Customer Spotlight: Unleashing Creativity with iSANMATE PLA Carbon Fiber Filament!

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1 How does him love our PLA CF

2 About iSANMATE

3 Contact us

4 Jackie Wang

How does him love our PLA CF

I’ve been buying the same brand of CF-PLA for a few years now. They were out of stock, and this (IEMAI Carbon Fiber PLA) was both cheaper and in stock. (EDIT: Eight spools deep. I’m not going back.)

For context; I print exclusively functional parts, not figurines etc.

Print quality is outstanding, dimensional accuracy seems very consistent. Very low to no stringing. It handles vase mode prints very well; 8mm dia x 30mm length test pins printed very quickly (~80mm/sec actual) with no flaws. It bridges extremely well with high airflow — honestly I’ve never seen better bridges from my printer.

Info on my setup;
– Extruder is a custom dual-drivegear 3:1 non-bowden extruder, hardened steel nozzle, 0.5mm bore, 0.3mm retract at 40mm/sec, heated to 223c
– Bed is glass, coated with a light mist of hairspray diluted to a thin layer with a coat of water from a spray bottle, heated to 57c
– Layer heights are usually 0.2mm or 0.25mm, outliers at 0.15mm and 0.3mm
– Print speed began around 60mm/sec~90mm/sec with ~1500mm/sec^2 acceleration, but recent improvements and tunings has it closer to 90~120mm/sec @ 3500mm/sec^2 with 0.2mm to 0.3mm layer height, with negligible notable change in quality.

It carves well if required, it drills well (unless you get it hot, obviously – it softens at a lowish temperature compared to hotter filaments, due to the PLA blend) and as stated it retains flawless dimensional accuracy. Ironed top surfaces look fantastic, and parts have a very satisfyingly solid sound when impacted. Side surfaces are smooth but grippy, a bit rougher than my normal brand of CF-PLA.

I’ve ordered eight rolls to date. I made no adjustments between rolls, and prints remained flawless with the exception of;
– The first print or two (~100g) from the first roll had occasional blockages which self-cleared within the same layer; I’m willing to attribute that to possible contamination on my end.
– The first few meters of the fifth roll, which needed a 5% feed reduction for ‘perfect’ surface finish.
– One nozzle jam, less than one meter of filament from the end of the sixth roll. Would’ve killed the print, but it was on the final, small area on the very top layer. Cleared with cold pull at 150c.
– Roll seven (Batch No 20221017ZD) had (to date) four clog issues which caused failed prints. Two abrupt, complete blockages fixed by hot-pull with no cycling after print cancel. Two partial blockages, one fixed via hot-pull, other fixed via cold-pull. I’d be more upset if these weren’t non-final prototyping parts.

– Most pics are before resonance tuning, so their surface finish isn’t flawless. I also had some frame stability issues causing irregular layer height, which have been solved.

– The ironing finish is astonishing. I’ve added three shots of 1mm thick, 115mm long vanes from an airflow project, with an ironed top surface. Ironing was 0.125mm, 20% flow rate, 30mm/sec. Lines are (BARELY) visible at this setting and using a 0.5mm nozzle; for perfection I would suggest 0.1@25mm or so. I’m not aiming for visible perfection with this project, so this is not an example of attempting such.

– Also, three additional pics of the underside of the same vanes – I literally forgot to enable supports for the underside of a dead flat, unsupported, 2mm deep, 115mm wide overhang. It’s tiny so it’s impossible to get better pics, but it printed, perfectly. 500mm/sec bridging acceleration, 60mm/sec bridge speed, 0.98 bridge flow rate. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it.

– I printed the auto-rewind filament holder, including the clutch and springs, from CF-PLA. I’m shocked to say, it has good spring-like qualities due to the TPU additive in the base blend, and the CF-on-CF clutch seems to be surviving very well so far. My extruder gearset is also printed from CF-PLA, and doesn’t wear like I had expected — this one gearset has lasted at least 12kg of printing so far.