Currently, there are some vendors that provide a lot of information about some of their filaments. I cannot say anything about how accurate or trustworthy they are, though. Unfortunately, as reported here by other users, it looks like the market if filled by “cunning” sellers who are not transparent regarding how they asses the properties of their filaments. Anyway, as far as the physical properties to track are concerned, one of the most extensive table I found reported:
- Density [g/cm³]
- Elongation at Break [%]
- Tensile Strength [Mpa]
- Flexural Strength [Mpa]
- Flexural Modulus [Mpa]
- Young’s Modulus [Mpa],
- Izod Impact Strength [KJ/m²]
- Melting Point [°C],
- Melt Index [g/10min]
- Heat Deflection Temperature [°C]
I could think that with those you can have some idea about how good the material will be for mechanical parts.
There are other properties which are sometimes advertised as “chemical resistance” which are often left without a reference.
Apart from the data you can get from the sellers, I found a table that, even if not providing a thorough analysis of the filaments in terms of the properties listed before, it looks like an attempt to gather together data to help user chose the right filament for their application: Prusa Research - Material Table
Yes, it’s definitely a good point of information. It looks like it was also referenced in the Prusa blog: Advanced Filament Guide.
That post is a bit old (2020), and I fear it has not been updated in a while, considering that the post writer replied only in the first year and all the following comments ended up without replies. It is a pity, considering also that the post ended with a sort of request for users to propose new filaments to test. I see that the last comment is fairly recent (2024) so I guess someone is trying to get more information to be added. Alas, it’s kind of understandable: it could be expensive and time consuming to test other brands filaments for the sake of keeping the maker community happy.
In the post seems that the data collected in the table is coming from real tests made at Prusa Research, so this makes me hope that the experiment setup has been kept the same for the different tests.