printed my first tractor part. printed pretty good but it brittle. what is ya alls setting for this material with best results
One thing that can potentially cause some brittleness in CF parts is moisture, make sure the filament is sufficiently dried before printing it! I will sometimes even dry the filament while I am printing it, depending on the material and environment.
seems like layer adhesion is not good. and break apart
Wet filament can be the cause of brittle parts. Another good thing that I will double check is that you are printing in an enclosure. ABS and ASA require an enclosure to reach their full layer strength and prevent warping.
Matt
yes in an enclosure but the asa-x cf10 does not require it
AsA is fairly stiff adding CF will increase its brittle properties. It is very good outside. My assumption is you need the weather stability. I might try non CF to have aa material that is a bit less brittle. You could also try petg which is a lot more flexible it doesn’t have as good weather resistance but I have PetG part outside for a few years now with no real issues.
I can testify to PETG’s weather resistance for sure. My Father works for environment canada as a technician on the weather equipment. During Covid they were having trouble getting mounts and stuff in for the buoys, so I printed them some out of PETG. They have now been on probably close to 25 buoys on all of the great lakes for the better part of 4 years now and they look just as good as the day they were installed (a little greener maybe). Honestly I didn’t know what to expect from it when I made them but it has blown my expectations out of the water, especially on a buoy which can see some pretty harsh conditions.
yes trying to make inside cab panels for tractors so heat resistance and uv is what im after. the asa and asa cf 10 are very brittle. not what i was expecting. printed prototypes with pla and its unbreakable in my hand versus asa which just snaps. but pla doesnt have uv and heat resistance. its inside a car in summer how hot they get this is the same theory on these tractor parts. I’m looking for a happy medium here between the two. i have an asa kevlar filament coming hoping for results out of that
Maybe, ASA kevlar is in my experience cranky printing. ASA is tough and abrasion resistant but layer adhesion can be an issue if you aren’t careful and it is brittle, CF makes it more brittle. Kevlar doesn’t like to stick to things and Jams like a crazy thing. I didn’t love my foray with it.
Make sure you have a well ventilated enclosure, best vented outside. ASA has very toxic fumes.
1 Like
Yes take it from someone who has had ABS/ASA poisoning more times than I wish to admit… not a lot of fun, don’t recommend, two thumbs down 
1 Like
In my testing, the vertical (Z) direction with that Spectrum ASA filament showed it is about equal to PETG in terms of layer bonding…
Bob
1 Like