3D Printing with CarbonX Carbon-Fiber PETG | Making a Monitor Mount for the CNC Plasma Table

you've seen me messing around with carbon fiber nylon on the channel before today we're going to try out some carbon fiber petg this stuff promises all the benefits of carbon fiber reinforcement while being much easier to print let's find out welcome back to cloud42 i'm james well if you've seen my last couple of videos you no doubt have seen my new plasma table we have been cutting out sheet metal parts with it and it is working great which means we're also at that dangerous point in the project where it's working well enough that there's a very real risk i won't ever finish it and there is one more thing that needs to be addressed and that's the computer you can see i've got the computer sitting here on my welding fixture table this is a 21.5 inch touchscreen monitor that's used to control the software for the table and no doubt the welding fixture table does a great job of holding up the computer and it's very convenient unless i want to weld something which i do so i need to get this off of the table and i'd like to get it permanently attached to the plasma table in such a way that i can just wheel the whole thing away into a corner when i'm not using it pull it out plug it in and use it now langmuir systems actually does make a laptop stand for this table and i bought one but i'm not really happy with it it's a little flimsy it's probably fine the thing that i'm not real excited about is putting my nice laptop right on the plasma table where it's exposed to that plasma cutting environment but more importantly there doesn't appear to be a really good way to swing the the laptop stand out of the way so that it doesn't make the table require more space for storage i'd like whatever i come up with to be entirely within the footprint of the table so that it doesn't actually make it take a bigger space in the corner where i want to store it so i want to build a stand that holds this monitor and the computer that's permanently attached and i've got some ideas about how i want to do that let me bring you over a little closer and let's take a look the frame on this plasma table is made up of this two inch powder coated tubing um it's actually slightly under it's like one nine seven five but it's basically two inch tubing and if i pull out one of these rubber plugs then you can see how it's attached at the corners there are just bolts through there's three tubes that come together there's a bolt through this direction bolt through this direction and there's a bolt from the inside of this tube that just goes down so there's no bolt head on the top but it's bolted in three separate directions and i would like to just use the existing bolts as the mount point so i don't have to drill new screws or figure out how to get whatever i put on here around the bolt heads and what i'd like to use is this one inch by 16 wall steel tubing this seems totally sufficient for for supporting the monitor and i just need to find a way to attach it you can see i've already drilled some holes in it and what i want to do is drop it right down in the center of this tube and intersect these two bolts and i thought about just trying to get the bolts to hold it but it's going to slide on the bolts and there's still going to be some movement so what i want to do is 3d print a spacer to take up this space so that this will sit in nice and solid the spacer will have a little bit of compression especially when the bolts are tightened to hold it firmly in place so that it doesn't rock and then the bolts will actually support the weight so that it can't slide down and to 3d print this i've thought about different materials that i have and i could print this with anything but i'm particularly concerned about the weight of the monitor it's going to be up high and it's going to be cantilevered back over the table and so they're going to be sideways forces on this and as the table runs the inertia is going to shake it a little bit there's going to be sideways forces as i tap the screen they're going to be sideways forces so i want something that's going to stand up and be really resilient under compression so i've messed around with carbon fiber nylon in the past and found it pretty difficult to print if you don't have a printer with a heated chamber and so i picked up a roll of this to try this is a 3dx tech carbon x this is the petg plus carbon fiber version and no i'm not sponsored i paid full price for this and this stuff is relatively expensive it's like 58 bucks a roll but we'll talk about this a little bit later when we see how big the part actually is i think it's still a pretty good deal compared to other kinds of materials that i might use for this now this is petg it's not nylon so it should print like other petg filaments which are pretty easy to print at least i've had great success with them plus it still has the benefits of the carbon fiber reinforcing so let's give it a try let's go into the computer and design something and see how it works this is fusion 360 and i've already got a model of what i want to build so down here at the bottom we've got the leg of the plasma table with the two holes for the bolts through it and i've got a one inch square tube going up angled back with a vasa 100 millimeter square mount for the monitor and we're not going to worry about all this today we're worried mostly about this plastic plug that allows this one inch tube to go inside the two inch leg let me turn the leg off here so we can get a little closer look at this and this is what we're going to make today out of 3d printed carbon fiber pet g and it's just a simple rectangular plug with some rounded corners and some holes in it let's open up a new model here and sketch it up now i think when i model i don't tend to model things in isolation i tend to like to first model the things that it has to interface with so we'll just do that quickly here we'll come in here and i will create a center rectangle and we'll model the tube of the leg so hit d for dimension and i know this is 1.975 inches outside dimension and i will model the other side here and just click on this dimension to transfer that value so that's the outside now i'll hit o for offset click the part and now we have an offset here and i can dial in the thickness of the material that i measured which was 0.075 inches and that gives us the shape of the leg i'm not going to worry about the fillets in the corner because we're going to put a generous fillet on the part that fits inside so anything else doesn't matter click in there to select right click extrude and let's give it i don't know 12 inches give it a foot so now we have a model of the leg now let's model the tube that's going to go inside of that i'll click on this top surface create another sketch could have done this in the same sketch but i will do exactly the same thing here rectangle center rectangle and we'll just drag this out put some dimensions on this and this is one inch by one inch so that's approximately the tube and the wall thickness on this i'll just hit o and the wall thickness on this is 1 16 of an inch so into the fraction 1 16 and that will give us the profile of the tube now this actually does have some fillets but i will put those on after i model this so i'll do exactly the same thing here right click extrude but this time we're going to go two sides so in the down dimension we'll give it maybe i don't know six inches down and the up dimension 12. okay so that is our tube now let's put some fillets on that i'll just hit f for fill it and i'll select all these inside edges and i don't know 35 that looks visually about right since nothing's going to fit inside this is just aesthetic hit f4 fill it again and let's do all the outside edges and do those a sixteenth of an inch that looks about right so there's our tube inside of a tube and now we just need to model the plug that's gonna fit in there so i'm gonna model that on this same top surface so i'll click there right click create sketch and now we could do this in a number of different ways we could try to actually fit it to this model though i'm actually not going to bother with that i'm going to instead parameterize the dimensions i mean i could just take this as gospel and say okay i'm going to offset from this edge and get whatever kind of fit i want from the inside and from the outside and that's one way to model it but i anticipate needing to tune the parameters in the future to tune the fit and so i'm going to use parameters for that so i'll say modify change parameters and we'll put in a couple here plug outside and i know i want to start with 1.82 inches and i'll add one for the plug inside and this would be one inch but i'm gonna say five thousandths of an inch would be a good fit plastic tends to be a little bit flexible and this whole thing is going to get squeezed by the bolts and so i anticipate that will give me a good tight fit when all of that is taken into account so we'll go back and take this sketch on the top here and start drawing and we'll use exactly the same the same process here we'll do a rectangle center rectangle for the inside and one for the outside and we'll dimension those up and this will be the plug inside dimension and this will be the plug outside dimension and if we go down here and look that is offset to the inside of the part a little bit and if we go over here we can see that yes that's offset a little bit outside of the tube so nothing has gone wrong yet that looks okay go ahead and say finish sketch and we'll extrude this right click extrude take this down [Music] five inches whoops minus five inches i want to go the other direction and that's set to new body okay we've got three bodies in here and i want to keep those separate so i'm going to go ahead right click those create components from bodies and we'll go in the here and give these names this is the plug this is the post and this is the leg and let me change the appearance of the plug we'll just make it red just so we can see that clearly that that's the one that we're working on okay so now i want to put a cap on the plug and to put a little lip on the top here so let me just go ahead and select the plug as my active component and then i will right click here and create a sketch and i will project the outside perimeter here and now i should be able to come in here and select control click let me make sure i got the gap between them it did now right click extrude and i want to pull this up yeah tenth of an inch is fine join and now that's been added on to the plug okay that's good for the cap the reason i wanted to activate just that one component to make sure that this joined properly and didn't like try to join to the leg so let me go back and activate the entire model here and i'm just going to hide the leg now because we don't need it hit f for fill it and i want to round some of these corners a quarter of an inch on the fillet there and then i want to do modify chamfer and we'll put some chamfers in a few places here just to make this uh print better because we're going to print it with this top down against the bed and the chamfers will help with elephant's foot it'll also help it make it look nicer say 40 thou on the chamfer okay so i think that's the plug the only thing we still need in it is a couple of holes and i'm going to go ahead and just model those up with sketches here so we'll right click create sketch and i'm going to hit l for line x for construction and we'll just drag a construction line down here it'll create a circle and we're still at the construction line on and i'm going to make these a little bit oversized i know they're about 590 but i'm going to make it bigger just so there's a little bit more slop so we're not so sensitive to the 3d printing parameters so 625 which would be 5 8 and i'm going to dimension that down from the top i measured this out and it happens to be 0.777 which is super interesting right click there extrude and we'll just cut through everything and then we need to do the same thing but we're going to need to transfer this over so i'll say construct axis and so now we have a an axis that we can use as a reference point when we sketch the other hole on this plane create sketch line x so l and then x for construction drag that down just so we have a center line and we'll do the same thing c for circle turn off the construction make the circle dimension this up 5 8 i don't know why it insists on moving that back and i'm going to project this sketch line and then i'm going to hit d for dimension i'm going to go from that line down to here and take that down 2 inches and extrude that through and there we go if we hide the leg in the post this is the part that we need to 3d print and i'll add some more chamfers on here just because i like chamfers there we go let's send this to the printer we'll slice this in simplify 3d so i'll just come up here say 3d print click the model click ok and the first thing it does is it asks me if i want to auto scale since i designed in inches and the 3d printers operate in millimeters it asks if it if i would like to scale it automatically i say yes and it drops the part in now i don't want to print with the lip on the top so ctrl l allows me to select the polygon for the bottom click and it will auto orient and put that down on the bed and there is the part now let's talk about settings the material i'm going to use here is by 3dx tech it's called carbon x carbon fiber petg or pet g and uh you know i've done some testing in the past with the nylon x which i found pretty difficult to print you had to use a gear light bed there was a lot of warping a lot of peeling it was hard to control the dimensions and i'm really hopeful that the pet g will be easier just because petg in general doesn't shrink i can print it on glass with hairspray it doesn't warp i get really good results in an open frame printer it looks like they're recommending a bed temperature of 70 to 90 celsius and printing temperature 230 to 260 celsius and that's right in the range that i normally use with other pet gs i normally print with either e-sun or overture or hatchbox or the three that i've used in the past i've been pretty happy with those so i'm just going to use the same settings i use with those on the carbon x and let's see what happens so if i go in process settings i am going to use my normal pet g settings for layers we're going to do a quarter of a millimeter and with pet g i always print the first layer at 120 so that it doesn't squish it down into the glass um i find that that causes problems with it rolling and peeling off and if you give it a little bit more breathing room it lays down on the glass and it sticks just fine infill we're going to run this at 25 it doesn't need to be a lot rectilinear fill is fine again given the the properties of the material i think that will work just fine since we're not shrinking the long strands shouldn't be a big deal for temperatures on the bed we're going to start at 90 drop it to 80. again this is just what i use with every other petg filament and the extruder we're going to run at 255 and that's right in the what was it 230 to 2 60 range that they recommend it's at the high end which will give us good layer bonding which is you know that should be fine and then for speeds we'll run 3000 millimeters a minute that's 50 millimeters per second this is about half what i run abs at um but i anticipate that'll be fine here this is what i normally do with petg because it's stringy i don't know if this stuff's any different but we'll give it a try now i'm also not sure about dimensions one of the problems that we ran into with the other material with the nylon material is that the the overall dimensions were hard to control it seemed to be spreading on the outside and spreading on the inside so the holes in the center were too small and the outside dimensions were too large so i don't want to print all of this i want to print just a sample piece so we can take some measurements and see if we need to make some adjustments so i'll double click on this and one of the things that comes up here is the x y and z offset z offset is 256 and change millimeters let me change that to 56 and see what happens and that was too far down let's change it to 156. okay so all i've done here is i've just dropped the part down through the bed and left a small section of it sticking up but this is representative so i should be able to 3d print just this section take some measurements off of it and we won't waste a lot of this filament as you saw this stuff is relatively expensive 58 dollars but i think uh it still makes sense for this kind of application you know compared to regular petg which is what maybe 21 23 dollars a kilogram this is a lot more expensive but we're talking about maybe five or six dollars worth of filament for a part like this and i my my time in the shop making this out of any other material by any other process is going to be way more than five or six dollars and if i hired somebody else to make it or even if i bought this thing manufactured it were free i'd pay that much for shipping just to get it here so i don't actually see the price of the filament being a big impediment if you compare this to other ways that i might make a part like this so let me click prepare to print we'll look at how this sliced make sure it's doing what we expected and that looks very reasonable let me send this to the printer and then we'll see how it comes out and take some measurements if you decide to print with carbon fiber filaments on your printer just make sure that you have a hardened steel nozzle installed the carbon fiber in the filament is very abrasive and it's very destructive to brass nozzles in fact you may not even get through an entire roll of filament without destroying the nozzle fortunately hardened steel nozzles are available for pretty much all 3d printers pretty much all hot ends they're available on amazon ebay and direct from most 3d printer manufacturers i've got the part here off of the printer and i got to say i just love the way the i love the surface texture on these carbon fiber parts the fill on the top of this is really good the bottom layer printed really great the surfaces feel good they've got that sort of matte texture that you would expect from a carbon fiber filament this looks almost exactly like the carbon fiber nylon and let's see where we ended up on dimensions now remember the outside dimension of this is supposed to be 1.8 inches and let's see where we are one point eight three seven five so what thirty seven and a half thousands over thirty six thousands over yeah so we've got we're close to forty thousand there's thirty eight and a half depending on exit that sort of surface texture so depending where you measure it you know we're close to yeah thirty six to thirty eight thousand thirty thou okay so let's check the inside now the inside is supposed to be 1005 and there were 983 and a half so we're about 20 thousand small on the inside too yep same thing there we're maybe 21 22 thou small and on the outside were 18 and a half thou large 19 large okay so what that means is if we take round numbers because i mean we're talking about 3d printing here right we're not this is not a machining operation we shouldn't expect the kind of precision we would get from uh cnc machining operations so we're about 20 thou large on the outside and about 20 thousand small on the inside now the great news is that means that the overall dimensions of the part are just about correct we don't have some kind of a systematic scaling error from shrinkage which is sort of what we would expect pet g doesn't shrink much and the carbon fiber is probably preventing what shrinkage there would be so we just need to adjust the walls and so if we're 20 thou large on the outside and 20 000 small on the inside we should be able to just push the walls back in about ten thou which is what about a quarter of a millimeter and we should be pretty close let's go in the computer and make that adjustment and try this again okay i'm back here in simplify3d we'll go back to the model and we actually want to print the entire model this time after we make these adjustments so i'll just do the same trick hit control l click on a surface i want on the bed and we're back up on top where we can print now we need to adjust the sides this thing is spreading the outside is oversized by about ten thousandths of an inch and the inside is undersized by about ten thousandths which means that our overall dimensions are pretty much right on we just need to adjust those surfaces for expansion so i'll go in here to process settings and come over to the other tab and we have a setting down here called horizontal size compensation and so i want a negative value if we hover here it says a negative value will shrink your model outline which is exactly what i want and it'll shrink it on the inside which will make the holes bigger and so i need a negative value i need to make this negative ten thousandths of an inch which is about 0.25 millimeters so minus 0.25 millimeters okay we'll re-slice this this looks right and i'll send this to the printer and we should expect to get a usable part out of this with dimensions pretty much right on i get lots of questions about what exactly this printer is and it's a bit of a unicorn it started life as a frame kit from a company called maker farm that i don't believe is any longer in business it's basically you know an i3 kind of geometry i sourced the electronics off ebay the extruder is my own design it's running a pair of e3d v6 hot ends the bed is borosilicate glass usually with hairspray but i have some different materials i put on there and they all sit over an industrial silicone heater that heats up really rapidly and maintains temperature really well all in all this has been a really solid printer i've been running it for six years maybe a little bit longer and the only thing i have ever done to it is replace the brass nozzles in the hot ends as i wear them out i do all my production printing on this printer so it sees a lot of filament and it has just been a solid performer and here is the full part again i just i just love the texture on this you can see that it was pretty nice and smooth and shiny down on the bed of the printer in fact you can see all the artifacts in the layers of hairspray that were there the top surface is very clean and very well filled and the whole thing it's just got a little bit of a kind of a rough texture to it uh and i love the satin finish let's see if we got closer so we're trying to hit what 1.8 and we're at about 1.82 1.8 so we're uh what they're about 3 000 under and there were one thou under it's kind of a rough surface so i'll take some averages yeah three thousand one and a half there were four thou under two and a half yeah so this is this is really close one thou under i'm real happy with that let's try the inside dimensions and that is dead on half that over i am going to take that i am very pleased with that so then we just need to see if this fits so it's supposed to be one thousand five let's see what this stuff actually is one thousand two 1001 that should go in easily and see if i can do this on camera if i'm going to make a big mess make sure i'm putting it in the right direction so the bolt holes will line up yeah that's going to go in i just need to tap it down a little bit further i'm going to take it over to the vice and do that and it should get the holes to line up and we should be ready to try to drop it in here okay well that ended up being way less dramatic than i thought it would be it basically just put it on the vise grabbed it with both hands and just pushed down and just slid right to the bottom so no dramas there that actually looks pretty good and lo and behold the measurements work out the holes line up so now we just need to drop it into here and that means i have to take the bolts out which means the leg is coming off the table now i actually threw some sandbags on the other corner and i traversed the arm and the torch all the way over to the other corner of the table so hopefully when i take away the support here the table will not fall over if it does we'll find another plan so let me take out these bolts i'll go ahead and pull the spacer on this side so you can see it's just a spacer that goes through so it bears on the outside and the inside of the tube at the same time okay so it's dropped a little but it looks like it's going to stay [Music] okay so then the question becomes how does it fit in here the answer is it's a snug fit which is exactly what i wanted but it looks good to me let's see if all the holes line back up every tool is a hammer so i've got this set to the low torque setting so i think it's only putting about 35 foot pounds on it which should be about right for this and so then the question becomes uh with that amount of force on it how solid oh my goodness oh my goodness that is okay that is pretty good i am impressed with how solid that is there is zero rock at all that is not moving at all i think that is definitely going to work well this is not so much a test to the material as it is a test of the dimensional fit and that is perfect the bolts have snug down a little bit put a little bit of tension on it and there is no motion in that at all i am really happy with that i think that's going to work great in this application and i think that carbon fiber petg is just going to last forever in this application as well plus it looks nice it blends in with the table it's not quite as black as the other blacks on the table but i think we'll let it slide this time i think this is going to work really well so next steps on this project we need to bevel the top of this and put an arm on at an angle we need to make a vasa monitor mount and we need to weld all of that together and we'll do that in a future video enjoyed the video give it a thumbs up feel free to subscribe to the channel and stick around and we'll work on this next time thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Clough42

Views: 55,839

Keywords: 3D Printing, CarbonX, Carbon Fiber PETG, Plasma Table, CNC Plasma Table, Fusion 360, Simplify3D

Id: Rh0qdokowNE

Length: 32min 13sec (1933 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 06 2021