Tricks for splicing ABS?

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zemlin
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Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:32 pm
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana

Tricks for splicing ABS?

Post by zemlin » Sun Oct 22, 2017 6:59 pm

I have been splicing PETG short-spools for some time now with good success. I have a little tool I made from a compass (circle-drawing-kind) which holds the ends in good alignment. I close them down onto the tip of my soldering iron and then close the compass down to fuse the ends of the filament together. There's a big mushroom of material that I trim down with some good flush-cutting wire nippers.

I have been trying the same technique with ABS, but the joint doesn't have enough strength for me to feel confident about it making it through the feed - mainly thinking it might fracture as it transitions into the drive gear.

I currently have the soldering iron set to 350C. Haven't tried lower or higher temps yet. Thinking about trying a drop of acetone to perhaps solvent-weld any voids in the joint, although it seems more likely that it would cause the joint to fall apart.

Just wondering of anyone out there has had success splicing short spools of ABS together.

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insta
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Re: Tricks for splicing ABS?

Post by insta » Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:10 pm

Heat it with a lighter instead of a soldering iron, so you get a much larger mushroom. It does work.
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zemlin
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Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:32 pm
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana

Re: Tricks for splicing ABS?

Post by zemlin » Thu Oct 26, 2017 11:18 am

Thanks. Had some time last night to try again. I tried a few different temps on the iron and ended up with an (I think) adequate joint strength with the iron set to 400C. Got a dozen short spools of ABS spliced together. I'll have to run a big ABS print with that to test my work.

In general I haven't been able to detect anything in the prints where I have spliced - except for one instance in a big PETG print where there was a slight color shift at the splice. I don't mix brands of filament on one spool - this was black Hatchbox PETG and one spool was just a little lighter than the other.

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