MakerGear Forum

http://www.mosaicmanufacturing.com/

They show an M2 but no mechanism on how they make it work

I may be wrong but it looks in essence to be a intermediary box between the extruder and the filament. Multiple colors of filament go in and a single comes out. My guess is then that the print is actually fed into the new box which is in turn connected to the printer itself. As the print progresses the third party box switches constructs a filament that corresponds with the required color

For example 20mm Red -> 10mm Green -> 100mm Yellow

Interesting idea but it will very much depend on how their software integrates with the current slicers. This is an entirely new layer above the gcode itself.

EDIT: Looks like they say the box doesn't connect to the printer directly ... they talk about a sensor that tracks the the filament movement. Now I am as confused as you Insta. No idea how the hell they determine where the print is at.

That's really neat!

I'm still interested in getting an easy filament splicer to do that sort of thing manually. That kickstarter splicer seems like it was a minor flop, people complain of it tripping house breakers. I did read up on it, though, and learned about PTC resistors, which maintain a certain temperature when fed a given voltage without the need for active control. They're not very expensive, either. The hard part is coming up with a way of getting a heat conductive sleeve in two halves, so it can come apart (hard for someone with hardly any appropriate tools). I thought of splitting a brass tube, but 1.75mm is not a standard tube size. I guess I could get one printed at Shapeways.

Ideally I want something like this: Maybe with PTC resistors on both sides, powered off a hefty LiPo 12V.

Anyone have any machine tools?

mcmaster 2900A227 + 88605K22 + square steel bar + flat steel plate

Put the shim inside the brass tube, roll back and forth with the steel bar against the steel plate until the tube compresses down

Perhaps what's going on here is the equivalent of a fancy gcode viewer with color data mapped on top. So basically, the color mixing device reads the slicer code and says "layer 0 to layer 50 is color 'a', which works out to 'b' mm of filament", and "layers 51 to 100 are color 'c', which is 'd' mm of filament", and so on. Then it just watches the color 'a' filament and waits until it gets to 'b' mm of extruded filament and then performs an automated splice of some kind to color 'c', which it watches until 'd' mm of filament are used, etc., etc.

If so, it's an interesting solution. Once setup, you could presumably run the same code on the printer and have different color combinations simply by tweaking the mixer settings.

That piece of tape on the extruder that says RW...those are Rob's initials. That is an internal QC tag from a batch test and should have been removed prior to shipping!

I like the idea and would want colour printing. I just can't picture them making a reliable automatic splicer. It would be great if it worked without issues.

jsc wrote:I'm still interested in getting an easy filament splicer to do that sort of thing manually

Just print a jig and use it as a guide to superglue it. According to the internet, the melting point of set superglue is 187°C, lower than any print temperature. If you are lucky, it will flow right through the nozzle. If not, then it will be the perfect nozzle obstruction. I would try it now except I am not at home and don't know where my extra nozzles are.

rpollack wrote:That piece of tape on the extruder that says RW...those are Rob's initials. That is an internal QC tag from a batch test and should have been removed prior to shipping!

Haha this is the best part. Is Rob selling parts on the side?