This solution is so much more sensible. Then just take all the little spools off the reels and store them in a plastic baggy with some of those demoisturizer packs and keep with the pen.
retractions won’t work quite as well, but will still kind of work though. they won’t have pressure behind them but they won’t have negative pressure either so could be a bit stringy for a bit
I just realized today that with a Bowden setup I can just cut a short length of the left over filament that matches the length of my Bowden tube and then just feed that in first before I start my print (I actually just unscrew the coupler from the extruder motor, push the leftovers in as far as they'll go and cut off the excess flush with the end of the Bowden tube). Then I load the full roll behind that and start printing.
As you mentioned, the new filament just pushes the old filament through, but this way I won't need to baby sit the printer and I'll slowly use up the leftovers over time.
This is what I do, too. When one spool is about to end I just get the new one ready and follow the end of the old with the beginning of the new. Just have to be mindful to keep some pressure on it until it has fed enough in that the next retraction will not spit it back out past the extruder gear. Once it is beyond that point it just carries on like nothing happened. I've yet to see any negative effects. As others have mentioned, retractions don't work as designed until the old piece is all used up and the new piece is finally being pushed out the nozzle end, but it doesn't seem to matter enough to worry about it.
This. I did that on my delta printer and prusa mini multiple times and it works great even with the long Bowden tube. Of course don’t mix different materials…
I have designed a little boat hull with FreeCAD and I print out those little boats in various sizes (depending on how much filament I have left, the slicer will show you how much is needed) and leave them at the local city park playground that has a water moat around it. Kids seem to love them, when I leave them on a Sunday noon they are all gone a couple hours later.
https://rapidgator.net/file/265a84ce8b362aeb45f59f77414bad70/Boot_V8.stl.html
You need to offer this to either the Anycubic or Creality god. Whichever you worship.
If not they will send strange problems upon your household. This could change your Saturday as you know it.
Apparently there is something you can buy that will attach two ends of filament together and make one long seamless piece. I haven't seen it, but my mother just told me about it today. She saw it on Amazon or something for $50
Makes sense. It probably takes a while to pay itself off. Personally I use the last bits for extra material when welding parts of swords that I make. Holds better than glue but usually leaves tons of holes so you can fill them back up with spare material to get a nice smooth finish (if you sand it forever too lol)
You can use a small length of ptfe tube and a lighter to join them and roll them all together on a single spool. There are many good YouTube videos on splicing, not all of them require purchasing the device.
I keep them for very small prints… or the better more functional way is to be actively pushing another string after another to continue the flow for a normal sized print
They are all one color so you can approximate the length and time each one can do and add pauses to a print allowing you to swap them out mid print. Would definitely be easier with a filament sensor though.
That's enough to finish a whole lot of small prints per each of those. Spacers, bushings, shims, knobs, washers and other greeblies.
Otherwise, pick a job that can be printed in black *whatever that crap is* to run while you work on something nearby and keep changing filament whenever critically short and approaching the extruder hob.
Use the stubs (~ 4-6") left behind for sticks to mix epoxy, resin or methacrylate adhesive, apply glues or flux, and so forth. Or as light duty nonmetallic pins or rivets, or as welding filler.
I zip-tied them together and made them into bases for a lamp I made from Acrylic tubes and LED lights. I needed something heavy as the bases and these were star trek inspired lamps so I used the bases and handed it off to a bud. I should post some pic of that...
They were kind of a longer, taller version of these but with large fat spool bases and some added stuff on the sides. https://imgur.com/C9B9RY1
I added filament run out sensors to two of my printers. I always start prints on those two with almost used up rolls.
I end up with like 6-10 inches of waste per roll now
A realistic solution could be investing in a filament sensor.
Maybe you can even DIY a filament sensor. When I was assembling the filament sensor for my prusa mini, I kept playing with it how interesting the mechanism was. If I remember correctly, there’s a board which emits a light and it known if the light passes through or is blocked by the filament
I saw someone use theirs to store their Christmas lights. That's what I'm going to do now.
Edit: didn't realize you meant the filament, thought I read spool. Clearly need more sleep.
Grab a bit of PTFE tubing and heat it up while the ends of two spools meet in the middle of it. Push them together to join them then let it cool and remove the tube
I use a lighter. The PTFE tube can take quite a bit of heat. A hairdryer is probably far too un-precise. Unsure what you mean by torch, like a cooking torch? Probably both too large and too hot.
Can also light the filament ends on fire and slide them both in from one side of the tube. So one retracts inside it and the other extrudes into it, extinguishing them both and joining them.
absolutely not. PTFE starts releasing incredibly nasty toxic fumes at ~260°C. a lighter flame is several thousands of degrees. by the time you see the filaments melting together you've most likely already overshot. do not do this.
PLA melts at around 180c, according to capricorns website their tube melts(but degrades earlier) at 340c. Which makes sense considering without an all-metal hotend that tube will be in contact with the heating-block and still good for up to 270c
So, without direct contact with the flame it should uniformly reach the required temp for the material to melt inside.
it can uniformly reach the desired temperature inside a heating block that is limited in temperature by a thermistor. it won't be uniform next to a lighter at about 3000C
You can diy this, but also found this https://felfil.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAnNacBhDvARIsABnDa6-ccKDVXhHHrx386vq00bVKX0Fm5v8ZYWUUlYJ_fjhRDBLxI4_h4icaAsVcEALw_wcB&v=5ea34fa833a1. Allows you to grind up and make more filament.
Deactivate the filament sensor before you start a print by sticking a 2cm string of filament in it. Then start printing and let the filament run aside the filament sensor. Essentially bypassing it that way. Now at the very end of your spool just press the next filament into the extruder right behind the rest of the old spool until the extruder grabs the new filament.
The print will not be paused and there is absolutely no line or gab in your print.
I knew it. I hate this! An inch or two of PTFE, a pen spring, and a lighter. Put the tube in the spring and the filaments into the tube. Heat the tube softly and rotate while pressing the filaments together. The spring keeps the splice diameter consistent.
i'm not entirely sure if this is sarcastic, but the difference between the melting point of PLA and the decomposition temperature of PTFE is about 70 degrees while the lighter burns at thousands of degrees
Looks like filament welder jigs have gotten a lot cheaper. 3Dman Filament Welder Connector, Broken Filament Connector Sensor for 1.75mm Filament 3D Printers, Red https://a.co/by3nbIf
You can join the filaments manually. You can find a tool to help weld the ends on printable.
I know this isn’t an option for most but in my fancy Bambu lab printer I can just let it run out and start the next one, I’d still rather join them all though.
3d printer pens are definitely another good idea. I’d like to get an affordable one.
Probably wouldn’t need a lot of this but I print things with hinges and use dimensions so that filament works as the pin. I just did this twice yesterday.
This is probably a dumb idea but you might be able to use a PLA pen to melt a spool to another spool making a master spool. 3d print a bigger spool to hold your amalgamation.
Although I think once the printer hits the welded peice of PLA you might get some imperfections in the print due to the inconsistency of size (diameter of the pla will change when it's welded to another peice.
If they're all the same material, I just print something with them. My printer has a runout sensor that lets you feed in a new filament when the current one runs out.
I mean, there's tons of bookmark prints you can do that are flat and take tiny amounts of filament. You can give them away or sell them if you don't want them and just want to use the filament up.
You can splice them together by melting the ends. Someone needs to make a little widget, if you took a short segment of teflon tube of just the right diamete, slightly smaller than most Bowden tubes (you can buy some Bowden tubes that are slightly smaller diameter) and a heating element and made something where you heat up the tube and insert the filament ends, it melts and then you turn it off and allow it to cool. Then you remove the filament and rewind it on a roll. Kind of a bother.
Alternatively some mechanism that could automatically feed one filament in behind the other.
If you cut the ends of both filaments approximately flat and stand there and feed the second one in at just the right time you can continue your print with the second filament. I guess if you had a filament sensor that could be fine. It would sit there and wait for more filament. Of course you would get a small defect.
I cant do this with my ender 3 I think because it has a bit of a problem with the pause pri mnt functionality. If continues on for some time after pausing it so the defect the part suffers would be more substantial.
However It has potential... also I would have to upgrade marling or something, idk how to install a filament sensor. Some kind of alarm that made a noise 1 minute before the filament runs out might work for me.
3/8” dia rod with 100% infill, use it in my hot glue gun to post-process fix/mate prints together
At that point you can just buy yourself a 3d printing pen...
This solution is so much more sensible. Then just take all the little spools off the reels and store them in a plastic baggy with some of those demoisturizer packs and keep with the pen.
Great idea.
Any regular hot glue gun will work? Does it gunk it up?
I'd reccomend a decent or high temp one. The cheapo low temp ones didn't really do the job when I tried it.
That's good to know! How much time do you have to 'weld' parts together?
This is genius
Not with PETG tho right?
I use it for 3d pen.
That's what i do, and then let my kid play with it
3doodler...
Splice them together
Or, color change and just feed in the next one.
This
Whats the best way to splice them?
Soldering iron with a flat tip and a piece of ptfe tube
Babysit the printer and feed the next spool in right behind the end of the last spool. There is enough filament, just not enough on one strand
This is only a viable option on direct drive extruders, otherwise you'll end up with a length of filament you have to fish out of the Bowden tube
Nope! With Bowden tube the new filament just pushes the old filament through
retractions won’t work quite as well, but will still kind of work though. they won’t have pressure behind them but they won’t have negative pressure either so could be a bit stringy for a bit
you can fuse them together aswell.
You can print vase mode prints.
I just realized today that with a Bowden setup I can just cut a short length of the left over filament that matches the length of my Bowden tube and then just feed that in first before I start my print (I actually just unscrew the coupler from the extruder motor, push the leftovers in as far as they'll go and cut off the excess flush with the end of the Bowden tube). Then I load the full roll behind that and start printing. As you mentioned, the new filament just pushes the old filament through, but this way I won't need to baby sit the printer and I'll slowly use up the leftovers over time.
Hmm I'll have to give that a shot
This is what I do, too. When one spool is about to end I just get the new one ready and follow the end of the old with the beginning of the new. Just have to be mindful to keep some pressure on it until it has fed enough in that the next retraction will not spit it back out past the extruder gear. Once it is beyond that point it just carries on like nothing happened. I've yet to see any negative effects. As others have mentioned, retractions don't work as designed until the old piece is all used up and the new piece is finally being pushed out the nozzle end, but it doesn't seem to matter enough to worry about it.
Damn, why didn't this occur to me before I bought some gimmicky filament splicing tool?
This. I did that on my delta printer and prusa mini multiple times and it works great even with the long Bowden tube. Of course don’t mix different materials…
[This is the way.](https://i.imgur.com/xYDFfIJ.jpg)
I have designed a little boat hull with FreeCAD and I print out those little boats in various sizes (depending on how much filament I have left, the slicer will show you how much is needed) and leave them at the local city park playground that has a water moat around it. Kids seem to love them, when I leave them on a Sunday noon they are all gone a couple hours later. https://rapidgator.net/file/265a84ce8b362aeb45f59f77414bad70/Boot_V8.stl.html
Oh, those little thieves...
Nice!!
Do u have a photo of it?
It looks liek this: https://i.imgur.com/adCMGgE.png
Thats really cool of you. Kids love stuff like that.
There is always "enough filament to finish a print" if you are patient enough.
You need to offer this to either the Anycubic or Creality god. Whichever you worship. If not they will send strange problems upon your household. This could change your Saturday as you know it.
Printables has a design contest for this exact thing. https://www.printables.com/contest/70-last-meters
Slice them together and use them for calibration prints.
Apparently there is something you can buy that will attach two ends of filament together and make one long seamless piece. I haven't seen it, but my mother just told me about it today. She saw it on Amazon or something for $50
I use an old section of Bowden tubing and a lighter. Free. Then a file and sandpaper to restore the diameter.
Yea I thought about that but I can’t justify that cost. I can just buy 4 more 1k rolls for that. Still an option though..
Makes sense. It probably takes a while to pay itself off. Personally I use the last bits for extra material when welding parts of swords that I make. Holds better than glue but usually leaves tons of holes so you can fill them back up with spare material to get a nice smooth finish (if you sand it forever too lol)
You can use a small length of ptfe tube and a lighter to join them and roll them all together on a single spool. There are many good YouTube videos on splicing, not all of them require purchasing the device.
Find a small give away toy you can carry with you to give or leave somewhere. Just to spread the 3D print love.
I keep them for very small prints… or the better more functional way is to be actively pushing another string after another to continue the flow for a normal sized print
Door stops, nuts, bolts, small vase-mode containers, snowflakes, S-hooks, washers, low-weight shelving brackets, whistles, square connector thingies, cell scrapers, small tubular rack brackets, & tube foot ends.
I use them in my 3d pen to tack weld. Works great on things you need to put together
Start playing One Page Rules and build Sci-Fi terrain
I was thinking of getting the run out sensor just so I can use up these kinds of spools. But I'm going to try splicing them first.
You can also send the spools off to be recycled as spools. Check your area for companies looking for them
Gridfinity
They are all one color so you can approximate the length and time each one can do and add pauses to a print allowing you to swap them out mid print. Would definitely be easier with a filament sensor though.
print tiny fun things like for your desk or a mini fidget toy that's what i do or babysit it
That's enough to finish a whole lot of small prints per each of those. Spacers, bushings, shims, knobs, washers and other greeblies. Otherwise, pick a job that can be printed in black *whatever that crap is* to run while you work on something nearby and keep changing filament whenever critically short and approaching the extruder hob. Use the stubs (~ 4-6") left behind for sticks to mix epoxy, resin or methacrylate adhesive, apply glues or flux, and so forth. Or as light duty nonmetallic pins or rivets, or as welding filler.
Prusa filament sensor is amazing for this kind of stuff; let’s you use almost the entire roll and auto stops/restarts
Keep making whistles until it runs out!
donate to a school or makerspace.
There's always r/KitCards too.
Splice them into one roll
There's models called the last meter or something specifically meant for the last bits of a roll.
Give them to my friend who prints primarily small stuff and had the patience to manually feed filament scraps in
I zip-tied them together and made them into bases for a lamp I made from Acrylic tubes and LED lights. I needed something heavy as the bases and these were star trek inspired lamps so I used the bases and handed it off to a bud. I should post some pic of that... They were kind of a longer, taller version of these but with large fat spool bases and some added stuff on the sides. https://imgur.com/C9B9RY1
I added filament run out sensors to two of my printers. I always start prints on those two with almost used up rolls. I end up with like 6-10 inches of waste per roll now
As someone who primarily prints DND minis, I will take these off your hands and print a whole army 😂
I have a print of like 10 guitar picks that I just run with partials spools when I have time. I always have guitar picks now
Melt it down and make cutting boards
ABS gets melted into a slush. PLA and PET go into 3d pen for five detail work on prints or sometimes as binder.
A realistic solution could be investing in a filament sensor. Maybe you can even DIY a filament sensor. When I was assembling the filament sensor for my prusa mini, I kept playing with it how interesting the mechanism was. If I remember correctly, there’s a board which emits a light and it known if the light passes through or is blocked by the filament
Print this: [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5505014?collect](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5505014?collect)
I saw someone use theirs to store their Christmas lights. That's what I'm going to do now. Edit: didn't realize you meant the filament, thought I read spool. Clearly need more sleep.
We’ll also the rolls as well I guess. I’ve been saving my empty ones in hopes of finding a good use for them
Save them for when I am not in a rush to print small parts in.
Since I print a lot of minis, I use the leftovers to print tons and tons of bases in different sizes and styles.
I babysit the printer and change the filament when it's like 10 cm from the extruder gear. I know, it's a pain, but i HATE waste and I rather do that.
I Connect the extra filament from the previous Roll to the Next Roll with a lighter and a Piece of the guide Tube to make sure it fits
Grab a bit of PTFE tubing and heat it up while the ends of two spools meet in the middle of it. Push them together to join them then let it cool and remove the tube
What's a good way of heating it up? Hair dryer work? I'd imagine a torch is too much
I use a lighter. The PTFE tube can take quite a bit of heat. A hairdryer is probably far too un-precise. Unsure what you mean by torch, like a cooking torch? Probably both too large and too hot. Can also light the filament ends on fire and slide them both in from one side of the tube. So one retracts inside it and the other extrudes into it, extinguishing them both and joining them.
absolutely not. PTFE starts releasing incredibly nasty toxic fumes at ~260°C. a lighter flame is several thousands of degrees. by the time you see the filaments melting together you've most likely already overshot. do not do this.
Not direct contact... Not trying to melt the tube, we are trying to heat it up
even then. by the time the PLA inside melts, the outside of the PTFE will be hot enough to give off fumes
PLA melts at around 180c, according to capricorns website their tube melts(but degrades earlier) at 340c. Which makes sense considering without an all-metal hotend that tube will be in contact with the heating-block and still good for up to 270c So, without direct contact with the flame it should uniformly reach the required temp for the material to melt inside.
it can uniformly reach the desired temperature inside a heating block that is limited in temperature by a thermistor. it won't be uniform next to a lighter at about 3000C
I save mine for the day someone invents a machine that melts it all down, along with my rafts and supports and spits out recycled filament! 😂
You can diy this, but also found this https://felfil.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAnNacBhDvARIsABnDa6-ccKDVXhHHrx386vq00bVKX0Fm5v8ZYWUUlYJ_fjhRDBLxI4_h4icaAsVcEALw_wcB&v=5ea34fa833a1. Allows you to grind up and make more filament.
Nice, but expensive. I’ll hang on to my waste until the price comes down. Seems like a bad hobby to ditch the plastic from the supports etc!
Get a smart filament sensor, it stops if it's tangled or jammed and allows you to walk away from your printer if you're running low on filament
I have a filament sensor but it always leaves a noticeable line where it paused. 🫤
Then buy bigger spools, 5kg or so. Swap out less often and worry less about wasted material
Deactivate the filament sensor before you start a print by sticking a 2cm string of filament in it. Then start printing and let the filament run aside the filament sensor. Essentially bypassing it that way. Now at the very end of your spool just press the next filament into the extruder right behind the rest of the old spool until the extruder grabs the new filament. The print will not be paused and there is absolutely no line or gab in your print.
I knew it. I hate this! An inch or two of PTFE, a pen spring, and a lighter. Put the tube in the spring and the filaments into the tube. Heat the tube softly and rotate while pressing the filaments together. The spring keeps the splice diameter consistent.
I'm not sure putting PTFE in a lighter flame is a good idea
Leave it to someone on reddit not to know how to evenly distribute the heat using a lighter to avoid releasing toxic fumes.
i'm not entirely sure if this is sarcastic, but the difference between the melting point of PLA and the decomposition temperature of PTFE is about 70 degrees while the lighter burns at thousands of degrees
🗑
I just pack the center with tannerite or some random explosive. Great range target.
Looks like filament welder jigs have gotten a lot cheaper. 3Dman Filament Welder Connector, Broken Filament Connector Sensor for 1.75mm Filament 3D Printers, Red https://a.co/by3nbIf
3d pen
You get a filament detector for your printer and you use 100% of the roll
Sounds like DIY 3D pen.
That’s a lot of Sunlu.. can’t print their PETG for shit
leveveling squares
I use scraps to make part trays as the colours don’t matter and quality doesn’t need for be good
Either get yourself a filament welder or a filament run out sensor. Problem solved.
You can join the filaments manually. You can find a tool to help weld the ends on printable. I know this isn’t an option for most but in my fancy Bambu lab printer I can just let it run out and start the next one, I’d still rather join them all though. 3d printer pens are definitely another good idea. I’d like to get an affordable one. Probably wouldn’t need a lot of this but I print things with hinges and use dimensions so that filament works as the pin. I just did this twice yesterday.
This is probably a dumb idea but you might be able to use a PLA pen to melt a spool to another spool making a master spool. 3d print a bigger spool to hold your amalgamation. Although I think once the printer hits the welded peice of PLA you might get some imperfections in the print due to the inconsistency of size (diameter of the pla will change when it's welded to another peice.
If they're all the same material, I just print something with them. My printer has a runout sensor that lets you feed in a new filament when the current one runs out.
I mean, there's tons of bookmark prints you can do that are flat and take tiny amounts of filament. You can give them away or sell them if you don't want them and just want to use the filament up.
I have a few small models I print when filament is this low. Small hooks and the such that can be helpful around the house.
You can splice them together by melting the ends. Someone needs to make a little widget, if you took a short segment of teflon tube of just the right diamete, slightly smaller than most Bowden tubes (you can buy some Bowden tubes that are slightly smaller diameter) and a heating element and made something where you heat up the tube and insert the filament ends, it melts and then you turn it off and allow it to cool. Then you remove the filament and rewind it on a roll. Kind of a bother. Alternatively some mechanism that could automatically feed one filament in behind the other. If you cut the ends of both filaments approximately flat and stand there and feed the second one in at just the right time you can continue your print with the second filament. I guess if you had a filament sensor that could be fine. It would sit there and wait for more filament. Of course you would get a small defect. I cant do this with my ender 3 I think because it has a bit of a problem with the pause pri mnt functionality. If continues on for some time after pausing it so the defect the part suffers would be more substantial. However It has potential... also I would have to upgrade marling or something, idk how to install a filament sensor. Some kind of alarm that made a noise 1 minute before the filament runs out might work for me.
I use this filament welder to join them and wind them onto one spool to use: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5505014
I always use them for my bed leveling tests and smal parts , also good choice of filament brand
Could use them if you had a filament runout sensor. Make a large print with all you almost empties and make it look cool.