M3D Crane Quad Spool cassette holder with desiccant pocket

thingiverse

The M3D Crane Quad printer is an incredible achievement, finally making full-color 3D printing accessible to everyone with a high-quality, cost-effective printer designed specifically for consumers. I'm thrilled to have this printer, but one thing that was missing was an effective spool holder. The included design was lacking, although it would suffice as a starting point, so I had to come up with something better. You'll need the following: 1 M4 x 20 + hex nut 16 M3 x 20 + hex nut 8 M3 x 10 + hex nut 8 Bearings This design is intended to keep spools of filament always ready to print while protecting them from moisture, featuring a desiccant pocket for a small baggie of desiccant to keep the filament dry. The windows (each window must be printed inside the rectangular holes on the cassettes) allow for easy visualization of remaining filament quantity. (These must be printed @ 0.0100mm.) The pockets located on the inside of the cassettes accommodate a typical bearing used in 3D projects. These should be epoxied into place. The mandrills are designed to sandwich the spool and are inserted into the bearings. They need to have their bodies epoxied to their heads, with the nub helping to align them. Everything was printed @ 100 microns for a better fit. This was achieved on a dual extruder Flashforge Creator pro, using transparent filament for the windows and a single color for the rest. This is an ongoing project that will be updated (I'm already working on better positioning of the extraction point from the spool as well as height for the base).