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

35804 Comments

Anonymous

RonaldLot (not verified)

on

Sun, 02/09/2025 - 11:25

Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum, US President Donald Trump and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Getty Images
CNN
—
President Donald Trump announced that he’s pausing tariffs on Mexico and Canada after speaking to leaders of both countries on Monday — just hours before the sweeping actions were set to go into effect.
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The proposed tariffs, which Trump announced Saturday, consisted of a 25% duty on all imports from Mexico and most from Canada (there was a carve-out for a 10% tariff on energy products), and a new 10% tariff on Chinese goods. Trump said earlier Monday that he’d be speaking with China soon.
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Trump paused the tariffs on America’s neighbors after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made commitments, some of which they’d already made, to bolster security at their respective borders with the United States.
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“I just spoke with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico. It was a very friendly conversation wherein she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican Soldiers on the Border separating Mexico and the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier Monday.

“These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our country,” he wrote.

He took to Truth Social with a similar announcement later in the day, after Trudeau first announced the 30-day pause.

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Anonymous

CarlosFesty (not verified)

on

Sun, 02/09/2025 - 15:46

Криптовалюта — это не просто хайп, а будущее финансов. И <a href="https://uniteto.live/">UTLH</a> — яркий тому пример. Вложил в стейкинг, получаю стабильные 2% в месяц, а через год верну свои вложения с прибылью. Это лучше любого депозита в банке! К тому же, токен используется в реальной финансовой программе, а значит, у него есть будущее. Пока многие сомневаются, я уже зарабатываю. Присоединяйтесь! ??

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