There are lots of nice toys and accessories that are based on 3D printing filament. The 3Doodler is a 3D printing pen, or pretty much an extruder, in a battery-powered portable case. You can make your own filament with a fila rudder, and of course 3D printers use a lot of filament themselves. [Bodet]The project for this year’s Hackaday Prize is giving new life to these tiny scraps of filament scraps by welding filaments together.
The EasyWelder [Bodet] The design looks a bit like a tiny hair straightener. It has temperature control, a power switch, and two tips that grip filaments with a diameter of 1.7 or 3 mm and weld them together. It works with ABS, PLA, HIPS, nylon, NinjaFlex, and just about any other filament you can throw at a printer. By welding a few colors of filament together, you can create objects with different colors or mechanical properties. It’s not as good as double extrusion, but it makes good use of the tiny pieces of filament that remain on a commonly used spool.
Since the EasyWelder can weld NinjaFlex and other flexible filaments, it is also possible to weld NinjaFlex to itself. What does that mean? Custom-made O-rings, of course. You can see a video of it below.
