Cube 3D Printer bulk filament Usage

The 3DSystems Cubify Cube is a solid little printer. It is very simple to use. There are barely any “knobs” to tweak. It’s good for someone that just wants to reliably print things without babysitting the printer. The ABS does have warping issues even with the heated bed. The big problem is the filament “razor blade” model. The printer is not that expensive, but they charge $49/0.7lbs of filament! (compared to $31/2.2lbs of Octave 1.75mm filament). That’s 5X the price!

I created an adapter which allows you to connect the plastic filament tube and then connect to a spool of generic filament. It was printed on the cube (version 1)

I made a spool holder out of some 1/2 in. cpvc tubing:

three pieces of 6"
four pieces of 1"
two pieces of 3"
six T fittings
two 90 degree fittings

Using Spool instead of Cartridge

It turns out that you can by-pass/defeat the Dallas Semiconductor 1-wire chip which is located in each cartridge. The chip stores the filament color, remaining amount, etc.

Put a full cartridge of the same color into the printer. Thread the spool filament thru the adapter and the plastic tube. Follow the instructions to load the filament.

Navigate to the file that you want to print. Then remove the FULL cartridge and replace it with an EMPTY cartridge.

You will get a message that there is NOT ENOUGH FILAMENT. Hit the CHECKMARK to continue

The system will go ahead an warm up the table and then start printing

Results

I tested a roll of Octave 1.75mm white filament ($31) and compared it to the Cube White (ABS) [350166] ($49)

The box on the left was printed with the cube cartridge and the one on the right was with the Octave filament. Other than a slight color difference (The Octave is a bit whiter), I didn't see any difference.