PETG

PETG, or glycol-modified polyethylene terephthalate, sits between PLA and engineering plastics like ABS. It prints hotter than PLA, typically needs a bit more nozzle temperature and a heated bed, and cools more slowly, but it rewards that extra care with parts that resist impact, flex slightly instead of snapping, and hold up much better to heat.

It is a common choice for functional parts such as brackets, outdoor fixtures, containers and mechanical parts that need to survive drops or warm environments where PLA would soften. Because PETG is naturally a little tacky when hot, it also tends to string more between travel moves and can be trickier to remove cleanly from a build plate compared with PLA.

Dialing in PETG usually means tuning retraction settings, slowing down outer walls, and sometimes lowering temperature slightly to reduce stringing without hurting layer adhesion. A frequent beginner mistake is using PLA settings unchanged and blaming the filament for stringing or poor bed adhesion when the real issue is a temperature or retraction profile that was never adjusted for PETG.