What Is Filament
Written by Dion, Owner at FilamentHub Last updated July 29, 2026Share
What Is 3D Printer Filament?
In the simplest terms, filament is a reel of plastic that gets fed through a printer, melted, and extruded layer by layer to build a physical object. But which reel you reach for changes everything about how the finished part performs.
I got into 3D printing back when printers were a lot more fiddly than the plug-and-play machines you can buy today. My reason for getting a printer in the first place was simple: I wanted to make random knick-knacks for around the house that you just couldn't buy anywhere else. Where else are you going to find a Bulbasaur planter where the seed on its back is an actual pot for a plant?
Since then I've genuinely lost count of how much filament I've personally printed through, but it's easily into the thousands of kilos between my own projects and running FilamentHub. I started the store because there weren't many alternatives around that didn't cost a fortune. I wanted to sell filament without the large business overhead that drives most stores' prices up.
Quick Answer
Filament is a thermoplastic, wound onto a spool, that a 3D printer melts and pushes through a nozzle to build an object one layer at a time. Different materials (PLA, PETG, ABS, ASA, TPU, Nylon, PC and more) trade off ease of printing, strength, flexibility and heat or UV resistance, so the "right" filament depends entirely on what you're building.
Who This Is From
I've personally printed and sold thousands of kilos of filament through FilamentHub, supplying hobbyists, businesses, B2B and wholesale customers, schools and universities. Everything below is based on what I've actually seen work, and fail, across that volume.
How Filament Actually Becomes a Printed Part
Filament ships as a long strand of plastic, usually 1.75mm thick, wound tightly onto a spool. Your printer pulls that strand in, heats it past its melting point inside the hot end, and pushes it out through a tiny nozzle. The printer moves that nozzle around in the exact shape of your model, one thin layer at a time, and each new layer bonds to the one underneath as it cools. Do that a few hundred or a few thousand times and you end up with a solid, finished object. This process is called FDM or FFF printing, and it's what almost every desktop 3D printer, Bambu Lab, Prusa, Creality or Anycubic, is built around.
What changes between spools isn't the process. It's the plastic itself, and that's where the real decision happens.
Every Filament Type We Stock, Explained
Here's what each material actually is, in plain terms, and where it fits.
PLA (Polylactic Acid)
PLA is made from renewable plant starch (usually corn), which is part of why it's the easiest material to print. It's low warping, produces clean detail straight off the printer, and has by far the biggest range of colours and finishes of anything we stock, from standard PLA and Matte to Silk, Wood and Marble effects. That range is exactly why PLA is my personal go-to. For decorative, indoor prints, nothing else comes close on variety.
One PLA variant worth calling out separately is FPLA (Flexible PLA). It bridges the gap between rigid PLA and soft TPU, printing like normal PLA but flexing and springing back to shape instead of staying soft. We tested it by printing a basketball, and it matched a real ball's weight and bounce almost exactly. Browse FPLA filament.
PETG (Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol)
PETG is stronger and tougher than PLA, with meaningfully better heat resistance, which is why I reach for it over PLA the moment a decorative print is going outdoors instead of sitting on a shelf. It's also a good step up for functional parts that need to survive more than being looked at. Browse PETG and PETG Pro, or read our full PLA vs PETG breakdown and PETG stringing fixes.
ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene)
ABS is what I reach for when I need brackets or small load-bearing parts. It handles heat better than PLA and PETG and holds up well to everyday mechanical stress, but it needs an enclosed printer to control warping and produces fumes, so ventilation matters. Browse ABS and ABS Pro.
ASA (Acrylonitrile Styrene Acrylate)
ASA is essentially UV-resistant ABS, and it's my go-to whenever a part needs to survive outdoors or handle heat without going overkill on a heavier engineering material. I used it recently on a car rebuild, printing custom fittings to adapt an air conditioning unit pulled from one car into an old-school build where the factory outlets just didn't line up. They weren't load-bearing parts, but they needed real heat and UV resistance, and ASA has held up very well since. Browse ASA filament or read our full ASA guide.
TPU and the Flexible Filament Family
TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) is a genuinely rubber-like flexible material, and hardness ratings matter more here than with any other filament family. TPU 95A prints and stays at a firm 95A shore hardness, ideal for cases, gaskets and parts that need to flex but hold their shape. ShoeFlex 9075A and InsoleFlex 9585A are specialised TPU blends that print firmer than they finish, softening to around 75A and 85A once printed, which makes them genuinely comfortable for footwear, insoles and anything worn against the body.
It's worth being specific here too: soft isn't always the right answer. Printing a basketball in a soft TPU95A just doesn't have anywhere near the bounce that FPLA does. TPU gives you flex and cushioning. FPLA gives you resilience and rebound. They solve different problems.
Nylon (PA)
PA, better known as Nylon, is a high-performance material known for toughness, fatigue resistance and wear resistance that PLA, PETG and even ABS can't match, which makes it well suited to gears, hinges and moving mechanisms. It's also hygroscopic, meaning it pulls moisture from the air fast, so it needs proper drying and storage to print reliably. Browse PA filament.
PC and PC-PBT (Polycarbonate)
PC is the highest heat resistance and impact strength you'll find in a consumer FDM filament, staying structurally sound above 110°C. It needs a high-temperature all-metal hotend and an enclosed chamber to print well. PC-PBT blends in PBT for the same strength with far better cold-weather toughness, staying impact resistant down to around -30°C where standard PC turns brittle. Browse PC filament.
Carbon Fibre Blends
Carbon fibre filament isn't its own base plastic. It's chopped carbon fibre strands blended into a base polymer like PLA, PETG, ABS, Nylon or PC. The fibre adds real stiffness, better dimensional stability on large prints, and a matte, almost machined surface finish. The trade-off is that it's abrasive, so it needs a hardened steel nozzle rather than standard brass. Browse carbon fibre filament.
PVA (Support Filament)
PVA is a water-soluble filament used purely as dissolvable support material in dual-extrusion prints. It bonds well to PLA, PETG and TPU, and once printing is done, you dissolve the supports away in water instead of digging them out by hand, which is the only real option for complex overhangs and enclosed internal geometry. Browse PVA filament.
The Myth I'd Push Back On: "All Brands Print the Same"
At times, some brands genuinely print very similarly. But between brands and manufacturers, the quality of the raw material has a real effect on the finished filament. What I'd push back on is the assumption that more expensive automatically means better quality. At FilamentHub, we cut out as much overhead as we can specifically so we can maintain quality at low prices, rather than passing on the cost of a big retail operation.
My Filament Selection Framework
Whenever someone asks me which filament to buy, my first question back is always the same: what are you actually trying to print? The material follows from that, not the other way around.
| What You're Printing | Reach For |
|---|---|
| Decorative, indoor | PLA |
| Decorative, outdoor | PETG |
| Brackets or small load-bearing parts | ABS |
| Brackets that also need UV resistance | ASA |
Not sure where your project lands? Run it through our filament finder quiz and it'll point you to the right material based on what you're actually building.
The Mistake I See Most Often
The most common one is customers reaching for heavy-duty filament like Nylon (PA) when PETG or ABS would have suited the project just as well for less money. Nylon is genuinely excellent at what it does, but it's also more expensive and harder to print, so it's worth using it because the part needs it, not just because it sounds like the strongest option on the shelf. Picking the right filament for the right job, not the toughest-sounding one, is what actually matters.
What Printer Should You Learn On?
I personally recommend something like the Bambu P2S for anyone starting out. It's a little pricier than an open-frame bed slinger, but for an enclosed, Core XY printer at that price, it's genuinely great value. New printer owners find it much easier to learn on without having to build or tune a machine from scratch first, so they can spend their time actually printing things instead of tinkering with the printer just to get to that point.
Who We Supply
FilamentHub supplies filament to hobbyists, businesses, B2B and wholesale customers, schools and universities across Australia. If we don't currently stock the exact colour or material you're after, we're genuinely happy to work with you to get it added to the range.
Final Verdict
Filament is, at its core, exactly what it sounds like: a reel of plastic that gets extruded through a printer to build an object. But which reel you pick changes everything about how that object performs. PLA for decorative indoor prints, PETG when it's heading outdoors, ABS for brackets, ASA when those brackets need UV resistance, and TPU, Nylon, PC and carbon fibre blends once your project moves into genuinely functional or engineering territory. Match the material to the job, not the other way around, and you'll save yourself a lot of failed prints and wasted money.
Not Sure Which Filament You Need?
Run your project through our filament finder quiz for a straight recommendation, or browse the full range below.
Take the Filament Finder Quiz Shop PLA Shop PETG Shop All Filament