What is PETG 3D Printer Filament?

You must have heard about the excellent material called PET. Its most popular use is in Coca-Cola bottles.
Plastic Water jugs etc are also made of PET.

PET is very commonly used in food safe applications.
It is very strong, relatively rigid, & yet has excellent impact strength thanks to its inherent flexibility.

So what is PET – G 3d Filament ?

PET by nature is classed as a crystalline polymer. These types of plastics are hard to 3d print.
However, adding other chemicals can improve the extrusion linearity of PET.
PET is mixed with additives & a chemical called Glycol.
And now, we have PET-G. Written as PetG commonly.
3D Printing PETg is much easier than 3D Printing pure PET

Why 3d print PETG?

PetG handles higher temps than PLA (around 70C continuous operating temperature)
But it does not Warp as much as ABS when 3d printed.
This makes it a great material to upgrade to after you have used PLA & need something more durable.

Our Recommended 3D Printing settings for PETG

For Petg, we recommend starting with 240C head & 80C bed.

Print speed approx 15mm for first layer at 200 micron (0.2mm) & around 40mms for further layers is a good start.

If you drop the layer heights down, you can reduce temp down accordingly.

Many entry level machines (Creality etc) are Bowden machines – meaning the feeder is away from the head & connected by a tube.
Many of these use 1.75mm filament.
So they will tend to cause more stringing than direct drive machines when using petg.

For such units, you can increase retraction slightly, however not too much else that can grind filament & cause filament cracking.

Best Print surface for PETg

Print on a PEI sheet is the best.
However paper tape is also ok.
PET tape (expensive) is also excellent but PEI sheets are more versatile, long lasting & thus land up being cheaper.

Printing directly on glass can also cause the beds to crack if there are existing scratches on the glass.
Some people use glues on glass beds however we do not recommend that as it can still lift.

What is T-Glase?

T-Glase is a PET based material that is very similar to PETg but much stronger & has very high transparency compared to any other PETg based 3D Printing Filament.
All FDM Extrusion 3D printed plastics will make less transparent objects once 3d printed in comparison to some other manufacturing technology.

However, TGlase is our MOST Transparent looking so it is the closest to Clear you can get in the FDM industry for a strong & performance plastic.
PETG is available in a translucent colour, but rarely will the 3D Prints be as clear as TGlase.

The only material that comes close to TGlase in transparency is Pure PolyCarbonate.
However that is harder to 3d print on cheaper machines as it can warp more & needs very good extruder heads.

Pure PC is of course the king of functional production plastics, & only inferior to advanced performance plastics like PEEK or PEI.
Pure PC is better than TGlase in functional respects but is also more expensive.