Carbon Wasp Ltd is a UK based company that designs and makes one off custom carbon fibre parts, with a focus on bicycle products. It makes custom products for individuals and while also providing prototyping and development projects for other companies and industries.
Carbon Wasp has been developing its process for several years and a key part of that is the use of 3D printed moulds. Using pre-preg carbon fibre to create their custom bike frames Carbon Wasp needed a plastic that strong enough hold up against the large internal pressures while withstanding high temperatures of up to 130℃. Polycarbonate is an obvious choice of material, but they had real difficulty finding a brand of filament that met their needs.
“We tried many different types of polycarbonate filament, from a number of manufacturers, but only PC-Plus from Polymaker provides the result we need.”
-Adam Smith
PC-Plus is strong, temperature resistant, but most importantly for Carbon Wasp it prints very well. Its moulds can be large single pieces which take many hours to print, so reliability of printing is really important. PC-Plus is easy to print, gives consistent results and doesn’t suffer most common issues with PC, such as excessive warping. Polymaker’s PC-Plus has thus become a key part of Carbon Wasp’s working process.
