The PLA was the stuff that came with the printer some 3 years ago. It was vaccum sealed. As for settings, the makerbot Defaults. The ABS defaults work a treat so I figured they would be fine too. After it kept happening I checked online to see what others used an none seemed to have any problems with the same settings. Its not that important to us right now. The ABS works and its cheap so we will be sticking to that. But if we need it fixing I know who to ask :-)