Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “CES 2015: 3D Printing Carbon Fiber”.
You know that it’s a good prototype hey this is Mike with make, and I am hanging out with Greg. The CEO of Mark, Forge here at CES 2015 Mark Forge. Does carbon fiber, 3d printing so tell us why carbon fiber and how okay the? Why is a well because it’s cool? No, but really what it is, is normal. 3D printing, you have plastic.
So this is a part off a race car and the you know we printed plastic and then we reinforced with carbon fiber plastic is great. If you want to check fitted form, but if you want to put it on a racetrack and use it, you need to have the function you have the stiffness, so this part is: has a higher strength to weight. Then aluminum right, so you can use it right, and so this, if you want it in plastic, is a nine dollar part in fiberglass, which is a little heavier to $ 14 part, but go ahead and bend.
That thing I mean that’s a it’s pretty skin. It’S pretty said, yeah right and then for $ 19. You get carbon fiber, so you get the strength but no way no way. This is different light weight, but this thing – and I and I was playing around with this one right before we started filming it.
This thing you know you can see a little bit of Norwich in there yeah um this guys with carbon superlight, no, no flex at all. That’S that’s wild and there’s just uh six layers of carbon fiber. Is that correct? So we have so we have here. We show the process of making this part, so it starts with three layers: one hundred mark 100 microns each of nylon. Then up here we do three in next layers of carbon, we have a whole honeycomb structure in the middle.
We do three more layers of carbon. We top it off with plastic. This is all automatic, so you hit go and then, like seven and a half hours later, you scrape this off the bill.
Plane you wash off, we use a little glue to hold down. This is not sanded. This is just this. Now it comes out right, then you put it on your race car you’re done this quadcopter we designed and printed it in two and half days, Wow right. So this is made in two halves right, it’s reinforced with fiberglass. It has wire channels that run through it.
The motor mounts are embedded in it as our. If you see all these little kind of dark points, these are captive nuts to screw in these bolts. There are so we’ve printed up to the top of the nuts there’s. A pause function, that’s automatic in software.
You click it on it’ll shoot you an email, hey come at all the parts to it, you put the little parts in it. You hit resume. It prints the top on it. You scrape off the part boom done, so the nuts are actually encapsulated into the plastic itself.
That’S brilliant! I love it. It makes it a lot easier. So you I mean first of all, is it’s it’s narrow thing.
You want to have a smooth outer shell, but you need that hard mounting point that you can really screw into yep. Absolutely yep so got a few different things on display here some looks ago, so we got some wrench. We made this as a tech demonstrator for our friends who go to space and this one we’ve we sanded the bottom away, so you can see the nice little fill pattern.
You can also see in this one we’ve embedded an RFID tag right so, like let’s say you’re, you know GM and you want to track all the tools in your cell. You want to make sure you have everything there. Rfid makes it nice alright. So here’s an orthotic that we printed this has a printed in pressure sensor, so you can sense the impact of each tab. It also has an RFID tag, so you can make sure you know yours is yours. What’S cool about? This is with all orthotics you get like to fit in the form you know to contour to your foot right, but by being able to control the fibers, how many you put in controls, how stiff it is the angle of the fibers controls how your foot will Go through the strike so think about the motion aspect of some people. Let’S say you, roll in we’ve had this one reinforced with fibers on the outside to correct that roll and give you more right.
So my sprained ankles think of the pass to get the best right and the cool thing is because it’s all you know computer-controlled when you dial in that right fit you have it for life right and when you get a new one, it’s exactly the same. It’S not like it’s not custom handmade and like nobody knows how it’s gon na come out. It’S the same every time, so tell me a little bit of the geeky technical stuff. How do you actually 3d print with carbon fiber? How does that work? Oh, it’s a mystery, no, but uh. So we print we print with nylon. We have two heads: we have a nylon printhead, which puts all the form around, and then we have a carbon print head will do either carbon fiber, glass or Kevlar one at a time, and it will essentially melts the fabric into the part below it right and That’S how I that’s how I wait and when you, the key thing, is when it comes out of the printer there’s no post curing, it comes out done right. So in this part, there’s no there’s no nasty chemicals.
You know that one’s printing don’t smell anything. It’S not giving you cancer right when it comes out. It’S done.
This is our cycle tester right, so everything everything that we build, every new plastic, so Tony use, our chief chief scientist Tony, comes up with all these different plastic blends right and the way we figure out if the plastic is awesome or totally sucks is to first We print with it figure out, like you know, baseline something’s failed not that test things that pass the willit print test. We go through the in straw, so we have an intron, that’s back at home. It’S a three point been testing gives us a stress-strain curve for every new formulation. Once it’s passed, that you say: okay, it’s good in the day one. Is it going to be good five years later cycle, tester right so now that cycle tester usually lives in an environmental chamber? We take it down to negative 73 C up to 120 C and we beat the crap out of everything right and then you iterate right and that’s how we refine the plastics that we come out with.
So you guys got some hardcore science behind the stuff. You’Re working on Tony was a chief scientist for a 1-2-3. If you’ve ever used an a 1-2-3 batter you’re, getting pink, Tony great yeah so on the printer itself available now available. Now the lead time now they’re shipping for a couple months, leave time now.
It thinks like 17 weeks and five and a half thousand dollars it’s available either at mark force. Comm we’re also setting up the whole reseller network, buy through your resellers, they’re great people right and what’s 2015 whole tree guys more printers good .