I was getting rid of some spool ends the other day by manually feeding them in while printing. That way I was able to push all these ends past any sensors and into the extruder for uninterrupted printing. It came out fine but was quite tedious.
So this got me thinking: Do any of you guys splice filaments? Not only would this allow for more efficient material use, but I suspect a print made from a bunch of small segments of different colors could look kinda cool.
I’m primarily printing with PETG, so my question is specifically about that, but I’m sure the concept should work for other filaments too.
MMU units like the ERCF allow you to use a functionality called “endless spool”, which detects spool run-outs and automatically switches to another spool in the same group.
You still waste some filament, to be precise the length from the MMU unit inlet gates to the extruder, but whatever.