carbon fiber

38 Articles

Soluble Molds For Composite Parts

March 13, 2017 by 16 Comments

People have been experimenting with 3D printed molds for fiberglass and carbon fiber for a while now, but these molds really aren’t much different from what you could produce with a normal CNC mill. 3D printing opens up a few more options for what you can build including parts that could never be made on any type of mill. The guys at E3D are experimenting with their new dissolvable filament to create incredible parts in carbon fiber.

For the last year, E3D has been playing around with their new soluble filament, Scaffold. This is the water-soluble support material we’ve all been waiting for: just throw it in a bucket of warm water and it disappears. The normal use case for this filament is as a support material, but for these experiments in composites, E3D are just printing whole objects, covering them in carbon fiber prepreg, vacuum bagging them, and allowing them to cure. Once the carbon fiber isn’t floppy and gooey, the support material is dissolved in water, leaving a perfect composite part.

E3D aren’t that experienced with composites, so they handed a bit of filament off to So3D for some additional experimentation. The most impressive part (in the title pic for this post) is a hollow twisted vase object. This would have required a six-part machined mold and would have cost thousands of dollars to fabricate. Additional experiments of embedding ABS parts inside the Scaffold mold were extremely successful.

As you would expect, there are limitations to this process. Since E3D are using a dissolvable mold, this is a one-time deal; you’re not going to be pulling multiple composite parts off a 3D printed mold like you would with a machined mold. Curing the parts in a very hot oven doesn’t work — Scaffold filament starts to sag around 60°C. Using prepreg is recommended over dry fabric and resin, but that seems to be due more to the skill of the person doing the layup rather than an issue with materials.

Long-range Electric Longboard Outlasts Rider

December 27, 2016 by 24 Comments

What could be better than a holiday ride past the palm trees and blue waters of a Mediterranean resort town? Perhaps making that ride on a long-range electric longboard of your own design will ice that particular cake.

And when we say long range, we mean it – an estimated 25 miles. The only reason [overclocker_kris] couldn’t come up with an exact number in the test drive seen below is that he got too tired to continue after mile 20. With a bit of juice left in the 64-cell battery pack, built from 18650s harvested from old laptops, the board was sure to have another five miles in it. A custom molded underslung carbon fiber enclosure houses the battery pack and electronics, including the receiver for the handheld remote control and the ESCs for the two motors. Motor mounts were fabbed from aluminum and welded to the trucks, with power transmission through timing belts to 3D-printed pulleys. It’s a good-looking build, and topping out at 22 MPH isn’t too shabby either.

We’ve covered fleets of electric longboards before, from those with entirely 3D-printed decks to one with a flexible battery pack. But we doubt any have the endurance and performance of this board.

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Amazing Carbon Foam Doesn’t Take Much Bread

August 27, 2016 by 28 Comments

A lot of people knew the Space Shuttle had ceramic tiles to protect its nose from reentry heat. That’s mostly because the tiles fell off a lot and each one was a unique shape, so it got a lot of press coverage. However, you didn’t hear as much about the parts of the orbiter that got really hot: the forward part of the wings and the tip of the nose. For those, NASA used an exotic material called RCC or reinforced carbon-carbon. Other uses include missile nose cones and Formula One brakes. A similar material, carbon fiber-reinforced silicon carbide appears in some high-end car brakes. These materials can take high temperatures, easily.

[AvE] wanted to make some carbon foam for experiments. It does take a little bread, though. Not money, but literal bread. To create the foam, he burns bread slices in a chamber full of argon. The stuff has some amazing properties.

In the video below, you can see the foam protecting a thermocouple from a torch flame and even holding melting aluminum. Not bad for a few pieces of bread.

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Super Strong 3D Component Carbon Fiber Parts

May 15, 2016 by 20 Comments

[prubeš] shows that parts printed with carbon fiber filament are as strong, or at least as stiff, as you’d expect. He then shows that his method for producing carbon fiber parts with a mixture of traditional lay-up and 3D printing is even stronger and lighter.

[prubeš] appears to be into the OpenR/C project and quadcopters. These things require light and strong parts for maximum performance. He managed to get strength with carbon fiber fill filament, but the parts weren’t light enough. Then he saw [RichMac]’s work on Thingiverse. [RichMac] designed parts with pre-planned grooves in which he ran regular carbon fiber tow with epoxy. This produced some incredibly strong parts. There’s a section in his example video, viewable after the break, where he tests a T joint. Even though the plastic starts to fail underneath the carbon fiber, the joint is still strong enough that the aluminum tube inside of it fails first.

[prubeš] innovation on [RichMac]’s method is to remove as much of the plastic from the method as possible. He designs only the connection points of the part, and then designs a 3D printable frame to hold them in place. After he has those in hand, he winds the tow around the parts in a sometimes predetermined path. The epoxy cures onto the 3D print creating a strong mounting location and the woven carbon fiber provides the strength.

His final parts are stronger than 100% infill carbon fill prints, but weighs 8g instead of 12g.  For a quadcopter this kind of saving can add up fast.

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Amazing Analysis Of A 350,000 LED Airport Art Project

May 5, 2016 by 29 Comments

Before you zip to the comments to scream “not a hack,” watch a few minutes of this teardown video. This 48 minute detailed walkthrough of a one-off art piece shows every aspect of the project: every requirement, design decision, implementation challenge, and mistake. Some notable details:

  • PCBs that are 1 meter wide (all one piece!)
  • 350,000 white LEDs
  • Carbon fiber enclosures
  • 1-wire serial bus (like the WS2812 only not quite) with 12 bit resolution (TLC5973)
  • Customized cable test jigs, PCB test jigs, and test modes
  • An exploration on ESD issues in production

It’s not often that one sees teardowns of professional projects like this, and there’s quite a bit to learn from in here, besides it being a beautiful piece of art. See more about the Caviar House “Emergence” project at the Heathrow Airport, along with stunning pictures and video of the display in action.

If you’re thinking about how you’d control 350,000 individual LEDs with 12 bit grayscale and have it look smooth, check out the processor requirements behind the megascroller, which only handles 98,000 LEDs. More recently, we asked how many LEDs are too many, and the answer was quite a bit lower than 350k.

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Simple Headphone Bracket Shows Off Carbon Fiber Basics

February 12, 2016 by 12 Comments

The carbon fiber look is a pretty hot design element for things these days. Even things that have no need for the strength and flexibility of carbon fiber, from phone cases to motorcycle fenders, are sporting that beautiful glossy black texture. Some of it only looks like the real stuff, though, so it’s refreshing to see actual carbon fiber used in a project, like this custom headphone rack.

True, this is one of those uses of carbon fiber that doesn’t really need it – it just looks cool. But more importantly, [quada03]’s build log takes us through the whole process, from design to mold construction to laying up the fiber mats and finishing, and shows us how specialized equipment is not needed to achieve a great result. A homemade CNC router carves the two-piece mold out of Styrofoam, which is then glued up and smoothed over with automotive body filler. The epoxy-soaked carbon fiber mats are layered into the mold with careful attention paid to the orientation of the fibers, and the mold goes into one of those clothes-packing vacuum bags for 24 hours of curing. A little trimming and sanding later and the finished bracket looks pretty snazzy.

We’ve discussed the basics of carbon fiber fabrication before, but what we like about [quada03]’s build is that it shows how approachable carbon fiber builds can be. Once you hone your skills, maybe you’ll be ready to tackle a carbon fiber violin.

[via r/DIY]

Homemade Camera Stabilizer

July 13, 2015 by 11 Comments

We’ve featured quite a few camera gimbals and steady cams here, but this one stands out. For one, [Daniel Rhyoo] was in his sophomore year when he built it. His 2-axis camera gimbal uses brushless DC motors, and is made out of carbon fiber.

[Daniel] machined the carbon fiber parts on a CNC desktop mill and some hand tools. And he also had to teach himself Solid Works to design it. In his slick DIY guide, he starts off by listing the parts and where to source them from, along with the tools needed. Most gimbals use servos for axis movements, which limits the range and do not provide very smooth motion. Brushless motors overcome these limitations allowing a nice, smooth moving gimbal to be built with a wide range of movement. When [Aleksey Moskalenko] introduced the AlexMos brushless motor controller, [Daniel] ordered it out, and then waited until he could get his hands on the right kind of motors. CAD files for all of the machined parts are available for download (.zip file).

He then goes on to blog his build progress, with ample photos to describe the machining and assembly. He does a couple of nice design choices along the way – like using press-nuts to make assembly and dis-assembly easy, and dismantling one of the motors and replacing its shaft with a custom, longer one instead of using a coupler to extend it. At the end, the result is not only a nice looking, light weight rig, but one that works very well thanks to the motors and controller that he used. Check out the video below to see it in action.

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