Darkmoon CFX Carbon Fiber Build Plate User Guide

Introduction

Welcome to the comprehensive guide for the CFX Build Plate from Darkmoon 3D. The CFX Carbon Fiber build plate is created from 100% authentic, real carbon fiber that is encased in a high temperature resistant specialized resin formula that makes it the ideal surface for printing all types of filaments, but especially engineering filaments like nylon, polycarbonate, polypropylene, PPS, and more! We especially recommend using carbon fiber or glass fiber filled filaments, like PA6-CF/GF, PC-CF, PPS-CF and more. Carbon fiber filled filaments make parts significantly more rigid, increase heat resistance, and can improve XY tensile strength, making them much closer to injection molded parts than traditional FDM materials.

The CFX plate is designed and intended for use with engineering filaments and carbon fiber/glass fiber filled filaments. It is an added benefit that it also supports more common filaments like PLA and PETG, however they are not the intended use case and may sometimes require glue. 

Print Settings and Environment

Please use the Smooth/High Temp Plate setting in Bambu Studio/Orca Slicer.

 

Below is a table of suggested starting points for printing on the CFX build plate. Please understand that users are expected to change these variables as needed, as every roll of filament is different and every manufacturer is even more different. These are simply suggestions. If you want/need help while using your CFX plate, please join our Community Discord Server and post in the #plate-support channel and one of our many community members or staff will help you troubleshoot the issue.

Material	Bed Temp	Preheat	Adhesion Promoter
PLA	60-65°C	No	No
PETG/PCTG	75-80°C	Always	Sometimes
TPU/TPE	Ambient	No	No
ABS/ASA	105-120°C	Yes	Sometimes
PC	100-110°C	Always	Sometimes
PET-CF	100-110°C	Sometimes	No
PA/PPA/PAHT	100-110°C	Sometimes	No
PPS	100-110°C	No	No
Polypropylene	70-100°C	No	Always (PP Glue)

 

Some filaments will REQUIRE preheating. This is a non-negotiable for many materials, like PETG and PC. While PLA may recommend not preheating, there are roughly 30,000 different types of PLA being sold on the market and not all have been tested on the CFX plate. Please understand that these are merely good suggestions and a starting point for users. We are working on custom start up g-code for the slicer that will automatically preheat the printer based on what filament is being printed. Expect that to be available on this page in the next few days with a guide on how to edit the preheating time for each material.

A note on specific materials:

"High Flow" Materials: Filaments marketed as "high flow" or "high speed" typically contain copolymer additives known as "melt viscosity modifiers". These filaments tend to suffer from adhesion issues. 

PLA: Some PLA brands of filament may benefit from much slower first layers. Settings your first layer speeds to 15-20mm/s will improve initial adhesion.

Nylon: During testing, some nylon-based filaments struggled with warping more than higher quality, reputable brands. We recommend staying away from low-priced nylon filaments. Bambu Lab PA6-CF has similar issues, but the rest of Bambu's nylons work great. The official recommendation for nylon filament brands are:

• Polymaker Fiberon PA6-CF
• Polymaker Fiberon PA612-CF
• Polymaker Fiberon PA12-CF
• Siraya Tech PAHT-CF
• Siraya Tech PAHT
• Bambu Lab PAHT-CF

Polycarbonate: Similarly to some nylon filaments, some polycarbonate based filaments has issues with warping. Polymaker's Polylite PC does not stick well at all without glue, however their Polymax PC Tough sticks great. More testing will need to be done on exactly which brands work best. All carbon fiber filled polycarbonates (named PC-CF) adhered great. Carbon fiber filled filaments tend to resist warping more than others.

PET-CF: This material is some of the strongest, easiest to print, and most reliable available for at-home 3D printing. We HIGHLY recommend using PET-CF for any real engineering prints. We recommend these brands currently:

• Bambu Lab PET-CF
• Polymaker Fiberon PET-CF
• Siraya Tech PET-CF

Siraya Tech has 1kg spools available on Amazon for $40 and the quality is phenomenal. Extensive testing has not been done on Siraya's filament yet, but it appears promising. Both Bambu Lab and Polymaker's PET-CF have been independently validated to be incredibly robust. 

ASA: This is just general advice to the world--I'm getting on my soap box here--ASA filaments are 999 times out of 1000 "You get what you pay for." Please don't buy a $12 roll of Elegoo ASA and expect it print well. ASA is a specialty filament. If you see it for sale for $12... its ASA mixed with something really cheap.

White Filament (generally): White filaments are dyed using Titanium Dioxide. This pigment is prone to warping much more than any other pigment used for dying filament. This is just an FYI.

High Temp Considerations

Many of the filaments recommended for the CFX Carbon Fiber build plate are high temperature filaments. Nylon, for example, almost always recommends printing at 280°C at a minimum. Printing at over 280°C can temporarily deform the CFX plate. The deformation may be faintly noticeable when looking at your plate at specific angles in the light and will look like a slight depression in the surface in the shape of the model you just printed. This does not occur often and stops occurring at all after multiple heat/cool cycles from printing, due to the resin used in the CFX plate becoming "battle hardened". If you run into this problem, the fix is simple. Simply flip over your CFX plate and place it on your printer's heat bed such that the carbon fiber side is directly interfacing with the heat bed. Increase the bed temperature to 100 degrees celsius and allow it to heat-soak for 30 minutes to an hour. You may check on the CFX plate periodically during the heat soak (using proper heat resistant gloves to handle the plate while hot) to see if the deformation has disappeared. 

Care and Feeding

The CFX, unlike our ICE plate, is very sensitive to finger oils and even off-gassing residues from ABS/ASA. We recommend at the very least wiping down with 70%+ (ideally 99%) IPA between each print.