Making A Carbon Fiber Print Bed For My 3D Printer (how to)
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Published 2022-02-22
Some of the biggest advantages of using a carbon fiber bed plate on your 3D printer are the following:
1. Lower weight of the build plate (more stable movement)
2. Thermal stable on expansion (so less bowing or shrinkage of the plate)
3. Good thermal conductor (carbon fiber will take up heat faster and remove heat faster)
4. It looks good :D
Is this much better than a glass plate? No, you could get the same results with a glass plate but I believe this plate will have benefits using some more exotic filaments like ABS, TPU, Nylon, PET,…
Specially with the low thermal expansion and thermal conductivity of the carbon fiber
Let me know what printers most of u are using, so I can make some iterations on this video in the future based on most used 3D printers in the description.
I mainly work with carbon fiber on this youtube channel but decided to add a bit of 3D printing in my adventures.
As for the carbon fiber bed:
I’ve used various layers of carbon fiber to make a stable stack of layers with different weight of carbon fibers and carbon fiber orientation. Doing so I’m able to make a stable plate that won’t warp after demoulding or in the future while using it.
I have some more elaborated videos on my channel on my channel if interested in carbon fibre or processes used.
For this plate I’ve used the resin infusion technique (also called VARTM) to produce a nicely compacted stack of layers to add the resin to. The pressure of the vacuum will create an even thickness after demoulding the part.
As for the resin I’ve used some high temp resin from Easy Composites. In the past you might have seen that I’ve used the IN2 infusion epoxy resin. Having higher temperatures involved with 3d Printing I decided to use a higher temperature resin. The High Temperature resin from Easy Composites can be infused as well but has a higher viscosity so it’s advised to only use this on smaller and less complex parts. I let the resin cure for over 12 hours at room temperature before proceeding with the post curing of the part and resin into the oven. The part was graduality ramped up to higher temperatures over a timespan of 12 hours till 120°C. This means we now have a Tg value of 120°C for the print bed. Meaning it won’t bed, warp, melt till these temperatures.
To flatten the part after demoulding (B side has a peelply finish due to the peelply) I’ve used some primer out of spray can to highlight the low and high spots. Than I proceeded with sanding with a 150P grit sanding paper on my Mirka orbital sander. While sanding you’ll see how far you’ve got through the peelply finish and where you need more sanding. Having the B-side finish we can now proceed with the A-side. The A-side already had a good finish so I was able to start sanding with a 1200P grit followed by some polishing.
As For the printing:
I’ve made this printbed for my Creality Ender 3 S1. In case you’ve missed my review on this printer you can find it on following link: • Creality Ender 3 S1 - Good or bad?! R...
I’ve adding the plate using some clamps followed by some bedleveling. Keep in mind that adding a plate like this will lower your build volume due to the space the clamps are taking. I’ve noticed this while levelling the bed and having the CR touch interfering with the clamps. By moving the clamps I was able to solve that problem and proceed to do a first heat test of the bed. I’ve noticed that the temperatures where a bit of but I’ll fix that later on with some PID tuning in the software.
Once everything ready I was able to do a first test print, on the new Carbon Fiber print bed, being a calibration cube. I’ve started a bit higher on the Z-axis to lower it while printing till I was happy with the adhesion on the print bed. The Print turned out great with a good finish on the bottom of the part, even leaving an added bonus of having a nice texture of carbon fiber on the bottom. So far so good and more happy with this than my PC flex plate that came with the Creality Ender 3 S1 printer stock.
I’ve added a new print being a Benchy to make sure everything was running well. And it did! Good benchy came out of the printer without being knocked of the builplate.
Carbon fiber carbon fiber carbon fiber carbon fiber carbon fiber
3d print 3d print 3d print 3d print 3d print 3d print 3d print 3d print 3d print
Bed plate Bed plate Bed plate Bed plate Bed plate Bed plate Bed plate Bed plate
For more of my projects make sure to follow me on:
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#creality #carbonfiber #3dprint
All Comments (21)
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Let me know what printer you are using, So I can see what the most used printers are to base my future build plates on ;)
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Oh man, this is cool. I didn't think that carbon pattern would transfer so perfectly onto the print. And bonus points for having the coolest build plate.
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nice job as always dear Matthieu, I learned so much from you over the years, thank you for all your great tutorials
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Keep it up, bro! Always a pleasure to enjoy your videos!!🥰🥰🥰
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That is awesome! Was waiting for this video after seeing it “coming soon” on Instagram. 👍
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This is actually a great idea. I will try this :)
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The weave on the bottom looks crazy cool I want a high temp version of this for my Voron!
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Absolutely love it! Been wanting to try CF print surface for a while, but bed temperature was always a concern...
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Let's face it, the main reason anyone would want a CF build plate is because it looks freaking amazing! Thanks for another fun and interesting video.
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had this idea, gled u made it! =)
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Great video. with Vacuum Infusion Process, always one side is glossy and the other one dull? So all the blades with glossy finish at both sides are made with the old method, right?
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Leuk concept van dat carbon fiber printbed! Ik heb je kanaal ontdekt via deze video en heb me meteen geabonneerd ;-)
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Interesting video! subscribed I did this a couple of months ago on my Creality CR10S Pro v2. I replaced both the print surface as well as the bottom bed frame primarily to shave off weight. Before the replacement the bed stack had a 4mm thick aluminum plate as the bottom frame ( where the wheels are ) and above that a 3mm alu plate where the bed heater is attached and on top of that a 3mm alu plate with some BuildTak-clone as the actual print surface. Since the density of aluminum is 2700kg/m3 the original bed plate stackup weighed ~2.1kg (bottom 4mm frame alu plate was 25x29cm and the upper 3mm alu plates were 31x32cm). I replaced the top most alu plate with a 1.5mm thick 30x32cm CF plate which saved me ~600g (measured density to 1520kg/m3). 😀 Replacing the bottom frame only saved ~150g because the original alu frame had cut out holes and me and my brother (who helped me cut the CF plates) only bothered to cut one hole at some place on the 4mm CF plate. But a total weight loss of 750g from original 2100g certainly was noticable! I could rerun the input shaping in Klipper and saw an increased resonance frequency on the Y-axis and could increase my Y-acceleration from 1200mm/s2 to 1600mm/s2 with no increase in ghosting (my measurements show I could go up to ~2500mm/s2 perhaps but then the ghosting starts to show and I prefer quality). After all this I'm quite certain that I could have used a 3mm CF plate for the bottom frame instead of 4mm, because the 4mm was incredibly unbendable and feeling the stiffness of the 1.5mm CF plate I think 3mm would make a rigid bottom frame also. Regarding the bed adhesion I used the regular 83degC for PETG as I did before but I experienced worse adhesion than with the original BuildTak-clone. Tried squishing more and more but didn't help much. Tried hairspray and PrimaFix and purple glue stick and the gluestick was the best and made a huge difference, got better adhesion than even the original BuildTak-clone! The downside was that I must apply the gluestick on a cold bed otherwise there would be too much being smeared on the CF plate and that would show as ugly scrapes on the bottom side of the prints. Also I had to use quite large brims everytime I needed to print things only a few cm high or the print would start to detach in the corners in the middle of the print. In the end I bought a 0.2mm thick PEI sheet and applied on the CF plate to not have to bother with the gluestick and excessive brims. I still see the beautiful CF surface through the PEI sheet, but I never got the CF pattern on the bottom of my prints before anyway so no loss there (only a bit more matte bottom surface on the prints using PEI vs shiny bottom when printing directly on the CF). Just my experience in case someone wants to do the same. :)
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Nice video :3
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could this replace the alluminum base as a whole? thinking that makes more sense than making it heavier u know? I want to accelspeed things up at maximum
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I'm using a Tevo Tarantula, which has a really wobbly bed sling
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nice one
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Hi, im just wondering if you tried what max temperature that bed can withstand? Anyway good job!
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I would be really curious to know how well this surface works for various filament types. pla, petg, abs, nylon, tpu, etc.
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good videos you make! Ja one question..Can high temp epoksi hold 200c for long time?
