Experiences With Different 3D Printer Filaments?

I'm hovering with excitement, because there's a Prusa i3 mk3s kit in the living room... I mean, I've got a bunch of work-type work to do before I get to even start assembling it, but... I'm hoping to get some insight into what filaments folks have worked with, and what they've learned in doing so.

To get started, I've got one spool each of:

1. Prusament PLA, because it would seem to be a proven (if pricey for PLA) Known Good Starting Point for getting things working and figuring out what we're doing.
2. Wood-fiber Prusament, because my wife is very much intrigued.

There's a bunch of stuff I'm more curious about, because I want to print parts for miscellaneous actual usages, whether it's brackets, tube guides.... er... all the innumerable bits and bobs that actually DO stuff.

1. Carbon (or fiberglass) reinforced
2. PC Blend (is this a Prusa thing?)
3. ABS (or ASA)
4. PETG
5. And of course the machinable wax stuff for lost wax casting of metal...

What else haven't I thought of? Have some of these been straightforward to print? Nightmares? Unexpected benefits or shortcomings in the finished products?

In reply to Jesse Ransom (FFS) :

I started off with the prusament for tuning and initial prints, it works great and you will love your i3.

Shortly down the road I switched to PETG from esun. It has slightly more heat tolerance and a bit more flexability than pla, but isnt the pain in the butt that abs is. (No enclosure and it still works well), run the print cooling fan 100% to help stringing and add some between layer pauses when youre printing small to stop it from crash detecting because the nozzel picks up the previous not quite hard enough layer

Its also the closest to food safe, though I have yet to use it for that purpose

While there are niche applications for other filament, if you want to experiment with them I would first spend the time learning to tune petg, as its harder than pla which is simply magic out of the box, plus petg is about the cheapest non pla/abs option

I can't speak to anything but PLA. I've tried the oft mentioned Inland PLA with terrible results, I could not get it to extrude cleanly and stick to the bed compared to any other PLA I've used.  This is with an Ender 3 and glass bed, with using glue sticks as assist.

I keep going back to 3D Fuel PLA, either the standard or Pro PLA if you want to play around with annealing or need additional strength (nearly the same as ABS impact strength). It's made in the USA and the price for standard 3D Fuel PLA is the same as Inland, and I've never had an extrusion issue with their PLA.

3DFuel Standard PLA:

https://www.fargo3dprinting.com/products/midnight-black-ingeo-pla/

3DFuel Pro PLA:

https://www.fargo3dprinting.com/products/advanced-pla-plus-midnight-black/

Fargo 3D printing is a great supplier too, free shipping over $35 and relatively quick shipping as well.  

Brand new to the world of 3D, finally completed building my Ender-3 from Prime Day "treat yo-self" purchase.  Need to level the bed and see if it actually works.

A Star Wars friend with 3 different printers and loads of experience (yeah I'm asking him A LOT of questions) recommended PLA from https://www.hatchbox3d.com/  for this new guy.  Eventually I'm going to learn more about this carbon fiber stuff.

Hatchbox pla is great.

Abs requires an enclosure at minimum. It's really finicky, but also the easiest material to post process. Hang it over acetone for a few minutes, bonus points if you can do it in a vacuum chamber, and voila, smooth prints. 

Nylon materials are great for making food grade stuff with, but are really rough on nozzles. 

I have no experience with the wood or carbon mixed stuff yet, but I'm also moving from FDM to resin shortly

Start with PLA and learn how to tweak the settings in your slicer.   ABS and even PETg are totally different animals and require a good bit of background knowledge before diving in that deep.  

I used to print with Hatchbox filament but I would see a lot of variation in the quality and print settings roll to roll.  Inland PLA used to be my go to until this spring when the price went up and the availability went down I switched to JMO Engineering and Zyltech (both of which are US made).  JMO's prices have fluctuated quit a bit in the last few months but it's been good filament to me.  I would recommend Zyltech filaments all the way for whichever polymer you want to print. I have never had a single issue with any of their filaments, I've used about 50kgs of their black ABS since this spring.

Definitely start with PLA.  Nylon is also a good next step up without having to know too much about material properties in your print.  The micro-fiber reinforced plastics are quite strong and rigid, and definitely where you want to be if you're printing multi-use tooling, but the continuous strand fiber is a completely different animal and takes quite a lot of work to balance the reinforcement fill/placement. Hell, I don't even know if there are home machines that support continuous strand yet...

Your filament is going to mainly depend on what you're doing with it.  Something in the house? PLA is fine.  Something in the car?  ABS, PETG, or something with a similar heat resistance.  Oil/gas resistant, Nylon is needed.  Stuff like that.

Hatchbox is good, eSun is good, I'm currently playing with Duramic PETG as it was on sale on Prime day, I'll give it a pass as well.

I don't think I've run across any filaments that are horrible, but I also haven't been trying anything super-cheap.  The main thing to do when switching filaments is to do a test print or two of them and make sure that you have the settings right.

I've been printing for 7 years. I've tried LOTS of stuff. I can't say I've had a brand that was bad, but I've had two spools that were bad. 
That being said, I just got a printer that prints at 250 mm/s so filament is more critical. I loaded a brand (LNL) that I've been using for years and at 250 mm/s it's horrific. Total garbage. I loaded a partial spool of Hatchbox that's been opened for at least a year and a half, 1 year of that in humid florida. It printed great. Absolutely great. I've had good success with Overture as well, but I'm sticking with Hatchbox. 
Another thing is, the slicer make a difference, possibly more than the filament does. I just completed two prints, one with prusaslicer, the other with the slicer that comes with my printer. The AnkerMake slicer did good. Really good considering it's printing at 250 mm/s. But the prusaslicer was amazing!!! Nearly invisible layer lines with sunlu filament, I suspect it'd be just as perfect with Hatchbox. 

In reply to DrBoost :

What are you printing with that does 250mm/s? A Voron?

In reply to Jesse Ransom (FFS) :

I'd echo what most others have said- for most things, especially those of the non-structural/functional category, you're going to be best off with PLA. Generally the most indoor-friendly filament, fairly inexpensive, a nearly limitless selection of colors and finishes, and by far the most forgiving when printing with it. As far as brands go, I've run everything from pricier name-brand filaments to Amazon-branded ones to ones that don't even identify the company that made it through my Ender 3 S1 and can't really say that any are that much better than any others. Personally, I like the Sunlu PLA that I've got, but if there's a good deal on a color I want I'll usually not worry too much about it.

I've used a few different wood-fiber PLA filaments and have been quite happy with the results. It definitely smells like you're burning wood though when you print it.

As far as other options, I've printed with PETG the most out of the rest- I picked up 5-6 spools of Overture PETG from an auction for a steal shortly after I got my printer and I've used up most of several of them. Takes higher nozzle temps and higher bed temps, a different nozzle height than PLA (needs to be further from the bed), and has to be printed slower in general than PLA. It definitely smells more than PLA, but it's not terrible- I have a cheap enclosure (essentially a grow tent...) that my printer is in and I've not really had any issues with printing PETG in my office. Even The Dancer's stupidly sensitive nose hasn't complained about it. PETG is stronger and better out in the sun- I've got a pair of wall mounts for my biggest LEGO model printing out now in PETG.

I've also printed essentially one thing with ABS on my printer- an intake duct for my E46. Took a lot of tries to get it right, and even then it technically failed but was still usable. If I do it again, it won't be with the printer sitting in my office- that stuff really smelled. However, if I do try it again it will likely go a lot better now that I've got the printer dialed in a lot better.

Probably the best advice I can give is that whenever you get a new filament to go through and test and figure out all the settings for it- someone over on the 3dPrinting subreddit suggested this guide to tuning/testing, and it seems to have worked pretty well: https://ellis3dp.com/Print-Tuning-Guide/articles/index_tuning.html

As far as slicers (as DrBoost mentioned), I've been using SuperSlic3r for pretty much the whole time I've had my printer. It's a fork of PrusaSlicer and if you enable the 'expert' mode lets you tune a LOT of stuff. The only thing really lacking that I know of is the fancy organic/tree supports that some of the others have added recently- but I expect it will pick those up eventually.

This further reinforces my thought that we should have a 3D Printing Build Thread or 'What I'm Printing Now'...

At home I have only messed with PLA and PETG.  The learning curve with PETG was steep, and it probably took me 20 (short) prints to get it dialed in.

PLA pretty much just works and is robust enough for 99% of what I am doing.