I was wondering whether there is somewhere a dataset collecting the mechanical properties of different filaments.
Some filament vendors provide some mechanical properties data about their filament, others don’t. On the few comparison I was able to make, I noticed big differences among the same filament type, such as PLA+.
For example, regarding the Flexural Modulus, one brand of PLA+ could report 4175Mpa, while another one reports 1973Mpa. Clearly, the second offers a much higher Elongation at Break. This means that depending on the application, it could make sense to select one brand of filament with respect to another (of the same type).
I would expect this type of mechanical properties to be easy to fetch, but a lot of vendors provide only how accurate the diameter of their filaments is.
(edit: typo)
There are some tests on CNC kitchen (youtube), but dont think you can find values to compare different manufacturers. For 3D printed models its more important how good layer bond is, what orientation and other settings (temp, line width, layer height, speed) have been used. But yeah, I would love to see mechanical properties on each spool
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I saw those videos: they are interesting.
You are right, the fact that the 3D printed object are anisotropic add an extra variable to the game. You could use the strongest filament, but if the layer are oriented in the wrong direction you will get a poor results.
I don’t know if to avoid such issue, it could make sense for the producer to test molded specimens of filament (cylinders or bricks). In this way they will consider only the material itself. However, the inter-layer bonding properties will anyway play a role when actually printing, so there is the risk that those number won’t translate into the printed object properties. Otherwise, they could leverage their experience and claim that the tests were made in optimal conditions, so that you know that that’s an upper-bound.