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Any Research on New Materials (self.general)

submitted 2 months ago by Cowboy to c/general

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Hi all,

Long time community member here. Very sad to recently find out about the massive loss of information from the banning of fosscad, but before this I was trying to do some research and am hoping to get some information here if anyone has it on some of the newer filaments that I have seen recently and if any are worth picking up. I am just polishing off the last of my PAHT-CF and Polymaker nylon-GF spools, which have been incredible for my projects, and I've seen that polymaker has been releasing a lot of new filaments under the fiberon line and rebranding old ones. Are there any of these that are worth checking out and has anyone been done any up to date experimentation with some of these newer blends?

Thanks all, RIP r/fosscad

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[–] Kopsis 2 points 2 months ago

There can be a lot of performance variation across brands which makes generalization really difficult. But when it comes to PLA-CF, the primary thing it's gaining (stiffness) is the one thing that PLA doesn't really need. If you're going to try to anneal it, the CF can really help with dimensional stability. Otherwise, you can almost always find a higher performing non-reinforced version.

As for PETG-CF, it still suffers from extremely low impact strength. That's just an inherent property of PETG and adding CF usually makes it worse. That doesn't mean it's not usable. In fact, there's a video of Middleton shooting a 500 Beowulf upper on a GAP lower printed in PETG-CF. But that's a case of really knowing your performance requirements (the GAP has a bolt-on metal buffer tower) and how to dial in your print settings to get the most out of the material. Most people aren't at that level, and that's the main reason why you see experienced folks playing it safe with recommendations.