I see that someone has made a carbon fiber thread printer. It seems to lay down pre resin soaked thread with one “nozzle” and then print plastic over it. But it doesn’t seem to be open source. So, I wanna make one. I have a spool of 0.010 mm carbon fiber thread on the way, but I’m not sure of the best approach to actually make the thread impregnation piece. My initial idea is to drill a small 0.011mm hole into the side of a .5 (or maybe even a .75mm) nozzle and thread the carbon fiber into it with the filliament retracted. then extrude and hope the force of the plastic is enough to grab the thread and encapsulate it. . I’m worried that it would only work in the direction printing towards the hole, and would lead to the thread being on top of the molten plastic extrusion in directions away from the side with the hole.
My other, less workable idea is to try and feed the carbon thread in from the top with the filliament and hope the flow of molten plastic pulls it down and out. I think it would work if I can get it started in the first place, but I have no idea how the heck i would thread the carbon into the cold nozzle the first time short of tying it off to a piece of filliament and hopeing it eventually came out the other end without tangling in the melt chamber.
The last Idea I came up with seems like it would be technically infeasable. I’m thinking some sort of dual ring extruder, like what they use to extrude PVC pipe, and another hole down the middle for the thread itself. filliament would feed down one channel, thrad next to it, and through it in the melt chamber, filliament would come out the middle and plastic would extrude around it. I can see a workable model for that in my brain, but i have no idea how to even begin thinking about milling something that intricate on that small a scale.
Any ideas? I’m willing to give a shot to building one if we can come up with something viable. Would be nice to make something that could be used on a Taz as well.