Carbon-fibre nylon — the material for brackets that replace machined aluminium, tooling that gets abused daily, and parts that work hot. The top of our stack.
PA-CF is chopped carbon fibre in a nylon matrix: stiff like a filled engineering polymer, tough like nylon, and stable to about 170 °C. It's what we quote when someone asks for a part that would otherwise be machined from aluminium — at $0.308 a gram incl. GST, it's our most expensive material and routinely still a tenth of the machined price.
It runs on our large-format, heated-chamber machines with hardened drive hardware — carbon-filled materials eat standard printers, which is why most services either don't offer it or print it badly.
Structural brackets and mounts replacing machined metal
Drone, RC and robotics frames — stiffness per gram is the point
Tooling, jigs and fixtures that get abused daily
Under-bonnet and near-motor parts that run warm
Stiffness is in the layer plane — Z-direction is markedly weaker, so orientation matters more than in any other material
Carbon-filled surface is matte dark grey only
Nylon absorbs moisture over months — dimension-critical parts can grow ~0.1–0.2%
Overkill for most parts: if PETG can do it, PETG should
Tell us the load direction in the order notes — we orient PA-CF parts for the force, not the finish, and flag any conflict before printing.
Generous fillets pay off doubly here: stress concentrations find sharp corners in stiff materials fast.
Pair with heat-set inserts (M3–M5, fitted here) — threads in PA-CF hold brilliantly via brass, poorly when printed.
The aluminium bracket you'd machine for $300, printed overnight for a tenth of that — stiff enough that the bolt strips before the part does.
Mounts, frames and guards where every gram matters and vibration is constant.
Drill guides, assembly fixtures and soft jaws that survive a workshop year — see the jigs & fixtures page.
It replaces metal in many brackets and fixtures — stiffness-per-gram competes with aluminium in the layer plane. It's not metal across the layers: we orient for your load, which is why we ask about it.
The material costs more, prints slower, and runs on our large-format heated-chamber machines. It's priced by the gram like everything else — a typical bracket lands $27.50–62, GST included.
PC is the strongest unfilled rigid we run and takes impacts better; PA-CF is stiffer, lighter-feeling and handles 170 °C. For pure stiffness and heat, PA-CF; for tough transparent-ish guards and housings, PC.
Upload an STL, STEP or 3MF, pick PA-CF in the configurator, and the price reprices live — GST included, dispatch date shown before you pay.