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

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The Great Lakes have the most shipwrecks per square mile among all bodies of water in the world, largely due to the high shipping traffic in the 19th century and the lake’s volatile weather. Researchers know about the wrecks because reporting any commercial ship that sails on the lakes is required; from the early 19th century to the 20th century, about 40,000 ships sailed the Great Lakes, Baillod said.

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Wrecks in the Great Lakes have been found since the 1960s, but in recent years the rate of these finds has accelerated greatly, in part due to media attention, clearer waters and better technology, Baillod said. Some wreck hunters and media outlets call this the golden age for shipwreck discoveries.

“There’s a lot more shipwreck awareness now on the Great Lakes, and people are looking down in the water at what’s on the bottom,” he added. Part of the reason it’s easier to see in the water is thanks to quagga mussels — an invasive species that was introduced in the 1990s. The mollusks have filtered most of the lakes, turning them from their old greenish hue, which allowed for only a few feet of visibility, to clear blue. Now, the lakes have visibility of up to 50 to 100 feet (15 to 30.5 meters), Baillod explained.

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Related article
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A Tudor warship sank nearly 500 years ago. The bones of its crew reveal what life was like

And then there are advancements in technology. “Side-scan sonar used to cost $100,000 back in 1980,” he said. “The one we used to find this (shipwreck) was just over $10,000. They’ve really come down in price.”

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In the meantime, Baillod said he hopes he and his team will continue to discover missing shipwrecks from his database in the coming years and bring along citizen scientists for the ride: “I keep looking, and I don’t doubt that we’ll keep finding.”

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