Filament roller guide for Anet A8

thingiverse

I mounted my filaments on the side of the cabinet where my printer resides, so I required a low-resistance guide to steer my filament up and over the top of my printer and back down to the extruder. I rapidly designed this and it's not visually appealing but it functions superbly. It utilizes two 608zz bearings, one to swivel and the other as a roller for the filament. I employed a 16mm long piece of m8 threaded rod to hold the bearing and screw the two halves of the roller together. You'll need two m3 screws that are approximately 4mm longer than the standard screws. If I were to redesign this, I would: 1. Make the base plate smaller and move the bearing closer to between the two screws 2. Redesign the fan/fence on the guide's roller tower 3. Increase the clearance between the two sides of the roller tower I would do this because I designed it so that you can simply force thread the m8 rod into the holes on the roller tower halves but when I did this, I didn't thread them in perpendicularly and the threads that I did "cut" in weren't "clocked" correctly. So when I'd screw it down and align the two halves, the roller bearing would bind. However, I was able to re-"tap" the threads on one side and with a little sanding, it's working great now. UPDATE: I modified the base plate (new file is v0.4) to be smaller (12mm less wide), so that it takes less time and filament to print.