Filament fuser

I’ve seen several “devices” or methods of fusing filament. Wondering if anyone has found a method that actually works.

I’m assuming I’m not alone in having short runs of left over filament… So I’m hoping someone has found something that works.

I’ve tried a few but don’t seem to be very good - or I"m not doing it right…

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At Robo3D, we played with so many different types of things to do that. We all wanted it to work so bad.

It looks like the Pallet filament changer has it figured out. So hopefully someone has come up with something that works that is similar for us less frequent users. Running 8 printers here, I am very temped to get a pallet just to have it run all my small spools on one printer so I would not be so worried about babysitting the printers in my never ending quest to use every last inch of filament.

A filament runout sensor is a lot cheaper than a pallette 3. I’m not sure how many scraps at the ends of spools you would have to use to pay for a pallette.

I am printing a bunch of boxes for drawer organizers as a “back burner” project. It is perfect for the ends of spools because a box with a little less height is still usable. I just let it run out.

Ryan, are you doing any kind of weight estimate to guess if you can fit a part in the remainder of a spool? I would guess you could get within 10g or so that way. You could measure a few empty spools, then measure a couple different sized parts (measuring the spool before and after, probably). Then measure low spools to decide which part will fit, and use up the most of the remaining filament and chuck the last bit.

No I just make sure if I am running it overnight the spool is full enough. For all the rest I set alarms and stuff so I come in to check on them if I walk away for a while.

Yikes $800, they are not getting any cheaper.

I have one of the nice BTT filament sensors, fully intended on outfitting them all just have not done it yet.

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I have had success with PTFE tube an a butane lighter (blue flame type)

I could possibly be jinxing myself - I’m not sure if I’ve hit the join on the roll of filament I’m using at the moment…

more or less that’s what I did, I think I may have pre-melted one side a little though, so the spidery bits mend together a bit more. It’s hard to see with the same colour to same colour.

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No joke, I just ran out and I had 3 layers left. The front box is the partial print, the back is a completed one:

I didn’t even notice except the next print was printing air.

I tried that one and it didn’t work too well. Maybe I just need to try again.