Update 15/1 - Added circular threaded leg and rounded corner and edges option - see seperate print profile.

Extendable Multi Part Real Table Model - that was primarily designed as something useful to create instead of Flushing purge waste spirals when doing multi colour prints on a Bambu Lab or other multi colour printer.

The original idea for creating useful things out of flush/purge waste was inspired by the 3d Printing Professor youtube channel.

The sizes of the parts are similar to Ikea Lack table thicknesses - i.e. 50mm

This is a major print project with a minimum of around 40 major parts about 60 smaller joiner parts - which if printed single colour (or efficient multi colour) would take around 2d14h printing time and 2.25kg of filament for the basic size table.

Also useful as something to use up odd short lengths of filament or old brittle rolls of filament.

There are a basic minimum number of parts needed to produce a small table appx 40cm Long x 30cm wide and 30cm high.

But then as more parts are printed the table size can be expanded in all three dimensions - by simply slotting in more parts.

Parts are joined firmly together with Springy dovetail joiners (inpired from the Slant3d channel). The joints are pretty tight - so a small hammer is recommended to push them in.

The joining method may be refined in the future and extra parts will be added to allow greater strength when the table gets larger.

Also other designs - such as shelves and enclosures will be made available.

The primary recommended way to print the parts is by adding the individual STLs to other multi colour 3d model plates - with flush-into selected. This will only work if a small prime-tower is left on.

Many of the parts can either be scaled or sliced on the Z axis to make them the correct height to match the colour changes of the donor multi coloured 3d model being printed. Often with careful selection and scaling of parts it is possible to get flush waste down from 100s of grammes to less than 1g.

It is technically possible for the selection of parts and scaling process to be automated at some point in the future.

For any parts printed seperately out of waste filament it is recommended that the colour is changed either in the slicer, or via cutting the filament and changing coloured regularly in the AMS as it prints. Most of the example model parts were produced this way.

An assembly instruction video will be made available at some point. -

Historical background info and tracking of ongoing developments available here https://forum.bambulab.com/t/making-better-use-of-flush-into-object-in-bambu-studio/29422/5?u=ukdavewood

NB/ Only one test print done so far as doing lots of reprints kind of goes against the ethos of this filament waste reduction model.

For the ‘sliceable’ objects - to reduce their height in BS simply cut on Z axis below any horizontal features (but leaving enough of the part for joiners to still fit in).

To increase the height - again use cut in BS - below the horizontal features (at 20mm for example), specify ‘cut to parts’ - then in the object browser locate the bottom part and scale it up on the Z this should also lift up the top half.

Scalable objects do not have any special horizonal features - so can simply be scaled up or down on the Z axis only.

For illustration purposes - if all of the parts with cloned in the correct proportions for a minimum size table and the table was printed directly, rather than as flush-into object then it could be printed in 3 build plates as per the below - 3mf file not uploaded due to requirement for print profiles to have passed print tests. Total print time around 2d14h and filament about 2.25kg.

Basic steps I usually take to minimise flush volumes.

To reduce purge waste the basic steps I take are:
1. Model orientation/numbers/sliceup - if possible orient the model in such as way as to minimise the number of colour changes per layer, also consider doing multiple copies of the same or similar models together to reduce waste per model.

Finally in some case you can save a lot of waste with some simple slicing up of the model into smaller parts that print more efficiently and can then be joined back together after printing.
2. Optimise flushing volumes - using the button in BS above the filaments. Personally I usually set the Multiplier to 0.5 or 0.6 and press re-calculate
3. Reduce the size of the prime tower - Under Process - press Global, then in the 'Others' tab - on my setup I current set Prime Tower width and volume to 10mm
4. Now preview the slicing to see how Flushed Waste you will be getting compared to the Model.
5. Now if there is space on the build place as a few Colour-doesn't-matter objects onto the build plate - such as component parts of this Purge Waste Table. Look at where in the multi colour model the colour changes occur - and if possible change the heights of the Purge Table parts to match the same layers (as the top surfaces are better at absorbing purge than the middles).
6. Right click on the added objects and select Flush Options, Flush into this object.
6. Re-Preview to see if the Flush volume has gone down - I tend to target getting the volume down to less than 1g
7. Keep cloning or adding more objects repeating the above steps until you have reduced the Flush volume down to acceptable levels.

I appreciate that adding the flush-into objects is out of the box a fairly manual process - and I am working on some scripts to automatically select the best objects and the best heights for each print and also optionally to remove the prime tower from the GCode.

I am hopeful that at some point BL will add this sort of functionality into Makerworld or Bambu Studio.