Introducing Our New Material: CarbonMide for 3D Printing

Posted By Hilmiyati Kusnadi on May 17, 2017 | 0 comments

Here at Sculpteo, we always want to offer you the best additive manufacturing experience. That’s why, in the past few weeks, we launched several new materials, as well as upgrades on our existing ones. And it doesn’t stop there. Here’s another good news for 3D printing users, professionals or individuals. Sculpteo is releasing a new 3D Printing material: CarbonMide. Today we are going to discover more about our new CarbonMide material, its benefits, its applications and its design guidelines.

About CarbonMide

When you 3D print your object using CarbonMide, the object is created from a fine black plastic polyamide powder (PA12) reinforced with carbon-fiber. Using the process of Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), this material has an excellent stiffness, along with high strength and resistance.

CarbonMide perfectly suits your needs if you are looking for a material similar to Solid Black Plastic Polyamide. It has nearly the same mechanical properties with one more additional value compared to black plastic: it’s lightweight.

What are the benefits and applications of CarbonMide

Objects 3D printed with CarbonMide are very similar to the objects 3D printed with polyamide. It is flexible and stable to every weather. However, this material is not waterproof. Printed with EOS Formiga P396, it is known to have an excellent resistance to chemicals, particularly hydrocarbons, aldehydes, ketones, mineral bases, salts, alcohols, fuels and more.

Our new material can be used for many mechanical, electrical, medical and ornamental applications. As it is very lightweight and resistant, CarbonMide is often used to create aerodynamic components, particularly for motorsports applications.

Finishing options offered for CarbonMide

Our new material is available in black and we offer two options of finishes for CarbonMide: Raw and Polished. If you choose the raw finish, your 3D printed object will be sandblasted, but not polished and the surface will remain rough. However, it can be a good choice if you want an economical 3D printing option.

Also for the polishing option, your object will be polished through mechanical polishing. As a result, the surface will be smoother to touch. However, layers will still be visible especially on the rounded objects.

The shipping delay of objects 3D printed with CarbonMide

The CarbonMide material can be shipped worldwide within 16 days. Moreover, the current volume of orders and finishing options that you choose can extend the shipping time by 1 to 2 days on average.

The design guidelines for CarbonMide

When designing your model, you need to be sure to respect these maximum sizes before uploading your 3D file:

• Maximum size raw: 600 x 335 x 335 mm
• Maximum size polished: 180 x 150 x 150 mm

Also, the layer thickness of CarbonMide is 150 µm and it can be 3D printed with an accuracy of ± 0.5% with a limit of ± 0.5 mm.

One important thing that you need to take into account is that the mechanical properties of CarbonMide can vary in the three-axis direction as a result of the process of the orientation of the fibers. Compared to X and Y, the Z axis is the least resistant. For the Expert Users, you need to make sure to choose the orientation of your 3D model through ‘Customized Orientation’ options.

You can learn about the Customized Orientation to help you improve the 3D printing control.

The technical properties of our CarbonMide can also change depending on the thickness of your model. If you want to 3D print a model with 0.8 mm of wall thickness, your model will be flexible. However, if you design the wall thickness to be 2 mm, the result is that your model will be rigid.

You can refer to our article about Elastic Modulus Measurement for more information regarding the flexibility.

If you also want to learn more about the technical specifications, you can check the CarbonMide Datasheet.

Discover more about the new material and get ready to 3D print your model in black with CarbonMide!