<p>I have heard many times that silk PLA is PLA with some unspecified elastomers in it, but without any reliable reference to confirm this statement.</p>
<p>If it contains elastomers it should be more flexible and elastic than standard PLA I guess, but I have tried many silk brands and this doesn't seems true and actually in my experience on contrary it looks like harder and &quot;less&quot; elastic than standard PLA on average.</p>
<p>Since all silk seem behaving very similar, could be assumed that even if the specific blend changes from a brand to another with different secondary additives the &quot;main recipe&quot; ingredients are basically the same.</p>
<p>Does Silk PLA really contain elastomers as additives? If yes, since elastomers are an huge family what categories of elastomers?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-24T03:15:04.063Z
Not an answer since I don't have a source for this, but I would speculate that you would need a significant portion of elastomer content to make the overall printed material stretchy/flexible. Anyway, in my experience silks are more "gummy", prone to fusing with nearby material (e.g. in print-in-place mechanisms) where they "tear" away and possibly damage the print rather than snapping cleanly like pure PLA would.
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CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-24T11:06:12.600Z
Probably it would be a significant amount to make it really elastic, but the point here is that is less elastic than standard PLA. Silk PLA is stickier to other surfaces when fused and is trickier to achieve good layer adhesion with no delamination issues but is not gummier and has a “glassier” consistence and slightly higher transition temperature (some degree more to start to became soft), or at least this is my experience trying many different brands of silk PLA
AndreaF
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-24T12:40:08.517Z
I'm not sure about differences in Tg, but my silk (YOUSU brand) prefers to print much cooler than normal PLA (200-210 vs 210-245) and is watery at higher temperatures, flowing out of the nozzle rather uncontrollably.
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<pla><print-material>
Does Silk PLA really contains elastomers as additives?
AndreaF
# Does Silk PLA really contains elastomers as additives?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-08-23)

I have heard many times that silk PLA is PLA with some unspecified elastomers in it, but without any reliable reference to confirm this statement.

If it contains elastomers it should be more flexible and elastic than standard PLA I guess, but I have tried many silk brands and this doesn't seems true and actually in my experience on contrary it looks like harder and "less" elastic than standard PLA on average.

Since all silk seem behaving very similar, could be assumed that even if the specific blend changes from a brand to another with different secondary additives the "main recipe" ingredients are basically the same.

Does Silk PLA really contain elastomers as additives? If yes, since elastomers are an huge family what categories of elastomers?

**Tags:** pla, print-material
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Not an answer since I don't have a source for this, but I would speculate that you would need a significant portion of elastomer content to make the overall printed material stretchy/flexible. Anyway, in my experience silks are more "gummy", prone to fusing with nearby material (e.g. in print-in-place mechanisms) where they "tear" away and possibly damage the print rather than snapping cleanly like pure PLA would.  
> **username_0**: Probably it would be a significant amount to make it really elastic, but the point here is that is less elastic than standard PLA. Silk PLA is stickier to other surfaces when fused and is trickier to achieve good layer adhesion with no delamination issues but is not gummier and has a “glassier” consistence and slightly higher transition temperature (some degree more to start to became soft), or at least this is my experience trying many different brands of silk PLA  
> **username_1**: I'm not sure about differences in Tg, but my silk (YOUSU brand) prefers to print much cooler than normal PLA (200-210 vs 210-245) and is watery at higher temperatures, flowing out of the nozzle rather uncontrollably.  

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