Has anyone here tried increasing strength and stiffness of a part by boring holes through the lamination layers and epoxying in carbon fiber rods? That should remove the weakness between layers you get in 3d printed items.kind of like rebarb.
That is an interesting concept @John_Munro Ive never really given that any thought but I suppose it could work.
Yes, I’ve done the same thing, but just using filament through the holes. Joseph Prusa used the technique of simply placing tiny through holes in the X-Gantry ends of his RepRap Prusa i2 designs, forcing the slicer to palce solid columns of plastic in the parts at strategic points. By placing the tiny holes, the slicer is tricked into creating a perimeter there, and it goes all the way up the part.
That is an interesting idea of putting the holes in the print. I have a lot of cf rods from old helicopters. I think that I will test this out in a couple of months once I get around to printing the truggy.
Can you share some photo of it done? Thank you.
Yep. I will not have a chance for a couple months but I will test it out then and post something with results once I can.
I’ve combined carbon fibre rods and 3D prints in a few ways, but never by drilling through a print. I always designed the hole in my print. I’ve used carbon fibre rods for giving strength to an airplane wing, and for giving strength to a surf board fin.
I think it would give the same effect if you drilled through or if you designed it it. Putting it in the print would probably be better. What are your experiences? did you have a chance to compare the force required for delamination before and after the reinforcement?
Yeah, for surf board fins it was the difference between them shearing off right away and surviving a run.
When I put ABS filament into the holes of parts, it did not improve strength as much as I thought it would. Essentially, the ABS filament has a certain brittleness to it, and it just snaps. Probably does so before the layer fails. Other materials like CF rods, and nylon would definitely have better durability.