Filament Spool stand 5kg

thingiverse

For casual use, 1kg spools are perfect. I still use my old https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1533722 or https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1864589 spool holder designs for those. But when you do heavy-duty 24h face shield printing (or similar), then you get tired of the run-out sensor beeping every night on one of your printers. Enter a 5kg filament spool. This is such a massive monster, it cannot be mounted on top of your 3D-Printer. In fact, the printer may weigh less than the spool. This design consists of 7 3D-printed parts and two standard 22x8 mm roller bearings. All assembled by snap-in and press fit. Printed from PETG with 75% infill and 3 perimeter lines for strength. The snap-in connectors do not work well with PLA, as PLA will slowly relax under pressure, while PETG holds its tension. * 1x Shaft (achse131.stl). This is 131mm long; the middle part is reinforced with 3 wings. Push a roller bearing onto each side, as far as you can. 97% infill recommended here. * 2x Elastic Discs (federbuchse54.stl) to fit into the spool and onto the roller bearings (federbuchse54.stl). My spool has an inner diameter of 53mm. The 1mm extra diameter gives some nice tension so that it does not come loose. * 2x Sides (seitenteil.stl). These are large; your printbed must have 200 x 240 mm to print these. The top has a cut through the 8mm bore where the shaft is mounted. * 2x Bottom Connectors (querverbinder) - to snap from underneath into the sides, to create a sturdy rectangular base. The spool runs very lightly on the roller bearings. It needs some braking so that it does not unroll multiple windings after the printer pulled some filament once. I have experimented with many different braking techniques and finally found one very reliable and easily adjustable solution. An ordinary kitchen sponge folded into the bottom works very well. It touches the side of the spool and also the rim from below. When the rim is damaged, this may not work well. Heavy spools often have some damage but usually only on one side. See the yellow sponge in the photos. The design was done in Inkscape and extruded into 3D, then post-processed with FreeCAD. My first draft of a spool mount for that monster is included as rollenhalter5kg.FCstd - that is simply a clamp that sits on a shopping basket so you can use a wooden stick to mount the spool.