Horizontal Spool Holder for filament dryer
Description
This is a horizontal spool holder that was designed to fit in my Rosewill Food Dehydrator, which I use as a filament dryer. The "bottom_mount" part pushes onto the ring on the inside bottom of the dryer. This thing is sort of similar to this thing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3812650, but this one does not require a bearing, uses cones so that it is compatible with any-diameter spool, and has positive retention (spool can't pull up-off the mount). This spool holder rotates on the donut-shaped track glued to the bottom_mount. The spool can't be pulled off the holder, which is a common problem with horizontal spool holders. Required hardware: 1/4-20 (or 6mm) threaded rod, 1/4-20 hex nut (or lock nut), 1/4-20 washer (under wing nut), 1/4-20 wing nut (or hex nut + customized knob). Instructions: Refer to cross section pictures. I suggest using PETG for temperature resistance and slipperiness. Print 1x bottom_cone, 1x top_cone, 1x bottom_mount, 1x retaining_ring, and 2x track_donut_portion. The retaining ring and track_donut_portion should be printed flat on the bed with 0.1mm resolution, the others can be 0.2+. The cones are best printed inverted to prevent the need for supports. The bottom_mount will need supports inside the slot (which is for interfacing with the food dehydrator). Glue the two track_donut_portion's together to form a ring, then glue that to the bottom_mount so that the donut is tangent with the part of the donut that is printed with the bottom_mount. After the glue dries, sand/clean up the parts, particularly the mating surfaces. Then place the hex nut in the hex slot in the bottom_cone, thread the threaded rod through until it's flush with hex nut, use some loctite to lock it in place (or use a lock nut), place the bottom cone on the donut track, slide the retaining ring up over the bottom_mount, and twist the retaining ring such that the tabs lock into the slots in the bottom_cone. The teeth on the retaining_ring and bottom_cone provide grip when rotate-locking the two together. The bottom_cone+ring should rotate freely on the donut track now. Put your spool on, put the top cone on the threaded rod, place a washer in the top cone, then thread the wing nut on until the cones compress the spool slightly. Place this assembly in the filament dryer. The actual spool holder part can be easily adapted for any horizontal spool holding application by modifying the bottom_mount part. This is likely more complicated than it needs to be, but I really wanted a design with positive retention and that was compact. It also requires a well-dialed-in printer that can hold tight tolerances, which is not ideal. I'm working on another design that is much simpler, rotates better, but does not have positive retention and is not quite as compact.
Statistics
Likes
0
Downloads
0