Intro
Choosing the right type of material to print a given object is becoming increasingly difficult as the 3D printing market sees the emergence of radically new materials. In FDM 3D printing, PLA and ABS have historically been the two main polymers (= type of plastic) used, but their initial dominance was mostly fortuitous. So there should not be any major road blocks for other polymers to play a key role in the future of FDM. We are now seeing new products become more popular, both pure polymers and composites. In this study, we focus on the main pure polymers that exist in the market today: PLA, ABS, PET, Nylon, TPU (Flexible) and PC. We sum up the key differences between their properties in snapshot profiles, so that users can make a quick decision about the best polymer to use for their application.
Methodology
If you are familiar with our previous studies, you know that we usually grade materials along the three main categories: mechanical performance, visual quality and process. In this case here, we decided to further break down these categories to paint a clearer picture of the polymer’s properties. The choice of material really depends on what the user wants to print, so we listed the key decision criteria needed to choose a material (other than cost and speed):
Ease of printing: How easy it is to print a material: bed adhesion, max printing speed, frequency of failed prints, flow accuracy, ease to feed into the printer… etc.
Visual quality: How good the finished object look. More info on how we test it here
Max stress: Maximum stress the object can undergo before breaking when slowly pulling on it.
Elongation at break: Maximum length the object has been stretched before breaking.
Impact resistance: Energy needed to break an object with a sudden impact.
Layer adhesion (isotropy): how good the adhesion between layers of material is. It is linked to “isotropy” (=uniformity in all directions): the better the layer adhesion, the more isotropic the object will be.
Heat resistance: max temperature the object can sustain before softening and deforming.
We are also providing additional information that are not captured in the diagram, for one of two reasons:
- They are neither “good” nor “bad” in essence, they are just properties that will be suitable for some applications, and not for others, such as rigidity.
or
- We don’t have a good quantitative assessment of it, but we know it is an important factor, such as humidity resistance or toxicity.
Results
We ranked each material along each criteria on a 1 (=low) to 5 (=high) scale. These are relative grades for the FDM process, they would probably look quite different if other manufacturing technologies were taken into account. Using the data from OptiMatter, we ranked the polymers along the different criteria considered:
Rearranging the data by polymer, here are the profiles we get:
PLA is the easiest polymer to print and provides good visual quality. It is very rigid and actually quite strong, but is very brittle.
ABS is usually picked over PLA when higher temperature resistance and higher toughness is required.
PET is a slightly softer polymer that is well rounded and possesses interesting additional properties with few major drawbacks.
Nylon possesses great mechanical properties, and in particular the best impact resistance for a non-flexible filament. Layer adhesion can be an issue however.
TPU is mostly used for flexible applications, but its very high impact resistance can open other applications.
PC is the strongest material of all, and can be an interesting alternative to ABS as the properties are quite similar.
Conclusion
Choosing the right polymer is critical to get the right properties for a 3D printed part, especially if the part has a functional use. This article will help users find the right material depending on the properties they need. However, material suppliers also often provide blends or add additives to modify the properties of the pure polymer (e.g. adding carbon fiber to make the material stiffer). We are not addressing these more complex formulations in this article, but you can find data on some of these products in our optimization tool OptiMatter.
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Disclaimer
- The grades given in this article are for an average polymer representing the general chemistry, but the performance will vary depending on the actual product or supplier the user buys from.
- All the data underlying our grades in this study was measured by 3D Matter, with the exception of Heat Resistance, for which we used the glass temperature given by multiple filament suppliers
- For the sections called “Additional considerations”, we are using a combination of third-party assessments and of our own observations.
- The Nylon type we are talking about in this article is Nylon 6, not Nylon 11 or 12.
- Visual quality is tested without any significant post-processing. There are ways to smoothen the prints and improve the visual quality of a given polymer significantly (e.g. using acetone vapor on ABS).
- The toxicity of 3D printing polymers is still not very well understood, and is a factor that might play a bigger role in the future. We are basing our comments regarding toxicity on one study by Azimi et al.[1]
[1] Azimi et al, Emissions of Ultrafine Particles and Volatile Organic Compounds from Commercially Available Desktop Three-Dimensional Printers with Multiple Filaments, Environmental Science & Technology, 2016
Very good article. You might want to look into our Advanced PLA for analysis. It has superior strength and heat resistance compared to ABS, yet is still a PLA.
Hi Steve, we did test your Advanced PLA, it is in our optimization tool Optimatter. We did find that it had an impact resistance about 2x that of regular PLA, but maybe not as exactly as high as ABS. The max stress is also in line with regular PLA, therefore higher than ABS. Overall, very good mechanical properties.
However, the point of this article is to compare the “pure” polymers, not the formulations that material suppliers will develop based on them.
@3D Matter
Well the “pure”polymers are like iron!! NOBODY uses pure iron. We all use alloys that are WAY better than pure iron. The same should be with 3D printing material. I really don’t care about a polymer chemistry, but I do care about the usability of the filament I’m using. And if some Hiper-Advanced-PLA-Uranium combination meets my needs, which are strength, low shrinkage, layer adhesion, …I’m all in!
So bottom line IT IS VERY IMPORTANT to me to know, not what best “raw” polymers are but which supplier comes with a better chemistry combination my money can buy!!! Specially if we take in consideration than NO ONE uses raw polymers. Every single vendor has his own recipe which differentiate from others. And to be exact there are no equal PLAs!! Only the procedure to get them are the same (almost) but the final product aren’t.
Therefore your article it’s a rough approximation and of a little use in real life. Just changing a colour of the “same” polymer changes the printability of that filament.
What would I really appreciate would be a test of the most often used “chemistry” that are on the market. That would be of a real value!
Cheers,D.
Hi Dorjano, I feel we need to set a few points straight:
– Pure polymers are not like iron. If you conduct a chemical analysis of most PLAs that are on the market, it will be >95% PLA in it. The rest will most likely be a pigment and… that’s all. So providing users with a high-level assessment of each chemistry does go a long way to explaining a large share of the filaments on the market.
– Differences between PLAs do exist, but we believe they are more linked to the extrusion process, spooling and conditioning of the filaments. For PLA, there are actually only a handful of grades used in the 3D printing industry. For some other chemistries, the grade can vary a bit more, but the main properties will remain the same (once again: at a high level). If you want more detailed data to check out the differences between each actual product, I would invite you to sign up to the Full Version of OptiMatter, which has data on many of them!
– Composites and more complex formulations do exist in the market, and are likely to be increasingly prominent. We chose not to include them here because we wanted to keep the analysis clear and concise. We have written about some of them in the past, like in this study. And once again, you can also find a lot of data on many of them in OptiMatter!
Cheers, 3D Matter
I had no idea that there were so many different types of plastic that you could use in 3D printing. The one I’d heard most about was ABS, and with the fume emissions, I’m not sure that’s one I’d want to be using a lot. I’m interested to see what kind of materials they’re going to come out with in the future. thanks for sharing!
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I have heard that nylon absorbs moisture quickly which forms bubbles when it is extruded. Is this a big problem. Also, how bad is its warping compared with abs?
It is true that Nylon absorbs moisture if you leave it out for a while. It is advised to store it in a dry place with desiccant bags (the salt bags that are usually provided with the spools). If you observe bubbles when it extrudes, it is not all lost: put the spool in your oven at 100C for 3 hours and it will dry the Nylon. You can also try this: http://taulman3d.com/drying-materials.html
Warping for Nylon is an issue, comparable to ABS (maybe not as bad). We use a layer of glue on glass, with a heated bed at 50C and we usually don’t have issues.
Thanks very much for the info.
Nice article. Selecting a proper suitable plastic can give you best result in 3d printing. Because different plastic has different nature and chemical resistance power.
I really liked your article and how you studied the different types of plastic that you could use with 3d printing services. 3d printing is still really new to me, and I think that it would be cool to be able to find something that could benefit me from those services. I’m glad I found your article, so that when I do go in for some 3d printing services to be done, I can choose the right plastic and pick the one with the best visual quality and performance like you said!