Playing around with filament welding again

[Jules]

have a look at this.
http://zurich.fablab.ch/pla-splicer
greatings from Switzerland
werner

Neat!

[Mark the Greater]

How's about this:

Long copper tube, say eight-ten inches. I.D. matches filament O.D. One in from one side, one in from the other. Heat the center whilst slowly rotating the tube.
Awkward as all Hell but would result in perfect alignment with no distortion.

Of course, now you have an eight to ten inch copper tube in the middle of your feed...this is a terrible idea...

[Jules]

.....Of course, now you have an eight to ten inch copper tube in the middle of your feed...this is a terrible idea...

Really wish you guys would quit distracting me.....not getting anything done here!

[jsc]

That's the idea, Mark. Only, you don't want a long heat zone, you want a short one. And you want something you can take off, as well.

Previous segments in this vein had me trying to mold JB Weld and plaster into a heatable clamping channel. Not enough heat transfer.

[Mark the Greater]

I agree and disagree. You want a short heat zone but you want the filament held in tolerance well outside that zone. That way you can apply good pressure to the filament without any bulging from heat transfer.

Let me think about this and draw something up. This is fun!

[Jules]

Pic of my experiments.......amusing to say the least!
But it is a strong bond - the actual weld is at the tip if the arrow, and trying to break it deformed the filament behind the weld

Some experiments with PETG:

Strong welds in PETG.

welds.jpg (220.2 KiB) Viewed 11976 times

[Kulturfolger]

I use the principle which Richard pointed out in his blog: http://richrap.blogspot.de/2011_06_01_archive.html

A Headgun is okay, but for massproduktion a block where you can join a connection in 5 seconds is much better. I even abused a machine for plastic optical fiber splicing by thermal fusion but i made a mess.

Ingo

[jsc]

I got in my bead crimper today and had a play around. The first idea of heating it up and using it as the heat source didn't work as well as I hoped. It is hard to gauge the level of heat being retained, and the whole thing is a huge heat sink. Insufficient melting occurred.

It is useful, however, to clean up a burr after the weld has formed. You can use it to squish the burr back into shape, cold. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but as long as you get everything under 1.75mm, it should feed. My current method is to clamp the pieces into my pliers, melt the ends with a brief and careful pass of an open flame, jam them together to form a big ass bead, then clean it up with the crimpers after it has been joined.

[Jules]

I got in my bead crimper today and had a play around. The first idea of heating it up and using it as the heat source didn't work as well as I hoped. It is hard to gauge the level of heat being retained, and the whole thing is a huge heat sink. Insufficient melting occurred.

It is useful, however, to clean up a burr after the weld has formed. You can use it to squish the burr back into shape, cold. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but as long as you get everything under 1.75mm, it should feed. My current method is to clamp the pieces into my pliers, melt the ends with a brief and careful pass of an open flame, jam them together to form a big ass bead, then clean it up with the crimpers after it has been joined.

Awesome! Mine should be arriving soon.....

I lack your awesome pliers, but i got a really good weld by heating the nozzle to temp and then holding the two flat ends against the outside of the nozzle, sliding them down to the tip simultaneously, and sticking them together when they reached the end, and holding them for a couple of seconds. Very good, very quick welds, but they do have the tendency to create little blobs, like you said.....

Now i can squish 'em and clip 'em (sprue cutters) and not have to mess with carving them off!

[Kulturfolger]

Hey Guys,

Buy some Bake-O-Glide Anti-Stick-Paper and wrap it around the joint. Now apply the head and nothing will stip to the heat source.

PS: I hope my palette will arrive soon. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mo ... ng-evolved