RigidBot Filament Guide

Last crawled date: 6 years, 3 months ago

I've had problems in the past with new filament spools unwinding too much and getting tangled in itself - even more so since I started buying large 2.3 kilo spools.
To counter that, I designed three filament guides that would take up the "slop" of the filament when moving the extruder close to the end of the X axis and always make sure that the filament is centered in relation to the spool. For me, this has completely eliminated the problem and after 60+ print hours with both brand new 1kg and 2.3kg spools, I have not experienced any tangling whatsoever.

Designed to snap onto the bar under the filament rack. Reinforcements were added to counter the slight flex needed when snapping it to the frame.
For best performance, add a 6mm PTFE tube like the one as used in the extruder. It can also be used without the PTFE tube only to guide it, but the slowing effect will then mostly be lost. For my sandstone/wood filament with a very rough texture I used a tube with larger inner diameter to avoid it slowing down too much.

I made 3 versions of the guide, designed to sit near the front, center and rear of the frame (see photo). These are angled both horizontally and vertically in a way that allows the filament to go from the spool to the extruder with minimal twists on the way.