Filament guide and holder

thingiverse

I currently have four filaments arranged in two boxes above my printer; each box contains two filaments sitting on a TUSH coming out of a hole and a sock full of silica pellets. To prevent the unused filaments from getting in the way, I came up with this simple solution that acts both as a guide and as a holder. I printed one for each filament and arranged them side by side on my LACK shelf. I used double-sided tape, but it's best to sand the back of the holder so that the tape bonds more strongly; without doing that, I found that the tension from the filament through the hoops was enough to make it come off. For really desperate cases, there are versions with holes. The back is taller to allow for more tape to be used and to leave room for a hole if needed. The filament in use just goes through the main hole; that's what the front cut is for. Note that the cut is slightly smaller than the filament's diameter, but it's rounded and can be easily pushed in and out with my fingers, but at the same time doesn't let it come out on its own as it's printing. The other filaments go through the smaller hoops. I found it's easier to come in from below as it slightly reduces the tension on the filament, but my setup may vary. You can print this with thick layer lines just fine, especially if you're not using the version with holes, and even then, you could use dynamic layer lines to make the part with the holes more detailed and the rest all nice and chubby. I updated this design on 2018-09-20 as follows: I made a small OpenSCAD file to automatically join multiple holders into a single object or have holes. I pre-made versions ranging from one to six holders, each one coming in three versions: no holes, four-millimeter holes, and five-millimeter holes. If you need any other combination, you can change the two variables at the top of the .scad file, compile it, and export. Note that if you set the hole diameter to zero, no hole will be added. If you set it to anything else than zero and generate multiple holders, the holes will be applied only to the first and last one. I didn't add any chamfering for the hole as the screw head wouldn't really cause any issues with the filament (plus this is literally my very first attempt at using OpenSCAD, and I'm not entirely sure how to implement a chamfer yet!). Note that Portafilamento_1pc_nohole.stl is the same as Portafilamento.stl, just renamed for consistency. The .scad file does require that you have Portafilamento.stl available, however!