I work at Wichita State University. We have a carbon-fiber recycling technology that has enabled us to reclaim aero-space-grade carbon fiber–and then turning it into the world’s strongest filament.
What we need to find is someone who can extrude our pellets into filament. Would be low-volumes at first but as we gain market penetration, volumes would go up.
If you know of anyone interested in making small-volume batches of filament from our pellets please contact me.
Carbon fiber is useless in filament unless it is long continuous strands. Recovered carbon fiber is likely worthless due to infiltrants, etc.
Additionally, you need specialized hardware to be able to inject continuous carbon fiber strands into regular filament. There is no combination of filament that contains carbon fiber right now that is useful at all on a 3D Printer.
Long story short, abandon the idea. You’re wasting your time. It may have applications elsewhere though, just not in FDM 3D Printing.
Yeah I don’t really seeing it being very useful either.
@ThantiK What?!?!? CF absolutely is useful in filaments.
In PLA, which is already brittle, it makes it more brittle - so not particularly useful.
CF Nylon, though, is awesome. Gives you a ton more stiffness in Nylon and significantly increased heat deflection temperature. PA is way tougher than most filaments, so you can sacrifice some of it by adding CF. Additionally, it stabilizes it so it has less warp when printing.
@Taylor_Landry1 , and in Nylon filaments it negates the near-unbreakability of Nylon. I’ve seen it myself. It’s not worth the additional cost, it’s not worth having to upgrade every single component of your machine to steel, etc.
I’ve printed with carbon fiber, and I’ve also nearly seen CF filament saw a machine in half. And worse than that, this is recovered and possibly contaminated carbon fiber that they’re talking about.
That’s very different than “useless”. Lots of useful properties. You may not like or need them, but they exist.
It’s useless from a business standpoint because there is no market for it.