Ender S1 Reversed Filament Spool Holder with bearings

thingiverse

I haven't been the most thrilled with the setup for the filament spools on my Ender 3 S1 since I got it and have been looking for something that fit what I wanted without finding anything that was -exactly- what I wanted, so I finally decided to take several things that I found that had been close and modify them to what I was looking for. My main problem with pretty much every setup I'd seen (including the stock one...) was that the spool was always cantilevered off of one side so on both the original holder (which I really didn't like since the spool didn't always spin freely) and a modified one that I found (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5233543) that had an inner cylinder and a screw-on holder for the filament spool would always hang down a bit on one end. I also wanted a way to be able to quickly change the filament spool for when I was running a print with a color change in the middle- I wanted to not have to do anything besides pull the filament out and pick up the spool and whatever was holding it and swap in another. The previous modified holder required unscrewing a nut on the end which wasn't a big deal, but combined with the 'only supports the spool on one side' made me want something else. So, I used the spool holder, spool nut, and collar from Tek_3D's Spool Holder that uses 8mm bearings and an 8mm rod and used the lower-profile filament spool holder replacement that mddatthngvrs created as the starting point for designing a set of matched spool holders that would hold the rod & spool holder. I modified the spool holders in OpenSCAD to fill in where the original cylinder that the spool would rest on would attach and then carved out the necessary voids to hold the collars & 8mm rod. The resulting combination has the following advantages: 1. The spool is supported on both sides and is much more stable. Thanks to the rod & bearings it spins very freely (more on that a bit later...) 2. Swapping spools is very quick and easy- once the filament has been pulled out of the print head & runout sensor you can just lift the spool & rod assembly out and drop in another (previously set up) spool & rod assembly (obviously you'll have to print more than one set of collars, spool holder, and spool nut to be able to do this and have enough bearings & rods) 3. Though it's possible to set it up on the other side of the gantry, I put mine on the near side so the spool is closer to the opening of my enclosure to make changing it even easier. Yes, since the angle of the holder is lower than the original one it means that the spool might interfere with the print head on prints that use the full print height of the printer- but this happens so infrequently (has not yet for me...) that it's something that I figure I can deal with down the line if I need to. You will need to mirror the Spool Holder in your slicer to have one for each side, and print out 2 collars for each set of spool-holder holders (yeah, the name isn't the best...) and spool holder nuts that you print. I printed mine with PETG since it's what I had an excess of at the time but PLA or anything really should work just fine. A 20% infill worked just fine, and only the spool-holder holder needed any supports- print it with the 'screw' part upwards and put supports for just the inside of the bearing cavity on what is the bottom when printed in that orientation. In addition to the printed parts, you will need the following: 2x 8mm x 20mm ball bearings- I used these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R7PR72H 1x 8mm x 150mm steel rod (you can use longer if you want further spacing between the holder arms, but I think 200mm might even be too long)- I used these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XP4H2K5 2x 8mm M5 set screws- I just bought a pack of set screws from Amazon that included some (this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L73K16W) You'll have to experiment a bit to get the collars placed at the right distance apart before tightening down the set-screws. If you've got the holes for the rod in the collars opened up enough that the rod slides easily, you can just place the collars on the arms and then slide the rod through one collar, then the screw assembly, and then the other collar and tighten the set screws down. So far it has worked wonderfully with one small issue that I want to work out if I can- the spool spins -too- well, and will occasionally unspool the filament slightly. One solution to this is to put the arms close enough together to press up against the bearings of the screw assembly slightly when it's on the arms creating enough friction to keep this from happening, but then it makes the spool not spin as freely. I'd like to figure out some kind of anti-backspin device to add, but so far it's not been enough of an issue to take the time to do that. Hopefully this proves useful for others besides just me!