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

41754 Comments

Anonymous

SpencerArbiz (not verified)

on

Thu, 07/17/2025 - 08:25

Elon Musk stood next to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday, but the physical proximity belied a growing philosophical divide between two of the world's most powerful men, resulting in the tech mogul's abrupt announcement that he is departing Washington — without having achieved his goal of decimating the federal government.
[url=https://kra33at.ru]kra35.cc[/url]
Trump took a more charitable view of Musk's tenure during a sprawling news conference in which he also declined to rule out pardoning Sean "Diddy" Combs, who is on trial on charges of sex trafficking and other alleged crimes; said he dislikes "the concept" of former first lady Jill Biden being forced to testify before Congress about her husband's mental fitness; and predicted again that Iran is on the cusp of making a deal that would suspend its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
[url=https://kra33ccc.cc]kraken35[/url]
In a battle of plutocrats against populists, Bannon, a longtime advocate for reducing the size and scope of government, found Musk's methods and policy preferences to be sharply at odds with those of the MAGA movement. So, ultimately, did Musk, who broke with Trump repeatedly on agenda items as narrow as limiting visas for foreign workers and as broad as Trump's signature "big beautiful" budget bill — which Musk belittled for threatening to add trillions of dollars to the national debt.

“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk said in an interview with CBS' "Sunday Morning," which will air this weekend.
[url=https://http-kra-33cc.ru]kra35 at[/url]
"I love the gold on the ceiling," he said.

Musk has argued that inertia throttled his efforts to reduce government spending — a conclusion that raises questions about whether he was naive about the challenge of the mission he undertook.

“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he told The Washington Post this week. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”

On Friday, he drew an implicit parallel between American government and the Nazi regime that committed a genocide, invoking the "banality of evil" that Hannah Arendt used to describe the atrocities in Germany.
kra35.cc

https://kra33---at.ru

Anonymous

JosephRed (not verified)

on

Thu, 07/17/2025 - 09:31

ראשונה בלי קונדום זה היה מאוד יוצא דופן, כאילו מלקקים אותך מכל עבר. ה-ira היה רטוב והחל בסדר. סיימתי את המים, זרקתי את הכוס לפח, והלכתי לבית שלי, לשטוף את ה "לאטה" מהפנים שלי. 13:00 עד <a href=https://vegetalsexpills.com/>סקס אדיר באר שבע</a>

Anonymous

RaymondFeare (not verified)

on

Thu, 07/17/2025 - 11:44

online medicijnen <a href=" https://501tracking.com/user/lqnbawkidm/?um_action=edit ">medicijnen online</a> or <a href=" https://www.google.com.na/url?q=https://zorgpakket.com ">medicijnen kopen zonder recept</a>
https://toolbarqueries.google.com.sv/url?q=https://zorgpakket.com holland apotheke
[url=http://www.thomas-neuss.de/url?q=https://zorgpakket.com]online apotheek nederland zonder recept[/url] mijn medicijn.nl and [url=https://vedicnutraceuticals-uk.com/user/uqekyrtlrp/?um_action=edit]apotheke online[/url] apotheek recept

Anonymous

WilliamGaups (not verified)

on

Thu, 07/17/2025 - 12:57

נסטיה, אך לא התרחקה. מה אם אני לא רוצה? קולו היה נמוך יותר, מתמיד יותר. הוא התקרב מקרוב, כך שהיא לא אמרנו שלום. אבל היום האלכוהול החליט עלינו. הוא זה שעזר להיות השכן משוחרר, ולהזמין אותו אליו. <a href=https://milfxxx4k.com/>דירה דיסקרטית באר שבע</a>

Anonymous

Ibrahimtrava (not verified)

on

Thu, 07/17/2025 - 13:30

Мне знакома эта ситуация. Приглашаю к обсуждению.
ежели вы уже мечтали устроить свою ванную в древнейшем стиле, плитка kassandra - то, [url=http://dl2.djring.com/cornertown.de/de/component/k2/item/1-consulting_de... что надо. великолепное качество и недорогой прайс делают эту керамическую продукцию доступной среди обширного слоев потребителей.

Anonymous

Edithexiny (not verified)

on

Thu, 07/17/2025 - 14:59

кто его знает
if {you like|you love|you watch|you adore} {one-armed bandits|slot machines}, {here|here|with us} {there are|are|available|thousands of online video slots {that|that} you {can|get the opportunity} to try. we {never|never} {want|wish} to take up {you|you} time by compiling a #file_links["C:\Users\Admin\Desktop\file\gsa+en+PhoenixPBN10T1k5k792P2URLBB.txt",1,N], {therefore|because|in this regard} we have carefully systematized {all information|complete information|complete data|complete information} about {casino|playground}.

Pages

Add your comment

More information about text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.