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

41627 Comments

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MatthewNam (not verified)

on

Wed, 01/08/2025 - 20:02

A year ago today, things went from bad to worse for Boeing
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At 5 p.m. PT on January 5, 2024, Boeing seemed like a company on the upswing. It didn’t last. Minutes later, a near-tragedy set off a full year of problems.

As Alaska Airlines flight 1282 climbed to 16,000 feet in its departure from Portland, Oregon, a door plug blew out near the rear of the plane, leaving a gaping hole in the fuselage. Phones and clothing were ripped away from passengers and sent hurtling into the night sky. Oxygen masks dropped, and the rush of air twisted seats next to the hole toward the opening.
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Fortunately, those were among the few empty seats on the flight, and the crew got the plane on the ground without any serious injuries. The incident could have been far worse — even a fatal crash.

Not much has gone right for Boeing ever since. The company has had one misstep after another, ranging from embarrassing to horrifying. And many of the problems are poised to extend into 2025 and perhaps beyond.

The problems were capped by another Boeing crash in South Korea that killed 179 people on December 29 in what was in the year’s worst aviation disaster. The cause of the crash of a 15-year old Boeing jet flown by Korean discount carrier Jeju Air is still under investigation, and it is quite possible that Boeing will not be found liable for anything that led to the tragedy.
But unlike the Jeju crash, most of the problems of the last 12 months have clearly been Boeing’s fault.

And 2024 was the sixth straight year of serious problems for the once proud, now embattled company, starting with the 20-month grounding of its best selling plane, the 737 Max, following two fatal crashes in late 2018 and early 2019, which killed 346 people.

Still the outlook for 2024 right before the Alaska Air incident had been somewhat promising. The company had just achieved the best sales month in its history in December 2023, capping its strongest sales year since 2018.

It was believed to be on the verge of getting Federal Aviation Administration approval for two new models, the 737 Max 7 and Max 10, with airline customers eager to take delivery. Approvals and deliveries of its next generation widebody, the 777X, were believed to be close behind. Its production rate had been climbing and there were hopes that it could be on the verge of returning to profitability for the first time since 2018.

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Kevinshuch (not verified)

on

Wed, 01/08/2025 - 20:04

New Glenn’s first flight
Blue Origin formally announced the development of New Glenn — which aims to outpower SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets and haul spacecraft up to 45 metric tons (99,200 pounds) to orbit — in 2016.
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The vehicle is long overdue, as the company previously targeted 2020 for its first launch.

Delays, however, are common in the aerospace industry. And the debut flight of a new vehicle is almost always significantly behind schedule.

Rocket companies also typically take a conservative approach to the first liftoff, launching dummy payloads such as hunks of metal or, as was the case with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy debut in 2018, an old cherry red sports car.
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Blue Origin has also branded itself as a company that aims to take a slow, diligent approach to rocket development that doesn’t “cut any corners,” according to Bezos, who founded Blue Origin and funds the company.

The company’s mascot is a tortoise, paying homage to “The Tortoise and the Hare” fable that made the “slow and steady wins the race” mantra a childhood staple.

“We believe slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” Bezos said in 2016. Those comments could be seen as an attempt to position Blue Origin as the anti-SpaceX, which is known to embrace speed and trial-and-error over slow, meticulous development processes.
But SpaceX has certainly won the race to orbit. The company’s first orbital rocket, the Falcon 1, made a successful launch in September 2008. The company has deployed hundreds of missions to orbit since then.

And while SpaceX routinely destroys rockets during test flights as it begins developing a new rocket, the company has a solid track record for operational missions. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, for example, has experienced two in-flight failures and one launchpad explosion but no catastrophic events during human missions.

Anonymous

Randallbaivy (not verified)

on

Wed, 01/08/2025 - 20:18

What’s on board this flight
Blue Origin had planned to launch a pair of Mars-bound satellites on behalf of NASA for the first flight of New Glenn.

But delays with the rocket’s development prompted the space agency to change course, moving that flight to this spring at the earliest. So for this inaugural flight, Blue Origin opted to instead fly a “demonstrator” that will test technology needed for the company’s proposed Blue Ring spacecraft — which will aim to serve as a sort of in-space rideshare vehicle, dragging satellites deeper into space when needed.
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The demonstrator on this New Glenn flight will remain aboard the rocket for the entire six-hour flight, Blue Origin said, and it will validate “communications capabilities from orbit to ground” as well as “test its in-space telemetry, tracking and command hardware, and ground-based radiometric tracking.”

The Blue Ring Pathfinder demonstrator is part of a deal Blue Origin inked with the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit.
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Why Blue Origin wants to reuse rockets
Similar to SpaceX, Blue Origin is aiming to recover and refly its first-stage rocket boosters in a bid to make launches less expensive.

“Reusability is integral to radically reducing cost-per-launch,” the company said in a recent news release, using the same oft-repeated sentiment that SpaceX has touted since it began landing rocket boosters in 2015.
Bezos, however, has acknowledged the importance of reusing rocket parts since he founded the company in 2000 — two years before Musk established SpaceX. And the company has already developed its suborbital New Shepard tourism rocket to be reusable.
“It’s not a copy cat game,” Henry said. “Blue Origin has been pursuing reusable vehicles since before reusable vehicles were cool. Now it’s much more of a mainstream idea (because of SpaceX). The difference is that it’s taken Blue Origin so much longer to get to orbit.”

If successful, returning the New Glenn rocket booster for a safe landing will be a stunning feat. After expending most of its fuel to propel the rocket’s upper stage to space, the first-stage booster will need to make a clean separation. The booster must then maneuver with pinpoint guidance and reignite its engines with precision timing to avoid crashing into the ocean or the Jacklyn recovery platform.

Anonymous

DanielARITH (not verified)

on

Wed, 01/08/2025 - 20:19

What New Glenn will do
In some ways, New Glenn has already made its mark on the launch industry. Blue Origin has for years pitched the rocket to compete with both SpaceX and United Launch Alliance — a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin that buys engines from Blue Origin — for lucrative military launch contracts.
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The US Space Force selected Blue Origin, ULA and SpaceX in June to compete for $5.6 billion worth of Pentagon contracts for national security missions slated to launch over the next four years.
Blue Origin also has deals with several commercial companies to launch satellites. The contracts include plans to help deploy Amazon’s Kuiper internet satellites and a recently inked deal with AST SpaceMobile to help launch the Midland, Texas-based company’s space-based cellular broadband network.

New Glenn could also be instrumental in building Blue Origin’s planned space station, called Orbital Reef. Blue Origin and it commercial partners, including Sierra Space and Boeing, among others, hope the station will one day provide a new destination for astronauts as the International Space Station is phased out of service.
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New Glenn vs. other powerful rockets
New Glenn packs significant power. Dubbed a “heavy-lift” vehicle, its capabilities lie between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and the more powerful Falcon Heavy launch vehicle.

SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9, for example, can haul up to 22.8 metric tons (50,265 pounds) to space. While New Glenn is capable of carrying about double that mass, it may also be roughly the same price as a Falcon 9: reportedly around $60 million to $70 million per launch.

“I think in order to compete with Falcon 9, you have to go head-to-head or better on price,” said Caleb Henry, the director of research at Quilty Space, which provides data and analysis about the space sector.

The question, however, is whether Blue Origin will be able to sustain a competitive price point, Henry added.

Still, one feature that makes New Glenn stand out is its large payload fairing, or nose cone. The component protects the cargo bay and is a whopping 23 feet (7 meters) wide — nearly 6 feet (2 meters) larger than that of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy.

Henry said Blue Origin likely opted to outfit New Glenn with such a large fairing in order to help fulfill Bezos’ vision of the future.

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