There's nothing super special about this print in particular compared to what people usually post here, just a simple Santa figurine requested by a makerspace patron. However, it's made from 100% pure PHA (polyhydroxyalkanoate), a natural polyester byproduct of common soil bacteria. Unlike PLA, it is fully home compostable. It can break down in any biome, in a very reasonable timeframe. Also unlike PLA, you can make it by feeding the bacteria stuff like old fast food fryer oil, and other waste products. The print settings are pretty similar to PLA, but it has some significant differences in material properties, like being less brittle.
There aren't a whole lot of people making 100% PHA filaments, but if you can find it, definitely give it a shot! It's our staple filament at the makerspace I work in. Hopefully this doesn't sound too much like an ad or something, I just really like this stuff and want it to catch on.
Oh also! The flexible version looks and feels really neat if you run it through a vibratory tumbler:
The few reviews I've seen of pure PHA filaments usually are pretty bad and many mention very bad warping issues with none of the usual tricks helping significantly. How easy is it to print compared to regular good quality PLA? What brand are you using?
The thing about the warping is, while most settings are nearly exactly the same as with PLA, there's a few things that have to be the exact opposite. Once you get done fiddling with it, it actually prints like a dream. We even use it as our default material unless somebody requests otherwise. If it was unprintable, we wouldn't be able to do that. Some stuff we've learned:
That all probably sounds pretty extreme but honestly these are worst case scenarios? Normally it just works. Maybe part of this also comes down to the fact that all the people making it have been refining their product for a while now to deal with the notorious warpy-ness, so it's just not as bad as it used to be. We've used every brand we can find, Colorfabb's AllPHA, Beyond Plastic's BioPHA, Bosk's Regen, they're all pretty comparable. Here's a vid of another PHA print in progress right now, one where we really didn't even follow most of those tips above, and it's going fine. It's the second one of these.
Yeah you're right, that really doesn't sound like it's anywhere remotely close to as easy as printing as PLA.
I disagree, but sometimes... difficult things are worth doing? It's not like we randomly decided to use it for no reason afterall.
Compared to just selecting a printing temp around roughly 200C, setting plate to 60C and putting cooling on full blast, which is what almost all PLA prints well with IME, PHA seems much more finicky from what you're describing. I'm not saying it's not worth it, but it sounds like it requires much more tuning before you get decent results.
Ohhh sure yeah, up front it does! There's definitely some work to get it figured out the first time, that's very true. It took us a while to iron out the settings. Once you get that stuff worked out though, from then on it's pretty smooooooth.
Oh, I should also have mentioned in the original post! Most of these pics/vids are of stuff printed on a low end printer with 0.6mm nozzle, not using high resolution settings. It's all just stuff our patrons have requested, who are more interested in getting it soon than it looking SUPER nice. It can absolutely be printed with super high detail in mind instead.