3mm Filament Straightener

thingiverse

I modified the 3Doodler's design for use with 3mm filament and decided to incorporate 608zz bearings instead since I had them readily available. With my trusty 3Doodler, I've found that using 3Doodler-branded filament is prohibitively expensive. As a result, I usually reserve the 3Doodler for joining multi-part prints together through "welding." To cut costs, I opt for the cheapest 3mm filament online and discover that cutting it into manageable sections and straightening it by hand yields surprisingly good results. I suspect that using 1.75mm filament would be even more effortless to load and pull through this design, as the thicker 3mm filament proves to be quite stubborn. To make loading easier, I recommend trimming the posts enough so you can remove the top part without breaking it. While this setup works adequately, I plan on designing a more refined version in the near future. If you're willing to load a spool of filament, straighten some sections, and cut them off before leaving them loaded, you might be able to make this design work. However, frequent changes will undoubtedly lead to damage.