Hey Michael,
PLA is by far the most user friendly material. It seems to produce the most reliable prints with the least number of issues. However, ABS is much stronger when it comes to structural or functional parts. You can make some pretty strong parts with PLA, but ounce for ounce, ABS is stronger. I use a heated bed for all of my prints to help it to stay put.
I've printed PLA, ABS, PET, Bronze-Fill, Ninja-Flex rubber - soft & hard, carbon-fiber filled filament and a couple of others. I am sure at some point I'll build my own and do it 'my way' - like everything elseI'd like to have a larger build volume and give up some resolution for speed and filament volume. A 0.2-0.5 mm layer range would be pretty sweet for larger parts.
I'm actually working on a project now where the parts are ABS to begin with, and would be a good candidate for ABS printing if I could do them in one piece. It is possible to 'tile' the prints, much like we do for CNC, but a 'monolith' is stronger than a multi-piece part that has to be cemented together. The part may also be ripe for vacuum-forming, so I will be trying that before I try printing it. Production time is WAY faster with the vacuum forming avenue. I just don't know yet if some of the complicated features are the part are possible to resolve with VF since the wall thickness is around 3mm. We shall see as time allows.
-B
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