Filament Splicer

Project cancelled, click here to read why
The idea for Filament Splicer was born about a month after our Ultimaker 3D Printer was build. As cool as 3D Printing is, printing in one color is boring.

Users of normal, single head FFF/FDM printers are stuck with single color unless they join filament pieces together to produce one multi-colored string. It is not very complicated but process is quite awkward and you will get fed up very quickly.

If you want to have proper, stable filament join you need to have right temperature on the tip of plastic when you connect pieces together. This is hard to achieve when you use some arbitrary heat source. You either underheat or overheat and burn the plastic. Using print head of your printer is best 'ad-hoc' solution but it leaves quite a mess on it, you cannot print when you splice and plastic which is in the head slowly gets burned while you take time to splice your string.

Then, of course there is issue with forming of the joint, carpet knife and fingers where our favorite tools for that job but it took quite a long time to form each joint.

We have had our share of failed prints due to broken joints / stuck filament and finally decided to create a device which will help to splice filament. Initial idea was to create fully automated unit: you place filament ends on copper block, close it, push the button and viola - you have your joint. That was the theory.... In practice this is impossible because PLA and ABS expand during heat-up and contract during cool down, this results in either no joint at all or bubble-filled mess.

Many headache filled days [Even best PLA is really nasty stuff when you breath it in for a while] later we dropped the idea and went for 'open' model with precisely manufactured grooves which help to quickly heat up, connect and form joints.

Thermal insulation was another challenge, we wanted to allow up to 260c temperature but nothing could properly insulate enclosure from hot copper block for prolonged period of time. Ceramic fiber thermal tape can take that heat but one needs a lot of it and then there is itching... Chinese tape is horrible and even best branded, made in USA [ThermoTec] tape is not flawless. We eventually gave up on ceramic fibre and went with PFTA [Teflon] plates. Since PFTA can be outright poisonous at high temperatures, we decided to use high quality - made in Europe material - this way we are sure that maximum temperature of 235c is well within safety limit.

Availability

Filament splicer can be pre-ordered via our campaign on Indiegogo, it is available as a DIY kit or fully assembled unit.

 

Assembled
Assembled
Kit
Kit

 

Open Source

Filament splicer blueprints are released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License and can be downloaded from Thingiverse and Youmagine.

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filament splicer

41343 Comments

Anonymous

FloydRitte (not verified)

on

Sun, 07/13/2025 - 13:08

Job losses
But what about the impact of tariffs on job creation? Surprisingly, an increase in import taxes has been found to result in slightly more unemployment across countries.
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An example provided by Irwin at Dartmouth College points to one plausible explanation — and it has to do with the steeper cost of imported goods.

“A number of studies have shown, on net, we lost jobs from the (2018) steel tariffs rather than gained jobs because there are more people employed in the downstream user industries than in the steel industry itself,” he said.
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A study by the Federal Reserve Board found that a rise in input costs resulting from US tariff hikes in 2018-19 led to job losses in American manufacturing. The damage from those higher expenses was compounded by retaliatory taxes on US exports, more than offsetting a small boost to manufacturing employment from US tariffs — at least so far, the 2024 paper said.

Retaliation by other countries is indeed another danger of pulling the tariff lever. Higher tariffs on American exports would typically raise their prices for foreign consumers, hitting demand for the goods in many cases.

When Trump announced new tariffs this year, America’s major trading partners were quick to strike back with their own levies, although the US then agreed a temporary truce with China and the European Union.

Costs of free trade
While economists generally agree that free trade has benefited the global economy in recent decades, they acknowledge that it comes with certain costs.

One is the loss of jobs in communities that are particularly exposed to new competition from foreign manufacturers.

That is similar to the impact of technological progress on workers. “Manufacturing jobs as a share of the labor force have come down everywhere. It isn’t a US-specific story,” said Gimber at JPMorgan Asset Management, pointing to automation.

He drew a parallel between helping workers affected by higher imports and what is known as a just transition — the idea that the drastic changes needed to move toward a greener economy should be fair to everyone and minimize harm to workers and communities.

In both cases, providing workers in impacted industries with new skills or retraining them could be key, Gimber said.

Another potential cost of free trade is dependency on far-flung manufacturers. That took on new relevance during the pandemic, which snarled global supply chains, contributing to shortages of products such as face masks and respirators in the US and elsewhere.

However, economists do not typically see tariffs as a good way to build up domestic manufacturing, Fatas at INSEAD said, noting that subsidies for specific industries are viewed as a better tool “because they work more directly.”

But perhaps the strongest argument in favor of free trade is its importance to maintaining peace between nations.

As Gimber’s colleague David Kelly noted in March, closer trade relations give countries more to lose in any conflict.

Anonymous

WilliamRuire (not verified)

on

Sun, 07/13/2025 - 13:08

Questioned by both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill about the low staffing numbers, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has brushed off concerns, testifying in May that slightly less than half of permanent NPS employees work on the ground in the parks, while other staff work at regional offices or at DC headquarters.
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“I want more people in the parks,” Burgum said. “I want less overhead. There’s an opportunity to have more people working in our parks … and have less people working for the National Park Service.”
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But internal NPS data tells a different story, Brengel said, showing that around 80% of National Park Service staff work in the parks. And regional offices play an important supporting staff role, with scientists on staff to help maintain fragile parks ecosystems, as well as specialists who monitor geohazard safety issues like landslides.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska recently pressed Burgum to provide a full list of staff positions that have been cut at the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service since the Trump administration took over. The Interior Department has not provided the list, a Senate staffer said.
The regional offices within the park service are on edge, waiting to see how courts rule on a Trump administration reduction in force plan they fear could gut their ranks, a National Park Service employee in a Western state told CNN.

“If they greenlight the RIF plan, then it’s going to be a bloodbath,” the employee said.

In addition to probationary workers that were fired in February, early retirements are also culling the agency’s ranks, and the continued $1 spending limit on federal workers’ credit cards is making it extremely difficult to do field work in the parks, with a simple overnight trip needing to be requested 10 days in advance, the employee added.

The lack of superintendents and NPS supervisors creates more of a headache, they added.

“These times, when it’s all about fighting for scarce resources, you really need those upper-level people with clout working the system,” the employee said.

Hall, the retired NPS regional director, said losing rangers, maintenance professionals and park superintendents could profoundly alter American landmarks.

“What you’ve lost with all this attrition – you’ve lost all this knowledge that’s going to take years to build back up,” Hall said.

Anonymous

VernonTah (not verified)

on

Sun, 07/13/2025 - 13:35

“We know that the water levels seemed to be higher than they were last summer,” Silva said. “It is a significant amount of water flowing throughout, some of it in new areas that didn’t flood last year.”
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Matt DeMaria, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, said storms formed in the early afternoon over terrain that was scorched last year by wildfire. The burn scar was unable to absorb a lot of the rain, as water quickly ran downhill into the river.

Preliminary measurements show the Rio Ruidoso crested at more than 20 feet — a record high if confirmed — and was receding Tuesday evening.

Three shelters opened in the Ruidoso area for people who could not return home.
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The sight brought back painful memories for Carpenter, whose art studio was swept away during a flood last year. Outside, the air smelled of gasoline, and loud crashes could be heard as the river knocked down trees in its path.

“It’s pretty terrifying,” she said.

Cory State, who works at the Downshift Brewing Company, welcomed in dozens of residents as the river surged and hail pelted the windows. The house floating by was “just one of the many devastating things about today,” he said.

Anonymous

Richardskaks (not verified)

on

Sun, 07/13/2025 - 13:38

‘Hire back park staff’: Visitors feel the pinch of Trump’s layoffs at National Park Service
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The visitors who trek to America’s national parks are already noticing the changes, just months after President Donald Trump took office.

“I’ve been visiting national parks for 30 years and never has the presence of rangers been so absent,” one visitor to Zion National Park wrote in National Park Service public feedback obtained by CNN.

The visitor said they saw just one trail crew at the iconic Utah park. There were no educational programs offered at any of the five parks they visited on their trip.
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“Hire back park staff. We need them,” the visitor wrote.

At Yosemite, another visitor said there were no rangers at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir entrance station, preventing visitors from picking up wilderness permits.

“More staff would be a BIG and IMPORTANT improvement,” that visitor wrote.
America’s most treasured national parks are getting crunched by Trump’s government-shrinking layoffs just as the summer travel season gets into full swing.
Top officials vowed to hire thousands of seasonal employees to pick up the slack after the Trump administration fired around 1,000 NPS employees as part of wide-ranging federal firings known as the “Valentine’s Day Massacre.” Department of Interior officials said in a February memo they would aim to hire 7,700 seasonal workers at NPS, and post listings for 9,000 jobs.

But those numbers haven’t materialized ahead July 4th — the parks’ busiest time of the year. Internal National Park Service data provided to CNN by the National Parks Conservation Association shows that about 4,500 seasonal and temporary staff have been hired.

Anonymous

TerryDal (not verified)

on

Sun, 07/13/2025 - 13:38

The study’s focus on 12 cities makes it just a snapshot of the true heat wave death toll across the continent, which researchers estimate could be up to tens of thousands of people.
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“Heatwaves don’t leave a trail of destruction like wildfires or storms,” said Ben Clarke, a study author and a researcher at Imperial College London. “Their impacts are mostly invisible but quietly devastating — a change of just 2 or 3 degrees Celsius can mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people.”
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The world must stop burning fossil fuels to stop heat waves becoming hotter and deadlier and cities need to urgently adapt, said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. “Shifting to renewable energy, building cities that can withstand extreme heat, and protecting the poorest and most vulnerable is absolutely essential,” she said.

Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the University of Reading who was not involved in the analysis, said “robust techniques used in this study leave no doubt that climate change is already a deadly force in Europe.”

Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading who was also not involved in the report, said the study added to huge amounts of evidence that climate change is making heat waves more intense, “meaning that moderate heat becomes dangerous and record heat becomes unprecedented.”

It’s not just heat that’s being supercharged in out hotter world, Allan added. “As one part of the globe bakes and burns, another region can suffer intense rainfall and catastrophic flooding.”

Anonymous

GeorgeUtisy (not verified)

on

Sun, 07/13/2025 - 14:44

Rescuers are hailing as a “four-legged hero” a furry Chihuahua whose pacing atop an Alpine rock helped a helicopter crew find its owner, who had fallen into a crevasse on a Swiss glacier nearby.
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The man, who was not identified, was exploring the Fee Glacier in southern Switzerland on Friday when he broke through a snow bridge and fell nearly 8 meters (about 26 feet), according to Air Zermatt, a rescue, training and transport company.

Equipped with a walkie-talkie, the man connected with a person nearby who relayed the accident to emergency services. But the exact location was unknown. After about a half-hour search, the pacing pooch caught the eye of a rescue team member.
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As the crew zeroed on the Chihuahua, the hole the man fell into became more visible. Rescuers rappelled down, rescued the man and flew him and his canine companion to a hospital.

“Imagine if the dog wasn’t there,” Air Zermatt spokesman Bruno Kalbermatten said by phone. “I have no idea what would happen to this guy. I think he wouldn’t survive this fall into the crevasse.”

On its website, the company was effusive: “The dog is a four-legged hero who may have saved his master’s life in a life-threatening situation.”

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Gabrielnof (not verified)

on

Sun, 07/13/2025 - 15:25

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Sun, 07/13/2025 - 15:36

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