Ultimaker S3/S5 Filament Spool Hole Filler

thingiverse

One of few poorly designed parts of the Ultimaker S3/S5 is the filament spool holder. It includes a chip reader so you can do lots of great things if you only use Ultimaker brand filament, but even then, it is a pain to change the filaments. I quit using their spool holders shortly after getting the system and now use heated dry boxes instead. The holder was in the way so I removed it, leaving the holes shown in the picture. I finally got an air manager and decided the holes needed to be covered. White tape would have worked just fine, but after all, this is a $6K plus printer so of course I had to design something fancy. This is a simple hole cover that looks worthy of the printer. The back slides down and locks into place so it is easy to remove. I made a pretty precise fit so I found it worthwhile to support the grooves. I suspect it would work fine with a single filament support, but I used breakaway filament with tough PLA in this print shown here. I do recommend using a 0.1 or 0.15mm layer height for precise fit.