Our fibers viewed by a microscope
Last friday we had a look at the printed or wound fibers with a microscope. The dark black carbon-fibers are fragile. They are wound around a piece of PLA but some of them are broken.
A cluster of carbon-fiber wound around PLA filament.
The Kevlar was much easier to wind, but the quality or stickiness of the fibers to the PLA was much different along the same piece. As shown in thenext three pictures, some windings are tight, as others are more or less coming off:
Kevlar-fiber wound onto PLA-filament but with different tightness.
This next piece of PLA was stuck in the nozzle. After pulling it out, the PLA was actually connected to the fibers. The fibers were split and got placed within the molten PLA. However, this amount of PLA is too low to print, since the layers won’t stick together.
A piece of molten PLA with some kevlar-fiber included.
The same test was done with glass-fibers, but these don’t provide any strength since they break very easily.
Glass-fibers wound around piece of PLA but they are clearly broken.
