Many designs I’ve found online seem to not take full advantage of the 3D printer. If you have a machine that can make anything, why are you resorting to using bolts in your design. I think if 3D printing is to become a common household tool, then more things should be designed to only use the products of 3D printing.

A while ago I realized that I could use a piece of filament as a substitute for a bolt in my designs. The way I seal the filament into the piece is by extruding extra plastic from the extruder manually. Extruding manually while moving the piece underneath works pretty well, but it won’t be as pretty as the rest of the print. I find that there are many trace hairs of plastic that get stuck to the print head. It’s probably a good idea to clean off the print head after using it to weld 2 pieces of plastic together.

Ok, so the real reason for doing this. This is secretly part 1 and 2 of 507 Mechanical Movements.