Skip to main content

Why use Carbon Fiber composite filament?

Most people enjoy the semi-matte finish and chatoyant appearance that carbon composites can have,provide, yet there seems to be some confusion about the non-aesthetic reasons for or against 3D printing with a carbon fiber composite material.materials.

Stiffness / BrittlenessEmbrittlement
  • Stiffness = resistance to bending effort
  • Embrittlement = sharpening of fracture style at break event

Regardless of base filament material, any carbon fiber composite should be stiffer and therefore somewhat more brittle when compared with 100% base filament.   Mixing carbon fibers into plastic creates a material that is typically greater than the sum of it's parts; the semi-flexible plastic material coats and sticks to the carbon fiber strands,strands holding them together which helps prevent the strands from fracturing under bending stresses.stress. 

This phenomenon can be roughly demonstrated using strawsstraws: by holdingHolding 5 straws from a single end andthen bending them with another hand vs holding the same straws at both ends and trying the same bend in the middle.   The straws being supported from both ends are much tougher to bend because they are being held together and able to better share their strength,strength instead of each straw having to hold all the strain by itself.

Composite materials are a bit of a double edged sword because by adding a significantly stiffer strengthening material that has significantly different physical properties fromto our base material,plastic, itwe createsare adding nucleation sites for cracks to begin once the part is put under heavy stresses.  The amount of additional stress the part will accept is usually significant.stress.  Unfortunately, these differences also cause a change in part failure "style"; this typically means a sharp violent break with reduced flexing when compared to the original material's properties.  

The amount of additional stress a carbon fiber composite part will accept is usually significant compared to 100% base material parts, even if it does change how a part fails.

Printability

The increase to a base material's overall stiffness willcan often reduce part warping entirely for those warp prone materialsmaterials. and canI sometimeshave enableeven printingused composite filaments as an enabler for times when needing to print in less than ideal conditionsconditions, but your milage may vary.  

Glass Fiber? Aramid Fiber? Other Fibers?
  • Carbon Fiber is not the only composite material, although currently it is the stiffest of the composites I am aware of.
  • Glass fiber is typically half the "composite tax" compared to carbon fiber with what I believe is 75% of the benefits and all the detriments of carbon fiber.
  • Aramid Fiber and Kevlar fiber composite filamentscomposites seem to stay similarly priced with Carbon Fiber but parts performed identically to the Glass fiber materials in my testing.

Back to top