Which material should your part be printed in?
Most people pick a material by name and hope. It is simpler than that: nearly every decision comes down to two questions: does it get hot, and does it live outside?
| Material | Best for | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| PLA | Models, prototypes, display pieces, indoor parts | Cheapest, sharpest detail, most colours. Softens around 55 °C, so never leave it in a parked car. |
| PETG | Functional parts, brackets, wet areas, kitchen items | Tougher than PLA, shrugs off water, and the resin itself is made to food and health standards. Our default for anything that has a job to do indoors. Not UV-stable, so not for years in the sun. |
| ABS / ASA | Outdoor parts, car exterior, engine bay, high heat | Handles ~90 °C and can be sanded or glued easily. ASA is UV-stable, which makes it the material for anything that lives outside. Costs more in machine time. |
| TPU | Gaskets, bumpers, grips, seals, flexible clips | Rubber-like and effectively unbreakable. Slow to print, so pricier per part. |
The short version
If the part sits indoors and mostly needs to look right, print PLA. If it has a job to do, gets handled, gets wet or goes near food, print PETG. Those two cover the large majority of what we print.
Go to ASA when the part lives outdoors, and to ABS or ASA when things get genuinely hot: an engine bay, a part in direct summer sun on a dashboard. Go to TPU when the part needs to bend, grip or seal.
Heat is what catches people out
PLA is the most common filament in the world and the one that surprises people. It starts to soften around 55 °C. A car parked in Ohrid in July goes well past that, so a PLA phone mount on a dashboard will sag into a curve by August. A PETG one will not.
This is the single most frequent reason a printed part fails in real use, and it is entirely avoidable by naming where the part is going to live when you order.
Sunlight, water and the outdoors
UV is what kills printed parts outside. PLA goes brittle and chalky after a season in the sun. PETG handles rain and damp perfectly well, but it is not UV-stable either: months of direct sun yellow it and take the toughness out of it, so treat it as fine for a season on a terrace, not for years.
ASA is the outdoor material. It is UV-stable by design, which is why car exterior trim, mirror caps and garden fittings are made from it, and it keeps its colour and its strength through years of sun and rain. If the part lives outside, ask for ASA rather than PETG.
Strength is not one property
A part can fail by snapping, by bending, by wearing through or by softening, and no single material wins all four. PLA is the stiffest and takes the most load before it bends, but it snaps without warning. PETG bends further before it gives and absorbs impact much better, which is usually what 'strong' means in practice.
Layer direction matters at least as much as material. A printed part is much weaker across its layers than along them, so tell us which way a part gets loaded and we will orient it to suit.
Food, skin and safety
PETG is the material to ask for when food or skin is involved. It is the same family of plastic as drink bottles and the resin is produced to food and health standards, so it is what we print anything kitchen-side in.
That said, we do not sell printed parts as food-safe. The plastic is fine, the geometry is not: layer lines trap bacteria in a way no washing reliably clears, so a printed cup or cutting board is not a good idea regardless of filament.
For a part that only touches dry food briefly (a cookie cutter, a coffee scoop, a stencil) it is a reasonable everyday risk that many people accept. For anything reused with wet food, we will tell you to buy the real thing.
Filament in stock right now
| Material | Colour | Price per gram |
|---|---|---|
| PLA | Black | 2.80 MKD |
| PLA | White | 2.52 MKD |
| PETG | Yellow | 2.10 MKD |
| ABS | Black | 2.80 MKD |
| ABS | Silver | 2.80 MKD |
| TPE | Black | 4.20 MKD |
| PETG | REd | 2.52 MKD |
| ASA | Black | 4.20 MKD |
Loaded and ready to print. Ask us if you need a colour that isn't listed.
Common questions
- Which material is strongest?
- For most real-world purposes, PETG: it takes impact and bending without snapping. PLA is technically stiffer and holds more static load, but it fails suddenly and brittly. If a part must survive being dropped or knocked, choose PETG.
- What should I use for a car part?
- Nothing inside a car should be PLA: interiors easily pass 60 °C in summer. PETG for cabin parts, ABS or ASA for anything in the engine bay or permanently in the sun.
- Can printed parts go in the dishwasher?
- PLA will deform: a dishwasher runs hotter than PLA can take. PETG and ABS generally survive it, but we would still wash a printed part by hand in cool water.
- Which is cheapest?
- PLA, on both counts: the filament costs less and it prints faster, so you pay for fewer machine hours. TPU is the most expensive per part because it has to print slowly.
- Can you match a specific colour?
- We stock a range and can usually get close. Exact colour matching to a sample is not something filament does reliably, so if the shade matters, tell us before we print and we will check what we can source.
Not sure which to pick?
Upload your model and say where the part will be used. We will flag it if the material you chose is wrong for the job.
Upload a model