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I thought what made carbon fiber so strong was that the fibers were weaved together in sheets?

• glenra 13y ago
  This new tech is not in general as strong as fiber woven in sheets. The claim they make is that it's "1/3 the strength of the best carbon fiber composites made today" and that to test this they measured resistance to bending "in the preferred fiber orientation" Their process lays down continuous strands along each layer but by its nature can't lay strands on the Z axis. So if you have a part that needs to be strong in every direction, this may not entirely solve your problem. It solves some of the problem, for some use cases. (It also looks like it ought to be ridiculously slow.) There's some answers at their FAQ ( https://markforged.com/faq/ https://markforged.com/faq/ ), but not as many as we might like.
  • retroafroman 13y ago
    This is an important point. The direction of the fibers makes a big difference. The basic method of strengthening carbon fiber weave (which is weaved at 90degree angles) is to alternate the layers so that they are 45 degrees apart, if laying up a normal flat part. When I created a longboard (similar to Boosted Boards in length) it was still very flexible, even with this method. The small part shown in the video is hard to bend, but so would a wooden part that small.
• Scene_Cast2 13y ago
  If they add a second arm with a second carbon fiber spool, they will be able to do some amount of weaving. That would boost the applications of their product significantly, IMHO. Two problems. The software for that is hard - it would take it out of the realm of "existing software modified for our machine" to "new algorithms". Second problem - it still wouldn't be able to do the standard carbon fiber weave (or the twill weave, for that matter).