this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Well, the pilot was lied to. That is definitely not carbon fiber On top of ABS. You can see where the print is falling apart. I’m certainly no expert, but that poor photo in the article definitely looks like a cheap piece of shit… Relative to what I imagine aircraft parts are like normally
carbon fiber filament just has tiny chobbed fibers in it to stabilize the material. it's not really a strength additive, definitely not in the way an actual woven sheet is. and you can't always tell if a printed part is CF filament or not, though you often can have a good idea
Whoever made this should have just covered it in fiberglass, or used it to make a mold for a stronger material.
But I guess The point of this whole thing is that whoever made this was definitely not qualified!
"carbon fiber" filament usually has little shards of carbon fibers suspended in it. This makes the part less flexible than raw ABS...when cool. It's not like they do a layup of carbon fiber over 3D printed ABS, that would almost defeat the purpose.
If they'd done that, 3D print a mold or buck and then do a carbon layup over it, it'd be made of epoxy, which doesn't melt.
This was part "only" meant to funnel air into the engine, so I could see why he wouldn't think it would be a problem. And I think it's more like the carbon fiber impregnated abs, than coated. I paraphrased the report, so that's on me.
Anyone worth their weight in abs knows “carbon fiber impregnated abs” isn’t going to actually do a FRACTION of the job that literal carbon fiber—or even fiberglass—would do, and this pilot is lucky they didn’t kill someone.
It just goes to show how little people know about carbon fiber and how easily Tricked they are when someone says they mixed carbon fiber into melted plastic… Laughing my fucking ass off
It's not the strength they were worried about, it was the temperature at which it weakend, which shouldn't have been a problem according the the information provided to the pilot.
I don't know the material data sheet was wrong or the person selling it to him was wrong or lying. We don't and won't know, because they didn't try to identify it.