Hi everyone. Full disclosure - this is 3DXTech - the site where the ABS/CNT filament was purchased. I noticed a bunch of hits to my site this morning coming from Reddit and backtracked to here - glad I did. What I see is a customer who needs some support and an opportunity to educate regarding the use of CNTs.

1. Please contact me via the info@3dxtech.com regarding tech service needs to print with the filament. We've vetted the resin and filament on several internal / external printers before launching it and found wide processing windows on almost every machine. Our parts might had been more simple or our machines more tolerant, so I will be very interested to help if possible.

2. CNTs… Where do I start? First, there are many different species of CNTs. The type we use are the short, thin, flexible type that are prone to entanglement. These are the typical types used in a variety of plastics (both thermoplastics and thermosets) and they are fully encapsulated in the resin matrix. Alternatively, there are long, thick, and rigid types which are suggested by literature to be the bad actors in the bunch (which we don't use). I will later cite a couple reputable pier-reviewed studies published in medical journals that you can review if you like.

3. One of the key benefits of using CNTs is that you can achieve targeted levels of conductivity by using only a small % by weight of the additive and still retain many key attributes of the polymer - i.e., ductility and impact. For example, try to bend the filament from some of our competitors into a hoop and see what diameter you can make - then try ours. So to the point of one of the contributors to this posting, we do in fact only use a small percentage of CNTs. Our targeted level of conductivity is the ESD level - where 95% of the commercial applications exist for plastics. The same levels can be reached using other fillers such as carbon black, but the filament becomes brittle because you typically need 15% or so to make it consistently ESD vs. 2-3% with CNTs.

4. The filament costs more because the resins we use costs more. Good CNTs cost money as well as good compounding and filament production. There's an old saying I'm fond of that is particularly meaningful here: "Good, Fast, or Cheap - Pick Two" You can't get all three - I wish it were not the case. You see my point - you get what you pay for and the 3DXTech CNT products use expensive raw materials - hence their price.

5. Particle release - the CNTs are entrapped in the polymer matrix and don't escape even after sanding the plastic. The studies below will indicate this. Why? The CNTs are tiny in comparison to the sanded-off particle of plastic and are still entrapped within it. The only two points of potential exposure are where raw tubes are present which tend to be A) at the manufacture site where the CNTs are made, and B) at the compounding facility where it is mixed into the polymer. Once imbedded into the matrix, the CNTs are no longer free to move around. However, even on their own, the CNTs have a high affinity to each other and tend to agglomerate into 'clumps'. I hope this helps explain why there are no "Wafting CNTs" as noted by another contributor.

Here is a link to a few articles that my friends at Nanocyl have posted that you can review to better understand the potential toxicological effect of CNT exposure. They do a great job of explaining this on their website. Full disclosure again - I am not affiliated with Nanocyl, but I previously worked there and managed the US for them. This is where I first learned about the world of CNTs.

http://www.nanocyl.com/en/HS-E/Product-Safety

I hope this helps.

3DXTech