Tag Archives: PLA

3D Printing and Composites

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Building the surfboard got me interested in using composites. I’ve done a bit of experimentation with 3D printing and composites before and I wanted to see how far I could push the limits of this technology available to me.

I Brainstormed some areas that I wanted to try and improve my capabilities in. From these areas, I decided on 3 ways in which I wanted to test the technology: 1. For detail (with the teeth moulds), 2. For different methods of layup (with the cube moulds) and 3. for different ways of applying the epoxy resin (With the hemi-sphere ones).

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Results

  1. Detail

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With these tests, I found that the moulds 1-3 produced very little deformation in the end product. I think this may have been partly due to the fact that there wasn’t that much clamping force applied. I would like to expand on this test by testing different amounts of clamping pressure and see how that changes the amount of detail I can get.

Model 4 did produce good deformation but the detail was lost on the ends of the points. This was partly due to the printer failing midway through the mould making meaning that the tips of mould 4 are cut off a little. This leads me to experiment with the printer to get better quality prints later on.

2. Methods of Layup

layup methods

Left to right these models are:

90 degree laid fibres stuffed in,

cube1

90 degrees laid fibres trimmed to strips and then inserted,

cube2

45-degree fibres stuffed in,

cube3

45-degree fibres trimmed to strips,

cube4

90 degrees fibreglass trimmed to strips,

cube 5

90-degree fibreglass stuffed in.

cube 6

Conclusions: The Ones with the trimmed fabric generally produced a nicer finish on the cube, they were also easier to insert and needed less trimming. The fibreglass cubes ended up with a really nice finish and the 45 degree carbon fibre worked much better than the 90 degree carbon fibre.

3. Epoxy application

Improving my printer.

After the failed 3D prints, I decided to take some time to try and dial in the settings on my machine to get better quality. I used the standard model in the 3D printing community to test my print settings: “a  benchy”