Has anyone cut carbon fiber sheets in the past? We are interested in building a drone and would like to use the CNC to cut it. Does anyone have experience? Where did you get the bit you used to do this? Do you have any tips and tricks?
I donāt have experience with it (and am not planning it) but if you do, do make sure to have a proper dust collection in place. You donāt want to breath that in. Maybe even use some kind of cooling liquid to avoid it getting airborne.
There are bits out there that are being advertised for carbon cutting. But donāt have experience with those.
Iād thought about doing it and looked into it.
Itās not really a big deal as far as bits. Can pretty much just use regular carbide bits.
Single flute and downcut is recommended. Keep spindle speed high.
The reason I chose not to do it is that the dust is pretty nasty. You do not want to be breathing it.
Even though I have good ventilation to the outdoors, Iāve found that the dust from regular cnc gets all over the SM and my enclosure. Itās enough of a pain cleaning that up.
Iāve also heard that the carbon fiber dust can be conductive so it can cause problems with electronics and will also cause wear on any mechanical parts it gets into.
For me I decided just wasnāt worth it.
There are a few plans for dust nozzles that will attach to the SM head and a vacuum hose. If I was to do it Iād definitely set one of those up with a vacuum with the proper filtering. Didnāt do enough research to find out if a heap filter would suffice or not. Youād have to google that. The vac attachments can be found on thingiverse.
-S
I have cut carbon fibre sheet, didnt use any special bits just the one that came with the SM2.0. I dont remember my speed settings off the top of my head but I used a 0.3mm step down and went relatively slow, especially for plunge speed. I went too high on plunge when drilling holes in the plate and it deflected the bed which caused slop in my linear rails. Still havent gotten around to tightening the cam nuts on the rails.
Snapmaker sells carbon fiber sheets in the store, and even advertises them as āa great material for making your own drone framesā. So I would expect the stock CNC and bits to work. As with all things SM, expect a learning curve.
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You could also print some drone parts with carbon fiber filament 
i have a spool of carbon fiber pla (they also offer a HTPLA which would be even better) from protopasta
prints rather nicely!
it will destroy your nozzle, so get a metal one.
it made for quite a rigid part to be sure