Hi,
For anyone interested in the CNC system it's called Maslow CNC.
http://www.maslowcnc.com/It's an open source project and always going through improvements driven by the community. I suspect the same it true of this community as well.
I'm a technologist. I live about a decade in the future. Printing on the scale I'm discussing is not common even in commercial systems. I stated learning about 3D printing in commercial systems when I started back in 1995. There are a few systems that can do infinite volume because it's a tool head working over a conveyor belt.
I'm pretty well versed on CF. Carbon Fiber adds strength. Depending on how your handle CF it's strength is variable. There are both 3D printer filaments that have directional CF filament embedded in them and software to control the direction of bias during the print. There are other filaments that fuse Carbon Fiber as a suspension in plastics that can double the strength of the part. In addition I have the ability when 3D printing to use a variety of internal support structures. By the way I have consulted on many levels with the US Air force on the use of 3D printers.
I think we need to define how people are using Carbon Fiber or what they call Carbon Fiber. Carbon fiber by it's self is just a floppy material like fiberglass. One of the discussions is how CF is laid up. Of the manufactures of CF tubes I've talked to, they are advertising the benefit of strength to weight ratio of the material but I know of none that have manufacturing standards outside of tolerance. I can't get a guaranteed Rockwell Hardness report on how a purchased part will perform. I will say most of what is available to the public is just resin laminated. When people talk of the strength of CF they are often citing the material used in fishing rods and Aerospace. These are baked in a oven at extremely high temperatures to achieve the advertised strength. These are custom built ovens that consumer ovens will not reach. Nasa paid for the projects ovens that I'm referring to. I spent a lot of time talking to the owner of the ovens about his CF process. My sister went to school with the daughter of the owner of the first fishing rod company that ever used CF. The tubes we are talking about do not go through proper baking to achieve this level of hardness and strength.
So depending on how you are achieving your goal I assure you, you can print an Airframe. I can't say without further testing how much a printed part will weigh verses a standard tube without some testing. As you have a variable infill in printing you can program the stiffness of the part and it's weight.
There is also the possibility of building printed airframe of metal alloys. Again I'm pushing the envelope of size. There is a very slick 3D printing system called Desktop Metal that could make all kinds of custom parts.
I make it sound easy. It is a vary difficult process to go from concept to part. There are a small number of people that have the skills to design, print and implement parts. The power of 3D printing is the ability to make changes to a design rapidly and repeatability, to produce a proven design. For what can be 3D printed it can enable prototyping and small scale manufacturing. I have a long history of working with 3D printing and the longer I work with it the better I understand it's applications. Not everything can be or should be 3D printed. It's just a tool, however it is a enabling tool for people that learn to use it. As an engineer I see it as part of my solutions not the only solution.
Routing Carbon Fiber is a bad idea in my book. The results are highly toxic. Forgiving that fact you will produce heat, lots of it and uncontrolled temperatures, that will cause your parts to be unstable due to the changes caused by the heat. The answer there is to over compensate with more material but that defeats the weight savings.
One other possibility is to 3D print a 1 time use mold and then cast an alloy.
I do appreciate the input as I can do some small scale testing on a desktop printer and then multiply out the results to see if I can beat the weight. The biggest change is opening up the build envelope to accommodate the width and that just requires more space probably 1ft in X & Y
Thank you
Bee
