Can you improve PLA with carbon fibers? Yes,

3D Printing
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Can you improve PLA with carbon fibers? Yes, but not in the ways you’d expect!
To be honest, i was slightly disappointed with the HTPLA-CF, but there’s still the option of annealing these parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z3Nq4hwKgs

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Dang just bought that stuff, printed a few things out, it does look good, haven’t tried annealing yet.

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I love this stuff, Thomas. Soooo professional and the brevity is so nice!!
Brook

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You are totally hitting the mark with these video’s @Thomas_Sanladerer Great job.
I know so many people who only buy CF filament for the look, and nothing else. If someone cracks a good looking matt black finish at a low cost, that’s going to sell very well indeed.

Also do try to review Dutch filaments Carbon fiber - it’s the most odd material I have ever used - you basically get a finish that’s almost like velcro! When printing I see some separation of the fibers and base material - runny black plastic, and visible looking fibers. Seriously it’s very odd and feels much stronger than most other CF filaments, it would be good to know what you think of it.

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@Richard_Horne ​ I’ve got PrimaSelect PETG-CF printed, which probably comes close to what you’re describing with Dutchfilaments. Prints are messy and it feels more like sandpaper than velcro, but the effect from the carbon fiber make it an extremely anisotropical material when it comes to strength and stiffness. Mechanically probably the closest thing to results from the Markforged machines.

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@Thomas_Sanladerer it’ll be interesting to see the strength tests. I was using a 0.8mm nozzle and low layers for the Dutch filaments CF I think that’s why it ended up so very fuzzy, more then sandpaper. Maybe a smaller nozzle helps keep the fibers more packed when printing? I’ll have to test that.

On that point, it would be good to see the difference of nozzle size and layer height on model layer strength - maybe something you can also look at after the first round of testing.

looking forward to more filament video’s :slight_smile:

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@Richard_Horne ​ the PrimaSelect Carbon video is out, performing practically, but with more tuning required to get good prints.
I’ve definitely got some branch-out videos planned for looking at the flow multiplier, temperatures, layer heights etc.!

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@Thomas_Sanladerer That was an interesting one, and yes it looks very similar to the Dutchfilaments CF material quality I experienced. I think you could easily spend the nest 6 months on Filament ! good luck with it. I’ll keep watching with increasing interest. Keep it up, this is really awesome stuff!