Filament pulley by AlejandroARG

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Because I don't want to have the spool holder that came with my printer on the floor, and because my cat has cut the filament twice when trying to climb the printer, I built the spool holder from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:454808, ant then the filament guide from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2042351.
You may see in the picture of the top of the printer these two pieces
All the descriptions suggest to invert the filament feeder stepper but I do not want to do it. So I decided to build a bracket, an axis and a pulley. in order to change the direction of the filament.
This is designed to be attached using two M4 by 10 and two T-nuts
There is a picture of the installed set in this thing.
Then I've found that I ran out of M4x10 screws and didn't want to go to the hardware store, so I printed a supplement that would patchthe gapp and also increase the resistance of the bracket.
There is room for improvement really easy to do (not me, not today) like:
1) change the angle of the pulley so it gets away of the printer carriage. This would allow to put the pulley closer to the stepper motor.
2) reduce the length of the extender arm, making the filament route straighter.
3) increase the diameter of the pulley. As you may see in the picture, the filament is asking for, at least, 4cm more in diameter.
4) Change the holes in the pulley by straight radiuses. I made the holes tryingto reduce printing time, later I've found that filling in the blanks between circles was too time consuming. I think that five or six straight radiuses would be better.
5) the axis is pressed into the bracket hole. It holds fine. I made a hole in it for a m2 screw. However the length should be a little shorter and it didn't seem necessary at the time of assembly.
I hope you like it, and make it.
Either if you like it or not, thank you for reading.
Alejandro