[PLA] - 4043D

Extruder type: Standard Filastruder with 1.75mm melt filter, full barrel insulation, hopper shaker, and vertical setup with winder.
Picture of my set up:

You can find more pictures on my imgur here: http://ggalisky.imgur.com/all/

Printer type: SD2, E3D v6, Bulldog XL, Glass bed, and Lawsy's Carriages.
Pre-Drying
Many different types of plastics need to be pre-dried in order to get good quality filament and prints. The plastics that encounter frequently that need pre-drying are PLA, Nylon, TPU, and PC (polycarbonate). There are several more plastics that need to be pre-dried, but for simplicity I only listed a few. I used a food dehydrator I bought off of Amazon to dry all of my pellets. http://www.amazon.com/Presto-06300-Dehy … dehydrator . The dehydrator comes with mesh plates, so you need to find a way to stop the pellets from falling through. I use this: http://www.amazon.com/National-Presto-D … ZNA913RBA. I usually let the pellets dry for about 10-17 hours. After drying I seal the pellets in a zip lock bag with a silica gel packet inside, and add a label so I know what plastic it is.
Extrusion
Extrusion temperature: 171°C
Extrusion rate: 6 inches per minute.
Average diameter of filament: 1.53 mm
Tolerances: + or - 0.05 mm

Comments
I got this from http://3dsupplysource.com/. First thing you need to do before extrusion and printing of PLA is pre-drying. If you do not pre-dry, you will get poor quality filament that has bubbles inside of it which will lead to extreme brittleness. PLA pellets are more round and smooth while ABS pellets are rectangular and blocky. This must mean that PLA and ABS are made through fairly different chemical processes.  Having a larger drilled out nozzle would be a good start in order to get filament diameter up to 1.75mm. Unlike ABS, PLA is much more "runny". The filament leaving the nozzle is "runny" enough to the point where the weight of filament bellow will pull the filament coming out of the nozzle into a thinner diameter. A good way to combat this is with more cooling, and a shroud that blocks airflow on the nozzle and directs it on the molten filament. During extrusion, there is a faint sweet smell which quite pleasant. I had no trouble with the winder, and normal spool sizes work fine.
Printing
Setting my glass bed to 65°C, the hot end to 220°C, the extrusion multiplier to 150% for the first layer, and using painters tape worked very well against warping. This is a very easy material to print. The vase took about 2 hours on spiral vase mode, and there seems to be a fixed speed that you cannot change when using the spiral vase setting. No delamitation occurred on either of the parts. Since PLA deforms in the sun, you cannot leave it out during a bright day, and this espically bad with black PLA. Because of PLA's thermal properties, I only use it for indoor art pieces or pieces that have only an aesthetic function.

Brittleness
1-10 scale, 1 is TPU and 10 is acrylic. 7
Layer bonding
1-10 scale, 1 is Nylon and 10 is acrylic. 4

Comparison to commercial PLA filament: The Filastruder PLA and my Makerbot PLA are the same in terms of quality of filament and prints.

Pictures:

Questions? Comment? Feel free to send me a PM, or post a reply