Health Expert Tutor : Thirty Days Of 3D Printing Filament

Our first 3D printers only printed ABS and PLA plastic. Yeah, we heard about PVA for support structures, but no one could get them to stick. There was also polycarbonate, but you had to have an all metal hot end with a fan to print that stuff. Now there’s a lot of variety out there: flexible, wood and stone, nylon, PETG, and more.

If you are still printing with just the old standards, you might enjoy [all3dp’s] comparison chart of 30 different filament types–that’s enough for one day a month–well at least for four months. It is too many for February, and a day short for the rest of the months. In addition to a table, there’s a short write-up about each type of plastic, its characteristics, and its technical data. There’s even magnetic PLA (see video below) which, in addition to being magnetic, will actually rust in water which might be good for some artistic prints.

Of course, there’s probably more filament types out there. After all, there are new ones it seems every day. Still, 30 should keep you and your printer busy for a while.

We’ve looked at some exotic filaments before like carbon fiber, for example. The magnetic filament is from Protopasta, and we’ve seen that they make quite a few strange and wonderful filaments.