3D printing with carbon fibre - video

[kjorn]

Wow, this looks pretty neat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbuu7UD2GVk

[davesails7]

I had heard people mention carbon fiber 3D printing before, but I couldn't tell if they were actually laying down fibers with epoxy resin. So it is "carbon fiber", but does it have the strength of hand laid up and vacuum bagged carbon fiber with epoxy?

In the video he says that this machine melts the cloth and the carbon fiber comes out fully cured? What is really going on and what is the resulting strength?

Edit: I watched it again and he says that it melts the fabric into the layer below. Sounds like it does not 3D print carbon fiber parts, but can melt carbon fibers into a part that you are printing out of nylon for added strength.

[plummet]

Yeah that's the way I see it. A carbon strand is layer into melted nylon. The nylon is performing the task of the resin.
The question here is" is the nylon bonded carbon as effective as epoxy bonded?

[ozchrisb]

Yes it's plastic re-enforced with carbon. The biggest issue I see with these is that you only get to control the carbon filament orientation in one plane. You can't run fibers up the Z axis only on the X-Y.