Poor Man's Ball Bearing Filament Spool Holder

Description

Doing my fist steps with TPU I soon realized that my filament spool had to much friction for the elastic filament and that I needed to find a way to let it run lighter. Before I had what Creality ships for the Ender 3, with a few hair bobbles tied around the bar to smoothen the run which was fine for PLA. But with TPU I could hear and see how the extruder fought the spool's friction. Now spool holder solutions with ball bearings are not exactly scarce but looking through them none actually appealed to me as they all involved printing a more or less huge structure to keep the ball bearings in place and carry the spool's weight. I searched the resources my life as a father and tinkerer helped me to accumulate and these are the ingredients to my solution: • about 150 wooden beads (8mm diameter) • 2 hair bobbles • some ends of thin isolated wire (but some nylon or other threads might do as well) Steps: • Thread the right number of beads on a piece of wire, for me 11 was just right, and make a knot around the first and last. • Repeat until you have at least 7 to 10 threads with beads, more is better as they will keep each other in place. • Fix those threads around the axis holding the spool with the hair bobbles so that the first and the last bead of each thread goes 'under' one of the bobbles • Ready! Put the spool back on the axis and enjoy how it turns so much lighter now. A hack and I'm surprised how good it works. So - is there anything to print here? Yes, a trivial but important part, a simple thin ring which you hang over the axis outside the spool. On it's new bearings the filament spool moves so easy it might drift too far outwards and even fall down. The ring is enough to keep it in place. After some time of using this: I printed TUSH, 'the ultimate spool holder', real bearings, elegant minimal design, clean looking. It's nice to have them both, an advantage when changing filaments in midprint for color effects. Must say, while tush looks much cleaner I hear more sounds while the filament runs from it than when it runs from my wooden beads. I do like how the filament goes straight from the spool to the extruder with TUSH but on it's own the extruder drags TUSH and the spool over the desk until it collides with the printer and gets in unpredictable situations there. Thus, TUSH needs a holder/distancer, rubber feet and possibly a new filament cleaner/lubricator (since the other one, part of the filament guide for the top-mounted spool, is not in the path any more. In praxi the two are quite at a level with a slight advantage on this one.

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