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

56112 Comments

Anonymous

Kerryplept (not verified)

on

Sun, 09/28/2025 - 12:00

Target is in trouble. And while it’s easy to get lost in the company’s recent (poor) handling of American culture war narratives that cast it as too “woke” or too willing to cave to online fascists, the root of Target’s problems runs deep.
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Don’t get me wrong – the massive consumer boycotts from Black organizers have done damage. And there are probably folks on the far right who think even Target’s toned-down, overwhelmingly beige Pride merch this year was still too loud.
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But its stock is in the gutter and sales have been falling for two years because of good ol’ business fundamentals. It overstocked. It lost the pulse of its customers. It went up against Amazon Prime with… actually, does anyone know what Target’s Amazon Prime competitor is called?
The brand we petite bourgeoisie once playfully referred to as Tar-zhay has lost its spark. The company reported a decline in sales for a third-straight quarter, part of a broader trend of falling or flat sales for two years. Employees have lost confidence in the company’s direction. And 2025 has been a particularly rough financially, as Black shoppers organized a boycott over Target’s decision to cave to right-wing pressure on diverse hiring goals.
Shares were down 10% Wednesday.

It’s not to say the new guy, Michael Fiddelke, is unqualified. He’s been at Target since he started as an intern more than 20 years ago, after all. But Wall Street is clearly concerned that Target’s leadership is underestimating the severity of the need for a significant change— just as President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported goods threaten the entire retail industry.

Appointing a company lifer “does not necessarily remedy the problems of entrenched groupthink and the inward-looking mindset that have plagued Target for years,” Neil Saunders, an analyst at GlobalData Retail, said in a note to clients Wednesday.

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In its 2010s heyday, Target became a go-to for consumers who liked a bargain but didn’t necessarily like bargain-hunting. The shelves felt well-curated. You’d go to Target because it had one thing you needed and 12 things you didn’t know you needed. It was stocked with Millennial cringe long before Gen Z gave us the term Millennial cringe.

Target’s sales held strong through the pandemic as remote workers set up home offices and stocked up on essentials. Months of lockdown also benefited the store as people began refreshing their spaces because they didn’t really have much else to do and they were staring at the same walls all the time.

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Robertpeems (not verified)

on

Sun, 09/28/2025 - 12:07

Dr. Jake Scott is on the front line of his second pandemic in five years and he is not getting much sleep.

Scott works full-time as an infectious disease physician at Stanford Health Care’s Tri-Valley hospital in Pleasanton, California. When he is done taking care of his patients and his two grade-school aged kids, he often stays up past midnight writing — furiously penning op-eds, collecting studies, leading evidence reviews and posting meaty threads on social media, most of them correcting the record on vaccines.
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Often, he’s reacting to the latest maneuvers by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. A pinned post responding to one of Kennedy’s appearances on Fox News has been viewed almost 5 million times. Another post fact-checking Kennedy’s claims about potential harms from aluminum in vaccines had 1 million views in its first 48 hours. Scott’s followers on X have doubled since April.
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“A million views for this long-winded, very detailed, kind of nerdy breakdown of the science,” Scott said, marveling at the attention it got. “I think that’s saying something, you know? People want that information, and they deserve it,” said Scott who is 48.

The Covid-19 pandemic turned many infectious disease specialists and virologists into household names. Scott’s was not one of them, perhaps because he was too busy treating patients. He didn’t stay out of the public discourse completely, however. He was one of the first doctors to tell people that Omicron didn’t seem to be as severe an infection as earlier strains of the virus, although some virologists were skeptical at the time.

In President Donald Trump’s second administration, however, Scott is taking on what he sees as a second pandemic — misinformation and disinformation about vaccines. He knows false information can be as harmful as any virus.
“When officials spread inaccurate information about vaccines, it does have real consequences, and families make decisions based on fear rather than on facts,” Scott said.

It’s already happening. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported data showing kindergarten vaccination rates continue to decline, as states make it easier to opt out of school vaccination requirements. Vaccine preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough are rising again, too.

Scott knows it could get much worse.

“In 2021, nearly every single patient I lost to Covid was unvaccinated by choice, and every colleague of mine has said the same thing.”

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Edwardwiz (not verified)

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Sun, 09/28/2025 - 12:48

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