YAFR (Yet Another Filament Roller)

thingiverse

I created a top-loading filament spool roller solution for a dry box (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1359419 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:961881), looked at various existing designs, and decided to make my own to optimize several things for my situation/tastes. Primarily, I wanted it as thin as practical - so I located the "spool keeper" plastic on the inside of the spool, it sticks out about 2mm from the bearing - not enough to rub the filament on the spool, but enough to keep the spool from sliding off the bearing. I also wanted a one-piece roller solution - located down in the dry box, it's going to be fiddly enough without having to position separate rollers. It's not a universally adjustable design, but you can print different width locating plates, and a single size of roller arms should handle a pretty wide variety of spool diameters. This design makes 4 easy-to-print pieces that assemble to hold 4 608 bearings as a spool roller. The bearings are held on by 5/16x1.25" bolts, a couple of washers and a nylock nut - 8mm hardware should also work, though 8x30s might be just a little short to work with nylocks, and 8x40 will stick out almost 9mm. (If you want to use 8x30s, you should probably tweak the .scad to make the carriage arms ~1.7mm thinner.) The same configuration could be printed as a single piece per spool, and wouldn't be too challenging to print, but then when it's not in use it will be big and bulky to store. The separate pieces can be mixed/matched to work with whatever new spools need to go in the drybox next. You could also print substitutes for the 5/16" hardware, but, why? It's solid, reliable, cheap enough, and readily available. PHIL http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:996398 is your fully printable alternative, but I trust the metal hardware a bit more, especially during an 18-hour print. Also, living down inside a dry box, nobody would see a cute smiley face if YAFR had one. Minor update: added another notch in the bottom of the carriage to let plates be attached between spool rollers, so several roller sets can be positively located relative to each other. Just print the same spreader plates, but sized as you like for spacing between your spools. For me, that means 2.5 inches (6.35 cm) is a good size. How I Designed This I designed this frame to sit inside the spool so that it takes up minimal space in the drybox. If you want a wider/more stable stance, you can widen the plate and flip the bearings around to the inside. Open SCAD The default settings work for a (my?) Hatchbox 1kg spool, the only two things you should need to change are bearingSpacing to accommodate larger/smaller spool diameters, and plateCtoC to work with thicker/thinner spools. Those are the numbers that get marked on the parts. If you leave the other parameters alone, then the parts should be interchangeable, and ones you're not currently using can be stored flat in a relatively small space. The numbers printed on the bearing holders are the "design distance" between the bearings (bearingSpacing in the customizer), iff you leave the pillow block outer angle at 0. The ranges in the Customizer should all make good interchangeable parts. If you need something bigger/smaller, you can open up Roller.scad and edit other parameters to make bigger/smaller designs work, but you may need to sacrifice interoperability with the parts that the customizer is making.