Filament Stand

thingiverse

Human: **sorry the pictures are squashed flat. Thingiverse is doing that for some reason.** I'll start with a bold claim: my 3D prints are better because of this filament spool holder. The crashes I was getting with the existing holder weren't just wasting time and money, they were a symptom of more or less continual problems with tension from the existing spool. That tension, when it wasn't outright crashing the spool and/or printer, was sometimes providing enough resistance to the print head to shift the x-axis half a millimeter in the middle of a print, or to just give fuzzy edges to prints that should have been smoother. A filament spool holder that meets my needs. The axle comes in two pieces and should just friction fit together. If not, glue will do the job and it should fit through spools anyway. Tolerances on your printer, filament shrinkage, etc., can all affect whether this is a slip fit or a friction fit. On our Prusa, they're not a friction fit. You can try the version of the male part with a couple little barnacles on the side to ensure the friction fit. I just printed the plain one and stuck a little roll of scrap paper into the split to splay it out a bit, and the friction fit is perfect. Low-tech solutions are often the best. The fat ends of the axle are designed to stay outside the uprights while still fitting through spool centers. We have a Prusa at work, but it's in a neat cabinet, and unfortunately, the little 3D-printed filament spool holder at the top is overly clever and under-capable. It's the one with the little wheels that drops the filament all the time, sometimes tangling it and causing crashes. I designed this so there would be a robust spool holder that wouldn't drop the filament.