My two cents on materials to use in 3D printing.

Ok, me; engineer, prototyper, coming from robotics, hands on mechatronic for industrial automation, I made myself two or three 3D printers out of crappy kits heavilly modified to make them perform as I needed, so they no longer are as bought, including motherboards, nozzles, heatsinks, stepper motors, etc, just the frames are less modified, but not virgin.

I design, print, test, and obviously re-design, for the iterarion of a product from idea to good to sell sometimes takes me to hundreds of re printings and design adjustments.

Why am I saying this?

Glass transiton, that is why.

Some of my products are made to improve 3d printers so that a crappy 200-500USD kit printer can do things normally you got to buy a 30.000 USD printer for, by just printing a few STL files of mine and mounting the prints to the printer, plus some things you buy online, and you go from PLA to... Polycarbonate, Nylon, PPS, printing capacities, and with some more twickening you go to over 400C printing PEEk and ULTEM. On your cheap kit toy, doing things for the big boys only. But without investing like the big boys.

Some other objects I create are designed to stay in a vehicle, be it on the wheels hub, or in the cabin on the dashboard, etc

As you can imagine my creations meet high operational temperatures be it from the heated print bed working just next to them at 120C, or the heatblock at 450C at 3 mm away from my object while printing for 32 hours non stop, or sitting on the dashboard of a car in the summer sun with a 75 C built in cabin heat.

Conclusion; PLA nope (becomes mushy at 50C), PETG nope, ABS neiter, HIPS no no, ASA neither (they all give in around 90C).

I tried them all during the years, they all get mushy and loose their shape, and since they are not decorative parts buut actually functional things, once their shape is a bit compromised, they do not work anymore, they become trash and end up in a bin.

So I modified my machines to go Polycarbonate, with or without Carbon fiber in the filament (Cf filament prints nicer, but becoming more stiff the part also becomes more brittle, is a trade off) or Nylon and similar, for the cheap products, (not as cheap as PLA thou... lol) but if I need to go really reliable mechanical than PPS with or without CF is a good option, and ULTEM (PEI) which is more expensive than PPS but also better heat glass transistion resistance.

PPS has amazingly the same glass transition as ABS (HIPS, ASA) but if anealed it jumps to nearly 200C resistance before deforming.

You will never get that from ASA, HIPS, ABS, PLA or PETG, not even from Polycarbonate, but hey, 150C before becoming mushy is still a good point in many applications, Nylon is a bit lower in that respect, around 140C gives in, but is more plastic deformable tolerant, practically is a pereneal hinge, you bend it back and forth a milion times before you shear it.

There you go, my two cents on materials to use in cheap 3D printers rightly tunned.