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.

Tags: 
projects
filament splicer

45265 Comments

Anonymous

WilliamEvity (not verified)

on

Sun, 03/23/2025 - 06:32

Xavier completes thrilling comeback, Mount St. Mary’s advances as men’s First Four comes to a close
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Wednesday saw the men’s First Four come to a close which means only one thing: the 64-team bracket is officially set following No. 11 Xavier’s thrilling come from behind win over No. 11 Texas and No. 16 Mount St. Mary’s victory over No. 16 American in Dayton, Ohio.

The Musketeers trailed by as many as 13 points, but their offense came alive in the second half behind guard Marcus Foster and forward Zach Freemantle to down the Longhorns 86-80.

The senior Foster scored a team-high 22 points while Freemantle, on his way to 15 points, threw down a dunk with a second left to seal the comeback win and ignite the fans at UD Arena, which is just over 50 miles away from campus in Cincinnati, Ohio.

With just under four minutes remaining, Xavier went on an 8-2 run to take a 78-74 lead, their first since the early going of the first half.

Musketeers head coach Sean Miller crowned Wednesday’s game as “one of the best” he’s been a part of.

“I thought we were dead in the water two different times,” Miller told the truTV broadcast after the game. “But that’s the one thing about our team — the resiliency of our group has always won out for us. Just when you thought we weren’t gonna make the tournament, we kept winning. Even in this game, just when you’re like, ‘It’s not gonna work out,’ we have a funny way of staying with it.”

The Longhorns did not go down without a fight as guard Tre Johnson scored a game-high 23 points in the loss.

Xavier will face No. 6 Illinois in the first round on Friday at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

Anonymous

DonaldHef (not verified)

on

Sun, 03/23/2025 - 07:55

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DonaldHef (not verified)

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Sun, 03/23/2025 - 07:55

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DonaldHef (not verified)

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