Multi Material (Composite) 3D Printing Discussion

[ChrisLabelle]

Hey everyone,

There are so many new filaments coming out: flexible, magnetic, textured, and conductive, just to name a few. We thought we should create a public place to share, and discuss ideas as to how these materials may be paired up to create a new of objects on consumer 3D printers.

One example that inspired us early on was when conductive PLA hit the market. A 3D printer cannot create a functioning circuit with just conductive PLA, but when you introduce an insulating material, you can. This is one of the many examples of how multi-material printing will let everyone create an entirely new range of objects.

There are rumors of 3d printable batteries, and super strength composite materials that should hit the market over the next couple years, so the sky is the limit.

We want to put up a place for everyone to discuss their ideas, share, and collaborate with each other so we can start exploring the world of multi-material printing.

.

[CaptainCanardly]

Even though I have some conductiveNano from 3DXTech, I have no clue of designing a circuit!

[BarnStormStudio]

Multi-material printing in the medical space as hinted by your email, especially composites of PLA and other bio-compatibles, would present enormous value to researchers & inovators. Encapsulation of functional materials such as conductive, magnetic, reactive metals and carbon fiber reinforced filaments without the need for multiple print heads will revolutionize the low cost printer industry. Sub $5000 systems will be able to produce prototypes similar to multi-material jetting systems 100x more costly and present a true bottom price point for developers, manufacturers and consumers alike. Mosaic should consider making this a priority.

[CarlosCuriel]

I would love to see a mix of ABS + Carbon fiber reinforced filament, using the ABS on the exterior you can achieve very smooth surface with acetone vapor and don’t have to worry about surface defects weakening the part and the use of a carbon fiber reinforced internal structure is obvious. I think that could be a low cost winning combination.

[oliver_6]

There are a few important things to consider when printing a circuit. I helped design the circuit Mosaic used for their flashlight here 3D Printed Flashlight - Will it work? - YouTube. There is also software coming to market that will help you with this like this: http://spark.autodesk.com/blog/wire.

First off, to make any embedded circuit you need at least 2 materials. A conductor and an insulator. This is why regular printers with a single extruder cannot make an embedded circuit (they can only use one material). That is why there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem where most people cannot yet print circuits using their printer so there is not much support for it online. As this changes and more people can print composite parts I look forward to seeing lots more content on this.

Typically the insulator can act as the body or substrate and the conductor will be used for “traces” or paths that current can flow through (like a wire in a standard circuit). It is very important that the traces are cleanly printed into the part with a large enough cross section, to reduce there resistance to act like wires and not resistors. Depending on the resistance of your filament, it will vary but I used traces that were three to four 0.2mm layers thick and about 3mm wide. It is critical that your traces do not short out by having conductive material unintentionally cross the paths between them. This is a big problem I hear about from people using multiple extruder heads where the conducive material will drip out of its nozzle while the other extruders are being used. It was convenient that single nozzle technology mitigates this kind of dripping allowing for the clean traces.

The nice thing about printing traces is that they can be 3D in spaced and thus not limited to 2D planes. Eventually when we can print batteries and other sensors in place it will mean you can print fully enclosed product and parts.

I’m curious, if you could print circuits what would you make?

[CaptainCanardly]

Hi Oliver! My personal thing would be for brushless motors, and radio control ( fixed wing) we need to go through using one ESC per motor, so i would need to venture into the understandings of the ESC’s and hopefully combine a dual function for a twin.( I suppose the quad copters have that enabled, but I’m not interested in them @ all- I suppose I need to ‘bite the bullet’ and have a ‘take a look’ there! other than that, it would be as needed by a customer.

[OpalTide]

Was thinking that it could be cool to print the external of an object in an expensive material such as bronzefill, and then the infill in a cheap PLA or something like that.

Could keep costs down for larger prints but still give nice aesthetic outsides!

[Alex3DHubs]

Great initiative. I think it would be really interesting to see what sort of objects can be printed when a stronger material like Carbon Fiber blended PLA is mixed with an elastic material like TPE. A potential application being a helmet that needs shock absorption? Just brain storming here. Also it would be interesting to see what the tensile strength of some of these mixes are.

[DrRaj]

We can use micro mechanical models to predict the performance of the composite materials to predict the product performance. In fact we can design the right constituent mix.

[3Dmigos]

I have yet to use both heads of my flashforge on the same print, but I’m going to start experimenting…

[CaptainCanardly]

Hi Amogos! I just got sorted out! Lookin’ fwd to “normal” life again! Even though this calibration is off, it’s on, somethin in the new makerware I guess- I only know my baby shark is running!

[oliver_6]

This would be very useful. Are you talking about using a model to make calculations at a material level or at the model level?

I.e. You could use a model to predict the behaviour of a strengthened polymer matrix by understanding the properties of the polymer and the properties of the reenforcing material. This would be useful for 3d printing filament manufacture to fine tune their product.

On the other hand you could use such a model to look at the 3d printed model itself taking into account that the structure is made using a layered approach with thousands of small extrusion segments. If you could take into account the weaker layer-to-layer bonding and other sources of anisotropy, it could be very useful to get an accurate performance predictions. Do you know of any software that could do this?