What are the advantages and disadvantages of using glass fiber reinforced material and/or carbon fiber reinforced Bambu Lab branded materials?
CF would seem to impart some dark coloring to the material while glass reinforced not so much. How much stronger is a CF part over an identical GF part?
Fiberglass is pretty robust in my experience. Your average boat is resin infused fiberglass. Carbon fiber is stronger but more brittle.
CF weight would seem to be a negligible factor in a 3D model as the bulk of the materials weight will be the material carrying the fibers
The price of PA6-CF ($42.99) is cheaper than the PA6-GF ($59.99). There is only black PA6-CF while PA6-GF has multiple colors.
Make sure to consider the size of the spools when comparing prices. If I’m not mistaken, that price for PA6-CF is for a 0.5 kg spool, while the PA6-GF is for 1 kg.
Regarding the advantages for each, I believe it boils down to CF filaments having increased tensile strength and stiffness, but at the cost of being more brittle. GF filaments will have increased impact resistance and ductility, being able to absorb more energy before fracturing.
One of the biggest advantages of using either in 3D printing is that they reduce warping in materials that are otherwise difficult to print.
A YouTube channel “My Tech Fun” has mechanical testing videos for a lot of filaments, I found it pretty useful.
In general, GF is also a bit better at anti-creeping for other base filaments it seems but PA6s creep so much they require annealing to handle stable load bearing.
