PLA stands for polylactic acid — polylactide, if you want the fancy name. It’s a plastic made by fermenting plant starch, usually corn, into lactic acid — you know, the stuff that makes your muscles sore after a hard workout. It’s also what makes yogurt tangy. Those molecules get linked into long chains.
That’s the plastic itself. Then it’s melted and extruded into a strand exactly 1.75 millimeters thick, cooled, and wound onto a spool. That’s the filament — and my printer melts it all over again and lays it down one layer at a time.
That’s why I print in it: it runs at low temperatures, and low temperatures mean crisp detail. That’s also why I’ll tell you its limit in the same breath — it softens in heat, so a PLA print left in a hot area will warp. I print in PLA because the detail holds. I tell you the rest because I’d rather you know than be disappointed.
