Filament Guide for Creality Ender 3

thingiverse

Here is yet one more filament guide for the Ender 3. This isn't entirely my work and up front I have to give credit to “filamentry” for the bearing holders and to “Filboyt” for the snap in arm. One thing that I've found on the Ender 3 is that the spool support that comes with the machine seems pretty good in terms of low friction between spool support and the spool hub. It's good but it can be improved with the addition of a Teflon tap wrapping, not the plumbing kind, the adhesive backed kind. The problem I've had is guiding the filament on the 180 degree bend from the spool to the extruder. Not only do we see poor wear on the extruder from the filament entering from the top but pulling on that bend against a PLA guide creates maybe enough friction to cause some problems. This may be considered by some as an overkill but what the heck. I could have gotten away with a single bearing on the upper and lower but I figured I'd go with the two bearings so that I could play with different ways to mount the filament sometime in the future. This may make it a little harder for some to thread the filament into the extruder but it's something I can live with. I replaced the two M5x40mm screws on the servo side of the X gantry with M5x50mm screws and added two additional nylock nuts. One nut holds the screws in place just like the original setup and one holds the guide body on for each screw. The top nut that holds the body on can be a little tricky to get on and it will work just fine with only the bottom nut. I used standard 608 bearings. I got mine at a local craft store that sells fidget spinners for cheap. Some of those things have four working bearings in them for a dollar. The 608ZZ bearings are also pretty cheap on eBay and Amazon if you want. Depending on the bearings (some just seem looser than others) and the difference in printers, the bearing halves may just snap together on the bearings. If not a little CA will hold them together. On the top arm there is some gluing needed. The back piece glues onto the flat of the arm. I made it that way just because it can be printed without supports. The three holes are used to line up the two pieces. Drill them out a little and you can use a short piece of filament to aid in the process and just trim them off flush with that cool little sniper that comes with the Ender 3. The top mount will slide into the aluminum extrusion and fit tight enough to hold itself in but I also added holes in the side if you want to use some screws and T-nuts. I used M3x8mm screws with 3mm T-nuts. I got the T-nuts from eBay for about $5 for 20. Be a little careful on the T-nuts. They are small and apparently quality control from China isn't that good on those little things. About 25% of the two orders of 20 each I got were not usable because of deformed threads. And.... I found a good use for that black sleeve that is over the Z axis screw. Cut off about three-fourths inch of it and slip it down over the Z axis screw. It keeps the filament off of the greasy screw without putting additional bend on the filament.