Self made Spool holder

Story telling

I recently installed a multi-material unit (mmu) on my 3d printer that can use several filament spools at the same time. At the beginning I used the spool holders supplied, but these create a relatively large resistance when the spool is turned. In some cases the resistance was so large that the filament could not be drawn correctly and caused the printer to stop the running job.

I looked in the internet for similar projects and was inspired to create the following design.

CAD Design

The spool holder consists of a wall holder with a bearing. A wooden rod fits into this bearing and a cap at the end prevents the spool from slipping away. In addition to the spool holder, there is also a tube holder that holds the PTFE (Polytetrafluorethylen) tube.

Since the inner diameter of the bearing is 25mm and the wooden rod has a diameter of 25mm, I had to use an adapter bushing.

The whole print took about 2h30m and was printed with PETG.

Assembly and mounting

The assembly was straight forward and fits well. The only part I had to redesign and print was the adapter bushing as the tolerance was too small for the “press-fit” design.

Spool holder

Mounted tube holder

Summary

The spool holder works perfectly and creates only a small resistance when turning the spool. The only thing to could be improved would be a deeper mount for the wooden rod to prevent it from pointing downwards over time due to the weight of the spool. For example, with two bearings one behind the other. However, this version works as well as expected, and I’m happy with it.