A team of researchers at MIT has designed one of the strongest lightweight materials known, by compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon. The new material, a sponge-like configuration with a density of just 5 percent, can have a strength 10 times that of steel.
In its two-dimensional form, graphene 3 is thought to be the strongest of all known materials. But researchers until now have had a hard time translating that two-dimensional strength into useful three-dimensional materials.
The new findings show that the crucial aspect of the new 3-D forms has more to do with their unusual geometrical configuration than with the material itself, which suggests that similar strong, lightweight materials could be made from a variety of materials by creating similar geometric features.
ive printed with metal copper, gold and wood filaments, know what they all have in common? powder mixed in with the pla its a 60/40 mix in plas favour so no matter how good it looks its never really any stronger than pla.
in fact the only filament i have ever used that prints and looks like its supposed to is wood.
metal even after going a night in the rock tumbler still looks like siver paint, copper looks brown and when excessively tumbled still looks like plastic, gold has a nice sparkle to it but still obviously plastic… wood looks kinda like a really light coloured wood but is the only one out of all of them that actually looks and feels like its supposed to.
im curious to see what this stuff is like but it does say in the video its flakes of it infused so sounds to me like it will be just another 60/40 mix
