Horizontal Filament Spinner for Dehydrator

thingiverse

UPDATE 20190706: Ditched unnecessary lip, produced an STL for 90mm to fit on shelf for storage. Discovered outer shell is unessential, added it to to-do list. This remix is based on my horizontal spool holder/spinner (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3128111), customized to fit inside a common food dehydrator, for DIY PrintDry clone. I resized everything properly and added a hole down the center for air column. The idea is to print from roll of filament while it's drying in dehydrator (filament dryer). This model allows spool to spin freely as filament unwinds. The dehydrator I use is Commercial Chef CCD100W6 (http://amzn.com/B075ZB3V9S), which is successor to Westinghouse WFD100W. You'll also need to print one or more Dehydrator Tray Extensions so shelf is tall enough for spool. davidhbrown's multipart model is https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2795773 and andreq's one-piece remix is https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2814779. You'll need to either add filament exit hole into model or drill one after printing. As with original spinner, you'll need some 4.5mm BBs to serve as ball bearings. I'm having success with Daisy zinc-plated steel (http://amzn.com/B00419C1IA) but anything is fine as long as it's 4.5mm for STLs. If you have different size, you can set that in SCAD file. The minimum spool hole diameter for STL versions is around 49mm, so not all spools will work. I tested a Hatchbox spool and it fits great, as long as shelf extension is in up position on tabs, because Hatchbox spool is pretty wide (tall when on its side). You'll want to have at least one shelf on top, not lid, because that lid has downward indentations that can touch spool. There are 2 STL files: the 67.6 version which is absolute minimum size using 4.5mm BBs, and the 100, which is designed to place bearings underneath average center of gravity of filament (just guessing). The larger one with more bearings in a larger ring spins significantly more smoothly but smaller one spins fine. There is also an OpenSCAD file so you can customize it if you like, either in Thingiverse Customizer or on your own computer. My printer isn't totally dialed in so there's reasonable slop between pieces. You can tighten up tolerances if your printer is dialed in and you like that sort of thing. There's no reason you can’t print multiple of this and shelf extensions and have multiple spools in same dehydrator. I plan to try this for my Mosaic Palette 2 Pro, which takes 4 inputs. Bugs/To Do: * I totally hacked in differences from original, so some code cleanup is warranted * DONE (made a 90 to be safe) -- I found that the 100 is just a bit too large to be stored in dehydrator tray but off-center -- i.e. between outer wall and inner wall -- so I need to generate a slightly smaller one instead (around 94 I believe) * DONE (on the 90) -- There is a vestigial lip on outer edge of spinner top that doesn't need to be there * outer shell of spinner (and outer edge of base) isn't necessary so can be removed to maximize size of bearing ring for certain overall diameter