So I just saw the warning about using Carbon Fibre filament and am unsure of how to proceed with the Taz6. What is the best way to start carbon fibre printing if I have a Taz6 and don’t want to cause undue wear?
Is there a new head I should buy in addition to the hardened steel nozzle??
I will take a step back and ask why do you want to print with that? A HUGE part of the strength to weight ratio of CF is the strand orientation in the weave. Get a good bonded bias ply or some of the other great weaves and you can get some awesome strength out of it.
Just grind up CF powder and mix it into plastic resin and extrude it into filament and I really can not see the benefit. Well other than reducing the density/weight of the 3D filament. There are better ways to do that though.
Its for a high performance drone application so I’m looking for something robust that can take some hits while reducing the weight as much as possible.
How else would you reduce weight while increasing strength?
For high performance multirotors, there’s a reason they are all made from CNC cut CF plate. CF composites get their strength from the weave of the fabric, orientation of the fibers, and the epoxy used to manufacture them. You simply can’t compete with that using 3D printers. The CF filament is primarily about marketing, frankly. It’s not much stronger than the PLA it’s made with. At least the metal powder infused filaments add the look of the metal with polishing and such, the CF filament can’t even do that, as the CF “look” is all about the woven fabric.
If it’s performance frames you want, you need to use CF plate. If you want accessories like cam mounts, just about anything will do fine. Start with PLA and PETG. You can print some decent sport frames, but strength to weight requires real composites. For sport frames, the strongest stuff would likely be Nylon, but it’s kind of a pain to print. I’d just use ABS or PETG and plan to replace parts when I hit things hard enough.
ROFL! Amen bother!
So racing drone? Those things take massive hits regularly due to the obstacles. As ttabbal said that will be hard to achieve with printing.
An “everyday” Quad? That should fine printed I would think.
I am building a RC plane and you can look in there and see how I am approaching weight savings. Mainly lots of holes! 
Plus I am going to incorporate CF into my designs but not printed CF. I will have pics of the CF incorporation posted by tomorrow.
In the meantime here is a buddies project incorporating CF tubes into his printed structure:
Just saw this post and wanted to point out that it’s not that complicated to layup some carbon fiber parts yourself. Yes, to get aerospace quality you need vacuum bagging and high-temp curing, but even if you just do open layups with some CF cloth and a laminating resin like West Systems you still get some remarkably strong and light parts. It depends on how complicated the shape is, of course. You can’t make CF take sharp corners without vacuum bagging, as the fiber is quite stiff.
You could probably even 3d print a mold to get the shape right, so you’d get some use of the 3d printer, too. Kinda like this video shows: https://youtu.be/kxRU9P-kh9s 
Folks seem to be down on the carbon filaments here.
The idea that the carbon-filled filaments are stronger is bunk, yes, but I’ve found my prints are more often stiffness-limited than they are strength-limited, and carbon-filled PLA is very stiff. I believe it’s stiffer than polycarbonate, and very easy to print on a printer that can handle it.
Also, the very-black matte finish should not be overlooked. I print a lot of opto-mechanical components and carbon PLA is the clear choice, both for the stiffness to weight ratio and for the optical qualities. In cases where impact resistance or the absolute best tensile strength isn’t important, it’s wonderful stuff.
Incidentally, I just discovered today that the hobbed wheel on the TAZ doesn’t seem up to the task of reliably feeding carbon PLA, which is aside from the issue of the nozzle material.
~Justine Haupt
