July 7, 2015 | By Simon
Although we’ve been seeing an increase in entirely new 3D printing materials over the past year ranging from materials designed for use in zero gravity environments to materials that are made from recycled consumer e-waste, we’ve also been seeing improvements on existing material types that are likely to see much more use.
Among other new 3D printing materials we’ve seen in the past week alone include the new Tough material from FormLabs - which is designed to absorb impacts and maintain structure in demanding conditions - and the Polysupport material from Polymaker which aims to make removing support material easier than ever when printing using FDM/FFF methods.
Recently however, many filament manufacturers have been turning their attention towards carbon fiber filaments for users looking to create lightweight and stiff objects. So far we’ve seen this from both colorFabb (with their XT-CF20 filament) and Sharebot (with their Nylon-Carbon filament). Now, users will have yet another option for sourcing their carbon fiber filaments as Amsterdam-based Formfutura has announced that they are launching their own offering of a carbon fiber-reinforced filament for FDM 3D printing, CarbonFil.
“The most important characteristic of CarbonFil is maybe its printer friendliness and easy processing features,” explains the company.
“CarbonFil is warp-free, can be printed without a heated bed, has a great thermal stability, an excellent flowing behaviour and a superb first- and interlayer adhesion and does not produce any odors during 3D printing.”
The company, who consider themselves “True believers in the life-changing technology of desktop 3D printing (and) are very passionate and enthusiastic about the opportunities which arise out of this technology,” has based the new filament on their own HDglass filament but have reinforced it with 20% relatively-long strings of carbon fibers, which ultimately makes the new material not only lightweight but also incredibly stiff.
CarbonFil features include:
- Extremely stiff
- Incredible carbon look and feel
- Very easy to print
- Warp-free
- Light-weight
- Great impact resistance
- Excellent first- and interlayer adhesion
- Great dimensional stability
According to the company, the CarbonFil filament is twice as stiff as their HDglass compound and the material developers were able to successfully increase the impact strength of the material by more than 10%. According to the company, this is a remarkable development because materials with higher stiffness usually show a decrease in their impact strengths. Additionally, the company was successfully able to increase the heat deflection temperature with 21% to 85°C and establish high dimension stability properties.
Available in both 1.75 mm and 2.85 mm diameter sizes, CarbonFil is currently being priced at € 37.50 per 0.5 kg spool over on Formfutura.
Posted in 3D Printing Materials
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