The field of 3D printing, like others, is currently seeing the consolidation of new points of reference and increasingly interesting niche markets.
Profplast, a company based in Poland and active in the field of filaments for additive manufacturing, has decided to specialise in the production of high-tech articles aimed at demanding customers that, for their own manufacturing purposes, want materials with specific performance characteristics, such as thermal or electrical conductivity.
Profplast’s decision is based on the strength of its solid experience in the extrusion of complex materials based on all types of profile. It is undoubtedly this particular know-how that has allowed it to obtain a continuous filament in LATAMID 12 H2 K/15, a PA12-based LATI compound reinforced with 15% carbon fibre.
The idea of depositing a filament formulated in this way might raise some doubts, linked, for example, to the integrity of the filament itself, the precision of its diameter and the shrinkage of the melt.
Instead, the product behaved excellently, both in extrusion and during winding, thanks also to the mechanical characteristics of the matrix. The printing process proved trouble free, carried out at a rate of 150 mm/min and a temperature of around 240°C, using nozzles optimised to withstand abrasion potentially caused by the carbon fibres.
The reinforcement present in the material gives it interesting mechanical properties naturally linked to the deposition modalities, e.g. orientation and infill.
The filament, marketed by Finnotech (https://f3dfilament.com/) under the trade name Nanocarbon, is offered for technical applications in which the use of ABS, PET-G or PLA is not feasible.
Its considerable dimensional stability, strength and resistance to environmental humidity and chemical attack make it an ideal candidate for the creation of structural parts for aerospace, medical, optical, robotics and automation applications.
LATI’s contribution to the unstoppable development of 3D printing does not end here.
It already offers compounds for the production of radio-opaque, identifiable by metal detectors, thermally and electrically conductive, reinforced and filled filaments.