Turntable Filament Spool Holder

thingiverse

For my upgraded DaVinci printer, I had the usual spool holder dangling precariously off the rear of the printer. It relied on a couple of bearings and worked flawlessly until one day I carelessly broke one of the supports just being my own clumsy self. I was running a pretty big print at the moment and desperately needed something quickly or my print would be ruined. Fortunately, I had recently printed a Medium Turntable by Walter (you rock dude) and seized it. Grabbed the turntable, hot glued the filament spool to it, set it on top of the printer, and finished my print with ease. Yay! I was frankly amazed at how well my makeshift holder performed. The filament fed smoothly with hardly a bit of tension on the line. So I fired up Autodesk 123D, created this Thing, and have been using it for a couple of months now. I did fix my hanging bracket - but I never use it anymore. This my friends is the way to go. You will need to print one spool_turntable_top.stl, two spool_centering_cone.stl, and one Medium_Turntable_v1-0-_Base.stl. The last piece remains unchanged from Walter's design and is provided here for convenience. In addition to the printed parts, you will require one carriage bolt either 5/16" by 4" or 8mm by 100mm. You will also need two washers, one regular hex nut, and a wing nut to fit your bolt. Finally, you will need three 608 (skateboard) bearings for the base to ride on. Please note that the Medium Turntable is designed with a circular groove on the bottom into which you can press a piece of 1.75mm flexible (TPU) filament. Doing so makes the assembly far more skid-proof. It would be well worth picking up a $3 sample somewhere just for this. (As an afterthought; I do have one spool, MG Chemicals I believe, that needs a longer bolt. Check your spools to ensure they are compatible. Allow about 1" or 25mm beyond the width of the widest spool.) Post-Printing Assembly is fairly simple, refer to the pictures above. Place the three bearings on the pegs in the base, and insert the bolt through the hole in the turntable platter. Onto the bolt, from the top side place one of the cones followed by a washer and hex nut. Tighten firmly but don't get carried away with it. Place the turntable on the base and ensure that it turns easily and smoothly. Set the assembly on top of the printer or wherever you think it should go. Place the filament spool over the bolt and onto the cone, place the other cone, inverted, onto the bolt followed by a washer and the wing nut. Load your filament and get to printing.