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Does anyone have any recommendations about how to combine leftover filament?

I’ve got 3 spools that have a pretty good length of filament left on them but of course I have no idea exactly how much. If I can combine them, I would have enough to finish another print.

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Hey chasearch07,

You may be able to use acetone to merge your filament together although I’m unsure of how effective it would be. If you leave filament soaked in acetone it should go sticky and pliable. You may then be able to connect them and file down after it has set. I’ve never tried this so cannot guarantee success.

Hope this helps.

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I weigh a similar empty spool and then weigh the spool of leftover filament and typically can make a good estimate to amount left from that. Then use that up on small items that I know there will be enough.

Joining the ends together will most likely turn out poorly since there will be a bump there that could catch in extruder and also it would be weak there and possibly snap during the bends to reach extruder.

You could also just watch the print, pause, and carefully swap in the other roll

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Hi

Although I have never tried to combine end of roll filaments, I have made O-rings out of ninjaflex material.

What I’ve done is to take two pieces of wood.

used a utility knife blade as a spacer and glued the wood together.

Then

I drilled a hole through both pieces of wood at the exact same size as the ninjaflex material 3mm filament diameter.

I pushed the ninjaflex into the wood pieces and heated the utility knife blade until it was glowing red.

Then

I inserted the utility knife blade into the slot of my wood block assembly and pressed the ninjaflex material together.

When I could feel the ninjaflex start to melt, I pulled the utility knife blade out and pressed the ninjaflex together as far as I could go.

After the ninjaflex cooled down, I broke the wood pieces and removed the newly created O-Ring.

Now I will say that my ninjaflex o-ring project was a one time experiament.

When the wood was removed, there was a lump of material larger than the diameter of my filament and some wood char contamination, BUT

I put the o-ring in the freezer for a day.

When I pulled it out, I cut most of the large diameter flange with a razor knife and sanded the rest smooth.

Ninjaflex is almost impossible to trim without freezing it.

The end result was a good usable o-ring.

While I did not test it to destruction, I will be doing that again in the future.

…

I hope my little experiment will help you in your endevour.

Just my 2 cents worth.

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Buy a scale and get used to weighing it. There’s no use in trying to ruin a print with spliced material. Store it properly and use it if you have a small print. At some point you just cut the loss and toss the spool into the pile.

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You need one of these: 3D Filament Splicer by Artesea - Thingiverse

You can also buy them pre-made (instead of creating our own).

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I somewhat agree with Nprint.

I usually unspool the last bit of filament from the spool and weigh it on my scale.

Then I keep an eye on how much filament a part will take and use up pretty much the last of it

on small projects.

My scale was purchased at Wal-Mart and measures in lbs or grams. It was not very costly.

However

It would be a pretty interesting experiment to reliably be able to splice stubs of filament.

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Dunno if it works, bu you can try to weld the filament parts together by using a hotglue gun with a flat end that looks like a knife pressed between the two parts…
filaglue.png

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