Materials guide

PLA — display pieces

Stiff, dimensionally accurate and the easiest to get a clean surface on. PLA is what I use for anything that sits on a shelf and gets looked at: plaques, lithophanes, boxes, charms.

Its one real weakness is heat. PLA starts to soften around 60°C, which is a temperature a closed car reaches on a warm day. Don't leave a PLA piece on a dashboard, a radiator, or a sunny windowsill in summer.

PETG — anything handled

Tougher and far more heat-tolerant than PLA, with enough flex to survive being dropped. PETG is the default for hooks, trays, clips, stands and planters — anything picked up daily or mounted where it takes load.

It's slightly glossier and shows layer lines a little more than PLA does. On raw prints that reads as texture rather than a defect, and it sands down fine if you'd rather it didn't.

Resin — fine detail

Printed at 0.03mm layers on a masked-SLA machine, washed in IPA and UV-cured. Resin is the only sensible choice for busts and miniatures — it holds detail that filament simply can't resolve at that scale.

Cured resin is more brittle than filament and it does not love long-term direct sunlight, which yellows it over months. Keep resin pieces out of a south-facing window and they'll stay as they arrived.

At a glance

Heat tolerance

PETG > Resin > PLA

Impact resistance

PETG > PLA > Resin

Fine detail

Resin > PLA > PETG

Outdoor use

PETG only, and out of standing water

Food contact

None of them — 3D prints have layer gaps that trap bacteria

Layer height and what it means

Filament pieces print at 0.12mm layers unless the geometry needs finer. Resin runs at 0.03mm. Finer layers mean a smoother surface and a longer print, which is most of why a 120mm resin bust costs what it does and a keychain doesn't.

Everything is printed on a 250 × 250 × 250mm bed. Larger pieces get split, printed in sections and bonded — the seam is sanded, but on a raw-finish piece you may still find it if you go looking.