[Chris Nafis] crunched the numbers and found out he could get filament for his 3D printer in bulk for about one-fifth the cost of the cartridges the company sells. This led him to print a feeder for his Cube 3D printer.

We’re skeptical about the Cube 3D printer’s cartridges. They contain a spool of filament, but also include a chip which reports back the filament color and length remaining. We’re sure this provides some nice functionality for those looking to press a button and walk away. But we see it as an annoyance like the laser toner cartridges that stop working based on page count rather than remaining toner.

The solution [Chris] went with still uses the cartridges to ‘trick’ the machine into printing. Basically the interface will tell you that you don’t have enough filament left, but as long as there’s a cartridge in place you can tell it to print anyway. The green adapter he printed has a pass-through for the stock cartridge as well as the bulk spool you see to the left.