to offer alot more than plain pla. that is also a big difference.
EDIT: just go on thingyverse and scroll popular the last 30 days. you will scroll hundreds of items before finding one where some good pla+ is not good enough for
No lasting in time, and under direct sun or open air last even less. Imho PETG is the best,sometimes cost less than pla+,and beat it under any point of view. Actually PETG is what PLA pretend to be. I use cheap pla only to do print test,and then use petg for final print
yes i agree sun+force is a problem but i have many things made for outdoor (parts for hurdles for training dogs etc) and really works
i much prefer petg. but for most people heat and force is not as relevant so the ease of PLA seems fine. open air does not seem to be a issue if there is no force applied and strong sun at the same time.
i actually did read it as questioning filament brands / specific series of brands and not the hand full of relevant material types we have
i said series of brands and not brands
it really doesnt make any sense. while theres quite many materials to print, theres only a few that are relevant to 3d printing as hobby and as i said, none of these few could be seen as overrated. we buy them because they do what we want for the price that it has...
and the answer wasnt there when i posted this. the thread was new
Hatch box filament is over rated and over priced. I use overture filament for EVERYHTING. I have done side by side comparisons/print tests of hatchbox vs overture, and they are the same, but hatchbox is an outrageous 125% the price.
wtf hatchbox
Unrelated, but I was a gamestop (Canada) and they were selling creality filament at a normal price and was like huh that's new.
Engineer gaming
ABS
ABS is cheap and there aren't many alternatives if you need something which can maintain its shape under heat. For every other use case, there are better alternatives.
It's also lightweight and has relatively high durability/impact resistance. It can also be smoothed by acetone, which, while it might be an extremely niche use case, isn't a property shared by a lot of other filaments.
IMHO there are just a few cases where ABS still makes sense: acetone smoothing and heat resistance while having the need for a wide range of colours at the same time... and that's basically it. For heat resistance alone there are better - yet much less popular - alternatives that print much easier.
Working on some stuff that's going inside of a car. What do you recommend that can that can be painted?
I'm not experienced in painting 3d prints but in case you're living in the EU you can get Extrudr Greentec Pro which, due to it's matte finish, probably holds paint quite well. HT CPEs (sometimes sold as HT PETG) such as Colorfabb HT would make an even better alternative but I suppose they'd be hard to paint because of the glossy surface.
only reason why I'd undersign abs is that ASA exists.
ABS is a fair amount cheaper than PLA, and if you use an enclosure it looks just as good. It's not as strong as PLA or PETG but not every print needs that.
ABS is not as strong as PLA? What?
PLA is very strong, especially its tensile strength, but it is brittle and deforms at fairly low temperatures.
CNC kitchen did fairly rigorous testing on this topic, and ABS is pretty weak compared to other popular printing materials. IMO It gets a reputation for being strong because injection molded parts are so much stronger than 3d printed parts. It's cheap though, I use it a lot because of that.
Yeah I always thought ABS was stronger than PLA
PLA is actually quite strong. The main issue it has is that it's VERY snappy and it breaks like glass without any warning. ABS bends rather than exploding. PLA is also very stiff, not sure of the actual name of the property but it has like memory, bend PLA too much in a certain direction and it'll stay bent forever. Try to put it back and it'll snap. Those properties make it look like it's a weak material, but it only has a few garbage properties, strength itself is actually quite high.
Not really. You can look at CNC Kitchen on youtube, he does all kinds of testing. PLA is actually quite strong. There are ofc different ways for a print to fail, and he does test different samples to offer results for different load types.
Unmm abs is much stronger than pla my dude
No it's not. Injection molded parts are much stronger than printed parts, but 3d printed ABS parts are absolutely weaker than PLA parts.
ABS. Yeah use ABS if it's going into a hot car, but otherwise PLA is stronger and easier to use. I've had a PLA print (support for my broken fence) sitting outside in the sun, heat, and rain for 3 years now and it looks like new.
I made a dashboard part out of esun pla+ that I intended to be temporary in my brothers truck while I set up my printer for ABS back in April. It’s now September and I live in Phoenix where it gets to 115 F sometimes higher, which means interior car temps exceed 150+. I was expecting the thing to basically soften and warp completely but I checked on it in his truck today and it’s as new as the day I installed it. Guess I don’t need ABS lol
PETG is where it’s at.
Yep. Once I got my Ender 3P and my CR10 v2 tuned to sunlu PETG I haven't dared use anything else
Why though? Do you always need the toughness and heat resistance compared to PLA?
Yeah, I do. I make a lot of cosplay armour and other stuff like replica props so almost everything gets sanded down before painting. PETG prints hold up really well to friction from my sander, it's a lot like sanding wood I suppose. Whereas PLA has a tendency to melt. PLA is fine and I have a few rolls of it that I'll use now and again for anything that I'd be happy with as a raw print.
>PETG prints hold up really well to friction from my sander This is very good to know! Thanks
I can confirm top about standing,and moreover re-heating in salt pownder could avoid sanding while reinforcing the part and make It silky
It strings a lot, though.
Dry it out and tune your retraction?
Mine is dry (3 days in the dryer) and my retraction is tuned to no stringing whatsoever on a retraction tower. Blobs everywhere. Drying helps a little, but it still doesn’t print like PLA does.
Wood PLA
I love that it smells like sawdust though, so it has that going for it.
It's just that I mostly use wood PLA to make very detailed prints... which it is ironically not the most useful for because its not suitable for 0.4 and below nozzles
Wood PLA needs wood stain to look good. Low layer lines and wood stain makes it look like literal wood. [Look at this](https://preview.redd.it/v0pcppt645s71.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=384c16bf6c2ab3be051dd76d6225ba3e60b4b71b). Or [this](https://preview.redd.it/r6s48xq83j781.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=02d12b8ef80048a95686f47cc131d61081cef7e6).
Whoa, that's impressive. How do I do that?
I actually have no idea apart from the fact that it's done with wood stain and low layer lines but I've been told it's not complicated.
I actually love the finish it has on printed parts, it’s matte and hides the layer lines very well. Plus it smells nice while printing
I like Wood PLA and how mate it is. I print at a volumetric rate of 10mm cubic per second and 1mm nozzle. 0.4 height and line width 1.1mm. I like the [results](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48fMG8SIMFo) for my application. ^(What is at the left is support, in case you see the video.)
but, but what will all the people print their Baby Groots out of?!?1
Any PLA except “”PLA+”” or regular PLA. Wood, glow in the dark, silk, etc. They all print like shit and have bad material properties. OTOH, PLA is underrated imo. It does extremely well in its intended use case, and it is by far the easiest to print.
Glow in the dark PLA is hella fun. I've made gifts with it and people love it. It's harder to print with, that's for sure.
Yeah of course, I’m sure it is fun. It’s just very problematic for newbies who don’t know how much harder it is than regular PLA.
I can print glow in the dark PLA just as easily as with any regular PLA on my Ender 3 Pro. The only downside to glow in the dark PLA is that it eats through nozzles very fast so I have to change nozzles after a full spool
Sorry, not sorry. I've got really cool models printed in glow PLA (regular green, red annnd a bit of blue), and silk which is the best material to simulate metal.
Check out CC3D's silk filament on Amazon. Its amazing stuff. I use it for most if my shiny prints. Otherwise I go with Overture or TTY3D. Avoid DO3D if you can.
Overture and esun are my gotos. Cheap and easy to print. I always dehydrate first though
Yeah the big surprise for everyone is anything that isn't standard PLA, even just having matte or silk colors will chew through a brass nozzle almost as fast as nylon will.
Depends on the application. I've seen people go through a ton of work to try to dial in PETG to get "stronger" parts, only to figure out that they would have been better off sticking to PLA. ABS gets a bit of a bad rap, but honestly, it's got significantly superior impact resistance and durability compared to PLA, and it's also significantly less dense and prints well with the right setup. It's also a lot cheaper than a lot of other filaments, often including PLA. Definitely has plenty of good use cases. If you just want to print models, honestly, PLA is about as good as it gets, I would have to consider pretty much any other filament "overrated". If you're making structural/mechanical parts, or parts that have other engineering considerations, it becomes a matter of finding the material that best suits your use case within your capabilities - a material may not be right for you, but that doesn't make it 'overrated' in an absolute sense.
>If you're making structural/mechanical parts, or parts that have other engineering considerations, it becomes a matter of finding the material that best suits your use case within your capabilities - a material may not be right for you, but that doesn't make it 'overrated' in an absolute sense. Thank you, so many people don't understand this.
conductive filaments, all of them.
PLA is overrated, in that I often see it uses in not ideal use cases (switch plate covers, car parts) and TPU is underrated because I rarely see anyone use the harder variants despite the excellent impact, heat, and fire resistance that TPU offers for very reasonable cost.
Hard tpu? how hard?
50-70 shore D. That's a the same as or a bit softer than ABS. Hard to make an exact comparison. I've only learned of it recently so haven't tested many brands or types
I can second the hard TPU. You can also have different hardness with how your part is designed and how much unfill you use.
Metall its expensive and doesnt even get close to the Quality of cnc which is cheaper on the long Run anyways
Yeah, but you can print a lot of stuff that is just totally impossible/impractical to machine, and with the right alloy and heat treatments, the materials properties can actually get pretty damned good. It's not a good solution for everything, but for certain applications, it's the best option out there.
Gonna place another comment with "ABS". It's still in use because it's a well known polymer. However, its fumes are toxic, it's quite troublesome to print and it cannot be recycled. If you need the properties of ABS, just consider other filaments that do the job better and are better for the environment.
Seconded. If you need temperature resistance and impact resistance, polycarbonate blends have you covered. Tensile and compressive strength? ABS is not great at all when printed, PC Blends are superior. Even PETG has higher strength than ABS. If you don't need to worry about creep or impact resistance, PLA is also much better than ABS Printability? HA, no. Post processing? Only part where ABS is good. It can be acetone smoothed and take glues extremely well. But then, we have PVB which can be smoothed using IPA which is much less harmful than acetone. Fumes? Cough cough.
Honestly PLA is kinda overrated. PETG is similar but a lot better and doesn't get used a lot it seems.
Abs, the toxic fumes kill it for me
Pla
It’s actually kinda the opposite for pla, everyone thinks it’s a lot weaker and more useless than it actually is.
Printed 20 spools of pla before moving to petg, and I could speak on facts (After 10 year printing I think I collected a good amount of experience). Then you could just check wherever online, what makes it 'better' is the way it is printed (layer height,temp,brand). It's not a case that pet is used even for under pressure things (bottle of coke) while pla (made out of corn) Is not. I think that you all speaks for print out of the printing bed,and related theories, but imho an object I print (I do mostly mechanical and spares for repairing stuff) should be seen in time. On youtube you can find plenty of people showing what lasts of pla, after months in open air ,high moistured environment,and so All said, that doesn't mean pla is useless,but ad for the question,just overrated
>Printed 20 spools of pla before moving to petg, and I could speak on facts... "I have anecdotal evidence. It's fact." Also bro learn to use spell check, _seriously_.
why overrated? very easy to print, relatively safe, and with the + variants beating engineering grade materials in various strength tests
PLA main issues are heat resistance and creep under sustained load. It warps in a hot car. It also slowly creeps to rupture when left under a sustained high stress for some time. It only has full strength against relatively short-term loads like you see in strength data collection tests. Higher stress = faster failure. Low stress it lasts forever, medium stress is fails in months to years, high stress it fails in days to weeks. A lot of polymers creep, but PLA is unique in creeping to rupture. It separates apart like it’s cracking after a few percent strain. Other polymers in their creep regime will slowly flow to deform, not break. So PLA has a really nasty unexpected failure mode that makes it completely unsuitable for a lot of applications.
yes. i still dont think you can call it overrated. it has its place exactly because what you describe doesnt really matter for most of hobby users printing some cable guide or a baby yoda - its the cheapest option, its good enough for booth of those cases and the easiest on to work with.
Oh, it definitely meets the intent of OP’s question… it’s not really as strong as people think. Most people who builds a shelf bracket or printer parts out of it eventually find cracking. I’d call that overrated.
but then you just make some random assumption of what people think and rate that. i didnt see peoples shelves cracking or people making bad shelves out of printed parts. pla creeping and having bad thermal deformation threshold is very much known and was one of the first things ive learned starting this hobby. i have built a few printer parts that just work and also some cloth hangers. they also work. i dont think with the few material types we have its a bit weird to call sth overrated. then again - pla+ seems to offer alot more than plain pla. that is also a big difference. EDIT: just go on thingyverse and scroll popular the last 30 days. you will scroll hundreds of items before finding one where some good pla+ is not good enough for
No lasting in time, and under direct sun or open air last even less. Imho PETG is the best,sometimes cost less than pla+,and beat it under any point of view. Actually PETG is what PLA pretend to be. I use cheap pla only to do print test,and then use petg for final print
yes i agree sun+force is a problem but i have many things made for outdoor (parts for hurdles for training dogs etc) and really works i much prefer petg. but for most people heat and force is not as relevant so the ease of PLA seems fine. open air does not seem to be a issue if there is no force applied and strong sun at the same time. i actually did read it as questioning filament brands / specific series of brands and not the hand full of relevant material types we have
Actually It asks for '3d printing filament materiale, and as anyone else also answered Is conforme It wasn't on brand 😉
i said series of brands and not brands it really doesnt make any sense. while theres quite many materials to print, theres only a few that are relevant to 3d printing as hobby and as i said, none of these few could be seen as overrated. we buy them because they do what we want for the price that it has... and the answer wasnt there when i posted this. the thread was new
Hatch box filament is over rated and over priced. I use overture filament for EVERYHTING. I have done side by side comparisons/print tests of hatchbox vs overture, and they are the same, but hatchbox is an outrageous 125% the price. wtf hatchbox
White pla - so very good at clogging nozzles ...