Testing PAHT-CF on the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon

Today I’m going to be testing some PAHT-CF, which I believe stands for nylon high temperature carbon fiber, bit of a mouth full, but anyway Bambu Lab sent me 250g with the X1 Carbon and I thought I’d put it to use.

So I didn’t really have anything to print that needed to be super strong and durable so I decided to use the PAHT-CF to print some honeycomb pegboards and legs to hold it up right.

Now when printing with filaments like PAHT-CF you need to dry them first. Usually you would need to buy a filament dryer or custom fit a food dehydrator however that is not the case with the X1 Carbon. The X1 Carbon has a drying feature where it will dry the spool of filament inside the machine via the print bed.

Now it does recommend printing a cover out of PA-CF or PC however, I didn’t have any around and I don't really understand how I could dry the PA-CF or PC to print the cover if I didn’t have the cover or a dryer to begin with…

Anyway I did some research on reddit and found that some people have been using old filament boxes as a cover instead, so I decided to give that a shot. I placed the spool inside the printer, placed the box on top, set the correct duration and temp for the drying which in this case is 80 degrees for 8-12 hours and started drying.

Now it does recommend flipping the spool halfway through so 4 hours later I returned to the printer to flip the spool. After the total 8 hours the PAHT-CF was ready to print.

I was really nervous for the first print as I have never printed with this material before however after I saw the first few layers my nerves went away. The first print came out looking pretty good but not perfect. A few of the hexagons didn't stick to the bed properly so before I printed the next two panels I put some more glue down on that section of the build plate and as you can see from the image below that did the trick.

I also printed some tool holders out of pla to connect to the honeycomb pegboard. One is a holder for extra print beds, another is a holder for spray paint or primer and the last thing I printed was a tool holder for pliers, small screwdrivers and allen keys.

Overall I'm very happy with the final results and I will definitely be using more of this filament in future when I have the need for some strong and durable prints.