Fillament Welding Clamp

thingiverse

<p>Fillament welding clamp.<br> I designed this to make welding fillament easier.<br> The goal is to make a tool to hold two fillament tight and accurate, so people can hot-plate weld 2 fillament easily.<br> I have tried it on PLA and TPU, they both work. I uploaded the assembly for reference.</p> Using of this tool: https://youtu.be/ElFuTF0LtSs (I can’t get access to youtube, asked a friend uploaded for me, if there’s problem please leave comment) <p>How to use:<br> 1 Assemble the clamp. Add some grease on the 2 bolt threads to make the nuts can clamp tight.<br> 2 Cut fillament end with a sharp knife or Precision Shear Cutter to make the end surface flat, put 2 Fillament into the 2 holes of "08_Fillament locator". If it's too tight, use a 1.8mm drill to enlarge the holes.<br> 3 Put the Fillament locator into the clamp, and tighten the nuts as much as you can.<br> 4 Squeeze open the clamp to remove the Fillament locator. Adjust both ends to align together if they are not aligned so well.<br> 5 If you have a soldering iron, set it to 250 degrees, if you don’t have one, torch a blade or sheet metal several seconds, squeeze open the clamp and clamp the fillament onto the hot sheet metal for about 0.5 seconds, squeeze open the clamp, remove the hot metal and let the clamp close to weld the fillament.<br> 6 Loose the nuts, take out the fillament from the clamp, chop off the excessive material around the welding joint.</p> Welding strength depends on temperature and pressure. Notice that if the fillament is melted too much on the sheet metal, there wouldn’t be enough overlap length to form the pressure. Using a soldering iron to heat the ends is easier for temperature control. But the cylindrical iron body make it slippery and tricky when heating the ends. <p>Note: The spring should be removed from the clamp if you are not using it in a day or two, otherwise it would become loose.</p> <p>Hope you like it</p>