Carbon fiber 3d printing was the technology many people were waiting for. We could finaly get very durable and strong printed objects.
Technical specifications of Mark One:
- Printing Technology: Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) / Composite Filament Fabrication (CFF)
- Build Size: 305mm x 160mm x 160mm (12″ x 6.25″ x 6.25″, 486ci)
- Material Compatibility: Carbon Fiber, Fiberglass, Nylon, PLA
- Highest Layer Resolution: FFF Printing: 100 Microns / CFF Printing: 200 Microns
- Extruders: Dual Quick Change
- Filament Sizes: FFF: 1.75mm, CFF: MF4
- Pause / Resume Prints: Yes
- Software: Cloud Enabled
- Supported OS: Mac OS 10.7 Lion +, Win XP+, Linux*
- Supported Browser: Chrome 30+, Firefox 10+, Safari 6+*
- Supported Files: STL, .OBJ
- Connectivity: WiFi, USB, SD Card
- Price: at 5000 USD range
Mark One website has a following description of their machine:
Brilliant ideas need brilliant materials.
Designed to overcome the strength limitations of other 3D printed materials, the MarkForged Mark One 3D printer is the world’s first 3D printer designed to print composite materials. Now you can print parts, tooling, and fixtures with a higher strength-to-weight ratio than 6061-T6 Aluminum.
Gregory Mark, the President of MarkFoged, also co-owns Aeromation, another carbon high technology company responsible for manufacturing computer controlled race car wings. The wings are typically made out of carbon fiber because of it’s high durability, strength and low weight. They discovered that it is quite a challenging task to manufacture parts out of carbon fiber, because of the time needed and high expense in laying the fiber down piece by piece in the production process. That’s what motivated the development of 3D printer which could simply print the carbon material.
We are waiting for more details and print results!
Mark One is produced by Mark Forged:
http://markforged.com/the-specifications/Now, after the initial hype, we can say that there are many uncertainties about the technology behind this printer.
- carbon filament and various carbon fiber technologies have been used in 3d printers before, but as far as I know, no machine has been designed specially for the carbon technology and this would be the first desktop / prosumer printer
- it is unknown how exactly Mark One prints with carbon fiber: is it a new "special" filament where carbon is mixed in thermoplastics or is it some other technology
- carbon fiber (and kevlar) wrapping 3d printed objects to reinforce them was tried before with good results, but it was done by hand: http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/06/carbon-and-kevlar-fiber-reinforced-3d.html
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| Screenshot of Mark One webpage showing that the carbon fiber material is 20 times stiffer then ABS and 5 times stronger |
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| Mark One is multimaterial machine that can print objects with two materials with different combinations of core, shell and structural honeycomb |
Update:
DIY carbon fiber and fiberglass projects are emerging:
http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2014/12/space-weaver-3d-prints-ultra.html
