Soldering Iron Powered Filament Joiner - Make Multicoloured Parts

thingiverse

I machined it out of scrap aluminum using nothing but basic tools. A drill and hacksaw made quick work of getting the design cut out, which wasn't too intricate to begin with. In fact, the overall piece is a bit bigger than needed. The real key to this design lies in creating the angled surface where the two channels intersect. This surface allows you to press the filament pieces together effectively, and there needs to be a hole that's precisely drilled for inserting the soldering iron tip. Using it's pretty straightforward - you simply press the filament parts together at the channels, then carefully shape the surrounding area as you move along while keeping the soldering iron in place. After completing this step, take your time rolling out the joint using your fingers and making sure not to apply too much pressure. To clean up any excess filament material from the joining process, grab some side-cutters and/or sandpaper. What should happen next is that you're left with a virtually imperceptible seam when done right. That being said, you could run into problems at the cold end if your join gets clogged - it happens when your joint becomes too large for the surrounding filament material. The fix? Temporarily stop the print process, carefully back out any jammed material and replace the faulty filament section with a clean piece before continuing on as normal. Improved versions of this design could use set screws to lock in place instead of relying solely on friction fit which is good enough but not foolproof - and might benefit from slightly adjusting the position where they're placed, although it would depend heavily upon what specific parameters were chosen for each application.