Experimental Setting for Continuous Fiber Reinforcement

[RedSandRobot 1]

Hello everyone,

 

As the title suggests, I have a proposal for a new experimental feature. This would entail preliminary support for tool heads similar to the ones Markforged uses for their continuous fiber reinforcement printing. I would think it would need to be implemented as a type of second infill that would be overlaid on top of the normal infill pattern; i.e. a normal pattern of triangles or grid with the continuous fiber reinforcement being only available with a concentric pattern, so that the fibers would line up together. It would have to be associated to only one tool and maybe the concentric infill would be the only thing that it would be able to do in regards to slicer settings.

 

I am interested in trying to develop an open-source version of continuous fiber reinforcement, but in order to be able to test anything I would need slicer support. As of right now, Markforged's Eiger software is proprietary and is the only one as far as I know that has this sort of setting as part of the slicer.

[ctbeke 133]

Cura is open source, so you could always add something like that yourself (if you know how to). Given that Ultimaker printers do not have the carbon fiber inlay hardware available, I doubt that the core team at Ultimaker will spend time on this, but maybe someone from the community would...

[bensand495 0]

Hey, I'm on the same page, I've been contemplating and experimenting with the hardware and it really comes down to some slicer logistics. Running specific nozzle change g code can trim or ready the continuous fiber, but slicing as a continuous line is paramount. Let me know if you're still interested - I'm going to continue mulling things over on my end!