Spool Cover Box Corner Brackets for Lack Enclosures by Charixfox

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Cats.
They love things that move. They love to break stuff. They love to play with skinny string-like objects. Like spools of filament.
So when we put our printer in a Lack Enclosure (Which is an awesome thing, by the way), we decided we also needed to protect the spool and filament going in.
One Eket "Cabinet" from Ikea ($15-$20 depending on size at the time of this writing) and some guiding corner holders later and we have a good solution. These are the corner holders. The will work for pretty much any box that should be set down onto something and kept from sliding around as long as they can be attached.
Two options, so don't print everything.
Option 1: Inner Corners. You can use the inner corners on the front, or the back, or both, or neither. The inner corners are much more difficult to position though.
Option 2: Outer corners. You can mix and match inner and outer corners. Outer corners are much easier to place with tight tolerance.
You can hold outer corner brackets in place against the box when screwing them down for the tightest tolerance and fit. The angle of all the brackets helps guide the box into place.
A tiny, tiny piece of putty or clay can be used to hold the inner brackets close to in position but slightly too far outwards and then slide the box over them very slowly to pull them in. Then take the box off very carefully and screw them down. You can measure for the inner corner brackets, however I found that the rounded corners of the boxes involved make that a challenge and even a millimeter of leeway will allow wiggle in the end result. Sub-millimeter fit is good in this.
Bonus points for air-tight filament system:
Use silicone caulk around the top (back) of the cabinet box and the inside corners edges to make it air-tight.
Use a silicone membrane with an tight hole for a bowden tube to feed through
Put an even bead of soft silicone caulk around the open side of the box and let it half-dry so its surface is dry, then place it on top to form fit.
Use a filament holder and/or bowden tube holder (even with a direct feed extruder) to feed the filament into the tube and down into the box through the silicone membrane. The bowden tube can still slip up and down through the membrane as the print head moves.
Some desiccant in the box and you're set.