Over complicated humidity protection spool holder/roller

thingiverse

I created an over-engineered solution to prevent humidity from ruining my filament while printing in my garage. The spool sits on rollers inside a container and feeds out through a tube at the bottom. An adjustment knob on the roller assembly lets me fine-tune the width of the rollers for different spool sizes. I used a 1/4" carriage bolt with two 1/4" nuts to adjust the slider/carriage width, ensuring proper alignment and spacing. A custom-made lock nut prevents the adjustment knob from moving in or out. The opposite side is flat, so it fits flush with the container lid. The entire roller assembly can either sit on a base stand or be raised using a Slider-Carriage Bracket Spacer and four 1/4" carriage bolts. Some issues arose during construction: hex-shaped holes for nuts were not ideal, requiring me to wedge a screwdriver in place while tightening bolts. M3 bolts holding the roller assembly to the carriage had to be custom-cut to prevent interference with the slider assembly. The adjustment knob plug was extremely tight and required sanding before fitting. Lock nuts in the carriage can jam while threading through, so I threaded the bolt through one nut while pulling or pushing it through the second until it moved freely. Spindle lock nuts were a delicate fit, requiring a bit of sanding to get them together. The container is an inexpensive option that fits my filament, purchased from Dollarama. It's held in place with the slider and bracket as well as two carriage bolts on the carriage side of the stand. I drilled 8 holes in the container: 4 for the slider bracket bolts, 1 for the adjustment carriage bolt, 2 for carriage bolts connecting the slider to the base stand, and 1 for a brass pressuring fitting. Holes were kept to a minimum size required. The connector at the bottom of the container is a brass pressure fit for 1/4 PVC tubing. I created a two-piece washer with the correct angle to hold it level in my container. In the end, I'm very happy with this project. A humidity sensor inside the container reads 19% (minimum), while the rest of my garage is at 82% humidity. If you have any questions or need clarification on instructions, feel free to ask. This build was intentionally complicated as I was bored and added features without revising existing parts, partly due to laziness.