Comment by kubik369
1 month ago
> is the regular PLA limit of ~55 degrees Celsius not okay for a desktop accessory?
Not the author, but PLA has a glass transition temperature of around 60 degrees, which in layman's terms is when it starts to melt. However, depending on the quality of the printing process, layers start separating/the print is pliable significantly lower, at around 35-40 degrees. This means that in countries where you get 30+ degree summers, PLA is not really suitable for anything which experiences any kind of stress. I would hazard a guess that the standing laptop can cause quite a bit of stress when the train starts/stops.
It should be mentioned that as far as I can tell pretty much no one is selling pure PLA filament. They all have additives, so who knows what the actual glass transition temperature is for any random given filament. This has been true for a while too. Pure PLA has some properly awful properties, among which is it having pretty much no elastic deformation. Any amount of force will introduce microscopic cracks. The various additives reduce these kinds of issues and are therefore not really optional.