A Filament Spooler

grabcad

This 3D filament spooler is a modification of the spooler in Woern et al.’s RepRapable Recyclebot (2018). I have modified it to work with a faster (500 rpm) motor since I needed it to work with an industrial extruder, but it’s pretty much the same design. It also uses an O-ring instead of an elastic band as a transmission belt, and the main axle threaded rod was changed too, as were the ball bearings it sits on. The pulleys were also changed, removing some of the screws to fix them and changing their diameter. I have also removed the horizontal beam Woern et al. used, since the assembly got so big it seemed unnecessary, and no heat inserts are now needed. All changes worked out pretty well. As in the original RepRapable Recyclebot Spooler the empty spool can be loaded by unscrewing one of the hubs and placing the new spool onto the threaded rod and tightening the hub back on, and the spooler speed can be controlled by the potentiometer on the PWM circuit. This work, just like the RepRapable Recyclebot it is based on, is intended to be open-sourced, so feel free to build it, share it and modify it.