TAZ 6 Spool Holder Shaft by russell_i_brown

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

I've been using https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1608830 on my TAZ 6 for a while and it works very well... except... the spool often seems to hangup on the shaft and then go over centre with a loud CLUNK! :-( I even tried a bit of polished 22mm copper pipe as the shaft but that still went CLUNK! as the spool went round.
I don't like machines that make unexpected CLUNK! noises (and having a kilo of filament bouncing on the top of the printer doesn't sound like a great feature) so I designed this totally over-engineered bearing mounted shaft with tapered inserts to fit multiple spool sizes.
Using this shaft, the spool very gently rotates as the filament is pulled down by the extruder.
As well as the printed parts you'll also need:
2 x 10x26x8 bearings (I used 6000ZZ; very common and a couple of quid off EBay)
1 x 20mm OD, 17mm ID tube around 127mm long.
1 x M6x8 grub or set screw.
I say 'around' 127mm for the tube as that wasn't the original length I used (started at 130mm IIRC) and had to tweak it a bit as the upstands in the original design do have some flex along the shaft axis.
Anyway, I've includes links below for the Fusion 360 CAD files if you need to change anything.
Printing.
You need support turned on for both the spindle nut and the tube inserts but not for the other parts.
I used a 2mm wall thickness and 30% triangular infill for the tube inserts. 1mm and 20% for the other parts.
Assembly.
The tube inserts were designed to be a 'tight sliding' fit into the tube and bearing. This fit obviously depends on the accuracy of your printer. A slightly loose fit can be accomodated with a dab of bearing retainer (aka superglue). A tight fit means a bit of post-processing or tweak the model and reprint.
I would suggest you assemble the back tube insert (the left hand red bit in the rendering above) and tube then offer them up to your printer with the front tube insert held alongside so you can tweak the tube length if needed. I aimed for ~1mm clearance between the outside of each bearing and the upstand wall.
Before fitting the outer bearing, tap (M6) one or more of the 5mm holes in the threaded shaft and insert the m6x8 grub screw (setscrew in some parts of the world). Fit the threaded shaft onto the tube, nip down the grub screw and lastly fit the outer bearing.
The tapered cups and spindle nut just slide over the front bearing and front tube insert.
Drawings:
Tube Inserts: https://a360.co/2wrVHHm
Tapered Inserts: https://a360.co/2K2XuV3
Spool Nut: https://a360.co/2Klaals
Threaded Shaft: https://a360.co/2I283eN
Enjoy.
Updated the spool shaft to have a slightly thicker body after I had one split around the base of the threaded portion.
Nov '19 - Added holders for the Colorfabb 2Kg reels. These reels are not only larger diameter but thicker than the 1Kg reels. The inner fits to the shaft as normal and the nut has an integral 'cone' for the 52mm core together with a bit of reduced depth to accomodate the 2Kg reels.
You may also need high spool mounts so I've included a version of those too.