Count me as skeptical. The strength of high-quality carbon fibre comes from having many pieces of fibre woven together over the surface omnidirectionally (Okay, I'm mostly wrong here - see below). This machine seems to simply lay it down in a (more or less) continuous strand, which means that the fibres will be cohesive rather than woven together. You can do this without a special printer - all you need is some carbon fibre/pla filament [1]. My bet would be that polycarbonate 3d printed parts [2] will be stronger that these pseudo carbon-fibre parts in most situations.
> The strength of high-quality carbon fibre comes from having many pieces of fibre woven together over the surface omnidirectionally.
No, not at all.
The strength of CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced polymer) comes from having very long strands of carbon fiber, ideally as long as the whole piece, held together by some polymer matrix such as epoxy resin. It also comes from having a very high fiber-to-epoxy ratio in the final product, which is usually achieved by squeezing out all the extra epoxy using vacuum while curing.
The length of the fibers, and the minimal amount of epoxy, is what makes CF strong. Short fibers, and having too much epoxy matrix, weakens the composite.
There is a kind of extruded CF where short CF fibers are mixed with epoxy matrix and extruded in the desired shape. This is strong compared to ordinary plastic, but not as strong as long-fiber CF.
What you're describing is woven CF, and it's not the strongest there is. The strongest CF pieces are made of unidirectional CF, where all fibers are oriented in the direction of the main effort. E.g., CF tubes are strongest when they are made of unidirectional CF, with fibers as long as the whole tube.
Woven CF is a good compromise in that it's reasonably strong in several directions in the plane of the CF cloth. Also, for CF tubes, an outer layer of woven CF gives it a bit more resistance to splintering.
Another way to achieve multi-directional strength is by laying unidirectional cloth alternatively in different directions. The piece will gain strength from each unidirectional layer in a specific direction.
Most people recognize the classic "CF look" only when the top layer is woven. Unidirectional CF cloth has a different look. This is why many CF items are made of unidirectional cloth, with a single woven layer on top.
If this CF 3D printer can lay long-fiber CF, and can achieve a very high fiber-to-epoxy ratio in the final product, then chances are the pieces produced this way will be strong.
> The strongest CF pieces are made of unidirectional CF, where all fibers are oriented in the direction of the main effort.
You're confusing issues even further! To anyone who wants to actually understand this:
Carbon fibre doesn't have a single "strength" value since it is virtually always anisotropic - its strength varies massively depending on which direction you stress it in.
GP is correct in that the carbon fibre weave with the best minimum strength is the 3D woven stuff which is very fancy and difficult to make, and not what this printer makes.
The most common carbon fibre is 2D woven cloth which is laminated together like plywood. It is strong in the directions of the fibres but can very easily delaminate (the layers become unstuck). It's a pretty big problem for things like the Boeing Dreamliner because the delaminations can be under the surface and impossible to see.
CFRP tubes are often made with the fibres all running along the axis of the tube, but it is then extremely weak in the circumferential direction and will tend to split like bamboo.
Delaminated Dreamliner sounds like a maintenance person's worst nightmare. Wouldn't you have to replace the entire part? Where "part" is wing, rudder or fuselage.
Replacing a defective part is no big deal, just incorporate an inspection of the part into a regular maintenance window every X cycles (a 'cycle' is usually one flight) and model its cost as an amortized per-cycle cost based on its mean time to failure.
The problem is when it's difficult to know whether a part is defective. Something like subsurface delamination might cause visible bubbling or warping, but if it's deep enough then it may only be apparent on an ultrasound or X-ray scan. That sort of scan might be more expensive than just replacing the part regularly, and shipping it off to a factory to be inspected and refurbished.
That is a maintenance technician's worst nightmare: an expensive and bulky part that fails in invisible ways, requiring either regular replacement or time-consuming inspection with expensive equipment.
The incredible strength of carbon fiber comes from the
long, continuous strands that carry load down the entire
part. This is why space shuttles, rockets, and Formula 1
cars are constructed from continuous strand carbon. And
it’s how we print. Don’t settle for plastic with a dash of
chopped carbon fill. Longer is stronger.
-
7mm x 3mm x 100mm. 3D Printed beam is packed with tens of
thousands of full length, continuous carbon fiber strands
Conventional thermoplastic FDM printing has a lot of design constraints: no overhangs, voids, etc. Looking at this, it seems like it takes those design constraints, and adds some more: the fibre is aligned in the direction of the print head! This is going to take some really tricky modelling work to get it to print what you want, with the direction of strength actually oriented in the direction you want.
And how do you even cure it? Is it just carbon fibre in a thermoplastic matrix?
It depends on the load, for a bullet poof vest you need to have woven threads, for a cable it's less of an issue but weaving still helps once the threads start breaking.
I'm skeptical too, but don't count it out because the fibers aren't woven together. The weaving is not where the strength comes from, and it's usually not omnidirectional. If this machine can set the wrap angle, and build out several layers, the fiber layout might be comparable to a filament winding process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filament_winding
But the thing that I'm concerned about is the curing of the stuff. A composite gets its strength by having a low resin content, and I'm not sure this machine/process can pull it off. Based on the few available details, it's right to be skeptical.
Looking at the specs page, their claimed yield stress is 20% higher than aluminum compared to a factor of ~4x for traditional CF composites.
Also concerns about the fiber content may be misguided. The hard part of CF compoisites is the the layup process, which is what a 3D printer would do. The part can then be vacuum bagged to pull out the resin, as in traditional CF manufacturing techniques.
Where did you get that yield stress number? Is it from that graph with Aluminum and the plastics?
Because that graph shows modulus(stiffness), not strength. Which is pretty hinky when placed next to the statements about strength. Looks to be a bit misleading.
On top of that "stronger" has no meaning when it comes to composites. There are about 9 different failure modes, and you can't just choose one and report the "strength". I'm guessing they're talking about axial tension numbers (because I'm cynical) where their material would perform the best. Even then, their yield strength is about 200MPa (based on the "5x stronger than ABS" statement) whereas aluminum's yield strength tops out around 600MPa.
I think that this is more of an 80 20 kind of question. At this level the argument isn't "hey this is as good as carbon fiber" but "hey this is better than regular 3d printing filament"
I agree in part, but I think you're overlooking a big tradeoff here. Printing with plastic filaments gives you a fairly weak piece, but leaves open the door for a lot of post-printing finishes (surface smoothing, using the piece as a positive image to invest, melt out, and cast as metal, etc). You give up a lot of those opportunities printing CF strands, so this printer really does need to be able to produce pretty strong parts to have a competitive advantage big enough to offset those tradeoffs. It definitely does not have to achieve traditional carbon fiber strength to be worthwhile, but it needs to be considerable.
I'm not overlooking that at all. The point here is that it addresses a different and interesting use case and is ultimately a welcome addition to the market.
Can carbon fiber be needle punched to get most of the benefit with a much much simpler process? I reckon adding some sort of barbed needle that can move over the surface of laid carbon fiber could accomplish this on non-flat surfaces. It would probably need some sort of corresponding arm on the backend to support the carbon fiber and accommodate the passage of the needle through the supporting platform.
Besides needle-punching, there are a bunch of other non-woven technologies that I reckon could be applied to carbon fibers in some form.
Maybe the issues you raised cause it to only "3D print parts that are stronger than CNC machined aluminum by weight."[1], according to the company, and not stronger as carbon fiber.
I am guessing that means you would not want to use to build structural members like the Tub of a racing car. Although maybe aero pieces like Dive Planes and winglets.
Do you still need to Autoclave parts created by this printer?
I too am highly skeptical. I could see laying down the fiber in overlapping layers, then pressing it and heating it to see the epoxy but not sure how you could do that in this sort of 3D printing environment.
The allure of carbon fiber in industry has to do with the properties of the material that can be produced. Home made carbon fiber won't be all that great of a material compared to what people see out in the world (on race cars, planes, etc...). Production lines for producing commercial carbon fiber is super expensive ($100 million+). Zoltek has a basic rundown of the process [0].
For the really good stuff, you'd need pultruded carbon fiber where the glue sets with the fibers tensioned straight to really get good strength effects.
A lot of composite work is low volume production with excessive manual work at not very good quality.
Ultrahigh Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) might be a much more interesting material as it has a higher strength to weight ratio and as it melts at a lower temperature, 135 C. It is nontoxic too.
I was thinking about 3D printed supercars, (or cars for that matter) because why not. I have a friend that works for Buell that informed me the industry has been 3D printing porototypes for a while now. Rapid prototyping has been something driving this field. He sent me this link:
I read last week about an Australian researcher using honey as a base to make graphene. Can just see people keeping bees in their backyards to create base material for their future printers...
I hypothesize that that technique will not work. Graphene molecules are flat, only 1 atom thick. So while they are strong in 2 dimensions, once you start stacking graphene vertically, it's just like a stack of paper. The layers won't be nearly as strongly bonded vertically as they would be along the plane of graphene. I think you would end up with a product the cleaves easily along the layers of graphene. I'm pretty sure you going to need a 3 dimensional arrangement of atoms.
With all the questions about epoxy content/ratio, I wonder if it might be possible to take a page from the metal clay playbook and use a binder that evaporates as it cures. Or maybe use one that's foam-like or frothy.
Are there health risks associated with extruding carbon fibers? I was under the impression that working with carbon fiber can be potentially harmful to your health.
- epoxy sensitivity. Work with it too long (years) and you can become allergic. I can't tell if this system uses epoxy as a binder; it doesn't seem to because it would be messy.
- inhaling carbon fiber dust. This dust is made when you cut it, not when you lay it out. A 3d printer should put it in the right shape, so less cutting would be required. You'll want to avoid breathing it in, but it's not cancerous like asbestos: http://annhyg.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/inhaled_particle...
For a pretty freaking cool view of how high-quality carbon fibre parts are made check out this youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DLr8qHliI
[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375236253/proto-pasta-...
[2]: http://www.makerfarm.com/index.php/2-2lb-1kg-1-75mm-clear-po...