The death of PLA, Long live the King  

RE: The death of PLA, Long live the King

Define 'stronger', PLA is more rigid than petg and the price difference still exists.

Outside the range colors, why would a sane person still print PLA?

I find I'm printing more PLA than ever ... I keep black, white, grey, clear and a three or four colours, I can't quite get rid of them.

- It will degrade over time due to UV

So does PETG

- It is weaker then PETG

No, it is stronger than PETG but brittle and less shock resistant. 

Even for inside materials, used in the house, it would still make most sense to print in PETG right?

Sometimes but mostly wrong.

You missed a couple of things, the most important being the tendency to evade stress.

PETG is tougher and more flexible but PLA is better for precision parts and light mechanisms; it's also easier to paint if you really need colours.

I also use cheap PLA for most early prototypes even if the final print will use PETG or something more exotic.

Cheerio,

RE: The death of PLA, Long live the King

You can print finer details with PLA vs PETG. This is good for features like Litophanes. It prints faster as well. I use PLA when I want to get a rough prototype out for sizing where the final product might be in ASA or a more expensive material. It's also super cheap. Then there are the "specialty" filaments like woodfill and metal which only come in PLA. 

RE: The death of PLA, Long live the King

2nd Hyiger's post.

I would agrue, that PETG is actually on the way out. We have many types of ehanced PLA now, that have alot of great properties. Since we can all print CF, I see regular PETG having much less use, PETG-GF is you want to save $, since I can print abs-cf, PAs and soon PPA-CF. I don't plan on buying any more plain PETG. When using my MK3S, yes PETG was most of what I printed and PLA was minimal. The engineering filaments are now able to be printed, leaving PETG behind on every single property it offers.

RE:

And also add the PCTG runs circles around PETG. They are cousins so have a very similar print profile but the former doesn't string (as much) as PETG, definitely doesn't warp as much, is more impact and chemical resistant. More filament manufactures are jumping onto PCTG so I expect PETG usage to start to wane. The one downside is that it's still a bit more expensive than generic PETG but around the same price a Prusament PETG. 

RE: The death of PLA, Long live the King

We have every filament imaginable in our inventory at work and print all manner of things. We still print almost everything with PLA unless there's a good reason not to. About the only good reason is if we want to print an assembly fixture that needs to go in the oven. I question the UV issue. It's real, but I've had PLA parts outdoors for almost a year with no visible degradation. I worry more about color fading, but I've got orange Prusament PETG that's been outdoors and is still so bright it almost glows.

RE:

PLA should definitely not be exposed to direct sunlight because it will warp. I got into 3D printing to print brackets and adapters for my telescopes mostly using black PLA and most of them warped when I left my scopes outside. I had an Ender 3 at the time and knew nothing about plastics and their properties then. Other than PLA was what you used and that PETG was the "advanced" stuff. But then the Ender 3 could really only print those two. Maybe ABS/ASA but I wouldn't have known that then (6 years ago). 

RE: The death of PLA, Long live the King

Yes, on paper. I own two rolls of PLA and a stack of PETG spools almost to the ceiling (sounds dramatic but I keep almost-empty spools as samples. They stack nicely...). 

Moisture absorption (=> stringing) and dimensional stability are the deciding factors, for me.

PLA creeps, warps, deforms and generally misbehaves at somewhat lower temperature than PETG. But at room temperature without extensive exposure to sunlight (it's not like it turns to dust at dawn) the material properties are fairly solid.