Filament Wound + Twill Overwrap. +Filter byInner Diameter, Outer Diameter, Wall Thickness, Surface Finish (exterior), More. Most filament wound tubing is sold by the linear foot. We will provide continuous lengths up to the max listed length in the product description OR cut the tubes as needed during checkout. Carbon fibre filament is not the same as the carbon fibre you might expect to find in high performance race cars or aircraft. The processes, materials used and the design are all completely different. Typical fibre-based composites are large, long sheets of woven fibres sealed in a tough epoxy based resin.
ColorFabb'h XT-CF20 is definitely one of the more spectacular filaments for amazing 3D printerers to get their fingers on. This PETG structured material features a 20% carbon dietary fiber content, aspiring to be the materials of option for tough parts of high rigidity. It's i9000 a intriguing materials that's certainly worth a closer look. Let's verify it out!
An Coarse Associates
The higher amount of carbon fibers makes this material extremely aggressive, therefore I attained a solidified steel nozzle for my Y3Dv6 hotend to print out it withoutharming my metal nozzles. It's i9000 also well worth mentioning that the filament can be able of slicing serious grooves into extruder idlers and other printer parts on its way through the computer printer.
The Structure
XT-CF20 features an Eastman Amphora PETG base resin, which itself is definitely currently a difficult materials and is situated about half way between PLA and Stomach muscles in terms of temperatures resistance. Yet, PETG filaments are usually pretty undemanding to the printing device equipment: No higher nozzle or bed temps, no warmed build chambers and also no amazing build plate materials are usually required. The XT-CF20 includes this resin with 20% carbon materials. Thesefibresarrive as a finely machine made filler instead than in the shape of long, reinforcing strands, therefore they definitely don't bestow super powers on imprinted parts. However, the XT-CF20 features a considerably increased shape fidelity, stiffness, and temperatures resistance likened to the bare associates of the XT household.
Printing Quality
To get an surrounding concept of the materials's surface-finish, overhang threshold, and bridging capabilities, I printed below Benchy, which lead in a highly uniform texture and colour with a nice matte finish off. The bridges and overhangs at the log cabin windows converted out great, and all information emerged out beautifully. Despite all countermeasures, it offers a inclination to ooze and generate little blobs and artifacts right here and right now there, which can be an barrier to printing something that provides to look perfect.
Conductivity
Possibly by incident, the materials safety data sheet describes this materials asconductive, but nope, it's simply antistatic. Despite the higher carbon fiber content material, the XT-CF20 functions a surface resistivity of 109Ω/sq (as stated in the technical datasheet) and is nothing you'm want to printing your circuits with.
Bending
PETG filaments usually display a extremely low tendency to deform during publishing, and with the higher fiber content of the XT-CF20, the issue ofbendinggoes straight down to virtually zero. Part of my checks were several massive 100 back button 20 a 10 mm pubs with 100 % infill, which I imprinted on a glue-stick-coated glass plate. It stuck to the dish perfectly directly during the 4 hour print out with not a individual corner raised. That's something I cannot even recreate with PLA. In terms of shape fidelity, this materials really deserves 5 out of 5 properly straight plums.
Properly straight, large bars with 100% infill.
Build Plate Material And Adhesion
In my tests, the filament adhered to clear borosilicate cup briefly. Little items could become printed straight to the cup surface area, but taller items were vulnerable to simply popping off during the printing. With a thin level of glue stick on the cup, I has been capable to print out the enormous blocks proven above with perfect build dish adhesion.
I furthermore examined the materials on my PEI construct dish. The construct dish adhesion has been certainly stronger than necessary for a material that does not warp at all, but all parts could become removed without damaging the PEI plate or the parts themselves. Glue-stick on cup is possibly the better answer for publishing XT-CF20.
Bed Heat
ColorFabb recommends 80 °G for the print mattress, which proved helpful great. Going below 80 °M directed to difficulties getting the very first layer to stay to the glue-stick-coated cup dish, but caused no issues when publishing on the PEI dish.
Printing Heat
The XT-CF20's specified running temperature runs from 240 to 260 °C. I examined it at temperature ranges from 230 °M to 310 °C, and properly, 240 to 260 °D is really the sugary place. At 230 °M, components can still be printed nicely, but the results are poor and split easily. Parts printed at 240 °Chemical are currently quite strong, but still have got a minor tendency to crack at the user interface between the levels. At 260 °M, fractures no longer occur in between levels, but throughout the part, which signifies perfect level relationship. Below stress fracture test collection shows the distinction quite obviously, and if you were wondering, was carried out by meticulous professionals making use of a laboratory-grade set of sludge hammer and chisel.
At about 290° G, the material starts to noticeably weaken until publishing becomes virtually impossible at 310 °M. Eventually, the greatest looking results were produced at 240 °C and 25 mm/s printing velocity, with little oozing, while parts published at 260° G and 25 mm/t printing quickness were extraordinarily difficult and demonstrated perfect layer relationship.
Oozing
Not all PETG centered filaments are usually alike, but several tend to ooze. Therefore will the XT-CF2, with droplets of molten material moving out of the nozzle during travel movements. Over the training course of a print out, some of these oozed materials droplets are also gathered back by the publishing nozzle, where they acquire to a larger fall of liquefied plastic, which sooner or afterwards falls down to the print out, producing blob-like artifacts and sometimes even substantial hurdles for the print head to run into.
The problem can end up being mitigated by publishing at lower temperatures and rates of speed. With a publishing heat range between 240 and 260 °C, printing becomes useful at 25 mm/s i9000, with little oozing and reduced material buildup on the nozzle. Other configurations I found useful in mitigating oozing are usually a minor underextrusion, mainly because nicely as triggering “retractions on coating change” and switching off “only retract when traversing perimeters” in Slic3l. Keeping the retraction duration short - 2 mm for the At the3D hotend I was making use of - rates of speed up the retraction moves and prevents nozzle clogging.
Printing Velocity
ColorFabb suggests a printing rate (40 - 70 mm/t) for the XT-CF20, although, within printing temperature ranges of 240 to 260 °Chemical, the optimum printing swiftness I could achieve without strongly affecting level bonding had been 25 mm/beds for perimeters and infill and 10 mm/s for little features. As described before, lower publishing speeds furthermore result in reduced oozing and much less blob-artifacts.
These ideals deviate a great deal from ColorFabb'h recommendation, so I nevertheless could become wrong in my findings. Nonetheless, in ColorFabb'beds comment areas, complaints are usually piling up from users who are incapable to “print anything” with XT-CF20 and the recommended settings. In contrast to that, Pau from Tilt Racing Drones in Sweden published a highly positive review displaying the excellent outcomes from his attempts to print drone structures from XT-CF20 at painstaking 15 mm/t and 260° D.
Resilience
Parts printed from XT-CF20 are extraordinarily hard and can take a beating. The specialized data piece attests XT-CF20 this outstanding durability, below table puts the beliefs into a known context.
ColorFabb XT-CF20 | ColorFabb XT | ABS (typical) | PLA (typical) | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Flexural Modulus ISO 178 / ASTM M790 cast specimen | 6.2 GPa | 2.1 GPa | 2.3 GPa | 2.3 GPa |
Tensile Power (max.) ISO 527 / ASTM G638 shaped specimen | 76 MPa | 50 MPa | 35 - 55 MPa | 60 MPa |
Elongation At Break up ISO 527 / ASTM M638 molded specimen | 7.5 % | 10 % | 20 % | 4 % |
Glass Transition Temp. | 80° M (176° N) | 75 °D (167° F) | lt;105 °C (lt;221 °Y) | 60 °C (140 °F) |
Overhangs
With the configurations dialed in, I put a plain overhang check item with overhang angles from 15° to 75° at the materials. It was imprinted at 0.2 mm level elevation with a 0.4 mm nozzle at 240° M with a nozzle enthusiast to selectively interesting the overhangs. The test ended in a messy catastrophe when it attained the 75°, which destroyed the test item, so I redid the check with a optimum overhang angle of 60° for the below photo.
Bridging
A beneficial effect of the PETG resin's high melt power can be its exceptional bridging capability. The XT-CF20 bridges actually large gaps of 40 mm without specialized print settings, and even produced it across the 80 mm connection. Take note that these bridges had been imprinted with default configurations, such as a connection flow price of 100%, with just a nozzle fan to selectively cool the bridges. These configurations might become tuned more for an individual setup to get better outcomes.
Support Materials
I discovered it essential to configure Slic3l to 0.0 mm Z-contact-distance to obtain a fair adhesion between the assistance buildings and the real print out when making use of XT-CF20 on my one extruder set up. Furthermore, a increased extrusion size of 0.7 mm for the support structures has been necessary to avoid Slic3r'h support materials from degenerating, since it's i9000 imprinted with a higher layer elevation. The support materials could still be taken out and fractures easily at the coming in contact with points. Provided the strength of the materials, the assistance constructions themselves had been also very rigid, which could become a issue when printing items with a lot of assistance materials all around them.
Hygroscopicity
A remarkable residence of the XT-CF20's PETG base resin is usually its hygroscopicity. It absorbs water from ambient moisture, which then leads to a chemical reaction called hydrolysis once it's printed - or normally heated above 160° C. The reaction causes the longer plastic stores in the material to decompose into shorter stores, which effects in higher brittleness of the material.WetPETG can end up being dried out for a several hrs at 65 °G, although stopping it from getting wet in the very first location by keeping the filament in a sealed handbag with silica gel seems to become the way to go right here.
Basic safety
XT-CF20 arrives with a materials safety information page that should become read through. In particular, dust made when sanding or otherwise digesting the material should not really become inhaled and can furthermore type an forceful blend with air flow. The filament is certainly not explicitly harmful, but the MSDS clearly lacks accurate toxicological information. For great gauge, I'd rather not use this materials for objects that come in contact with people on a regular schedule or use a varnish to close off the printed parts.
Conclusion
XT-CF20 has its caveats. Oozing is certainly nevertheless a problem, and the reduced printing speeds get the enjoyment out of the large, hard components that this materials would theoretically allow you to print. Nonetheless, it's an remarkable material, able of a wonderful surface end, while at the same time getting extremely tough and capable to duplicate high overhangs and wide bridges. Because it does not need high temperature ranges or unique build dishes, it can end up being published on virtually any printer that can end up being outfitted with a steel nozzle (or arrives with a cheap supply of brass ones). And it will not warp a micron. There are usually numerous use-cases where a challenging materials of higher stiffness will save the day, regardless of little deficiencies or long printing situations. Be it DIY drone structures, GoPro fixtures or actually practical, load-bearing components for 3D machines and small CNC mills.
I wish you enjoyed plunging into a instead amazing 3D printing filament with this quite first filament evaluation on Hackaday. Have got our readers yet run into tasks where they'chemical wanted for a tougher materials? Additional filaments you'd like to find here? Let us know in the remarks!
Test circumstances
Printer:Prusa i3 Einstein Rework (Proosha IIIo , photograph)Hotend:1.75 mm Y3Dv6, 0.4 mm hardened steel nozzle, E3D Rehabilitation100 thermocouple kit, narrowly ducted, axial nozzle fan, super-power-bestowing jolly wrencher enthusiast guardGet System:GT-2 belt get with 20T pulleys for XY, M5 threaded fishing rod for Z w/ cardan coupling, 0.9° 1.7 A Wantai stepper engines, DRV8825 Stepper Motorists in 8x microstepping setting for XY, IGUS RJ4JP-01-08 dried out lubrication bushings on XY, LM8LUU linear bearings for ZElectronics:Ramps 1.4, Arduino Mega 2560, 12 Sixth is v / 500 W ATX energy offerConstruct plate:Makertum MK1 500W Air conditioners heated bed, Vishay NTCLE203E3 thermistor, PEI printing plate or glass printing plate clamped on top, UHU solvent-free glue stay, capacitive distance switch for car bed levelingFirmware:Marlin-RC7