YAFR (Yet Another Filament Roller) by MangoCats

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

I wanted a top-loading filament spool roller solution to go in a dry box (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1359419 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:961881), looked at several existing designs and decided to make my own to optimize a few things for my situation/tastes. Primarily, I wanted it as thin as practical - so I located the "spool keeper" plastic on the inside of the spool, it sticks out about 2mm from the bearing - not enough to rub the filament on the spool, but enough to keep the spool from sliding off the bearing. I also wanted a one piece roller solution - located down in the dry box it's going to be fiddly enough without having to position separate rollers. It's not a universally adjustable design, but you can print different width locating plates, and a single size of roller arms should handle a pretty wide variety of spool diameters.
This design makes 4 easy to print pieces that assemble to hold 4 608 bearings as a spool roller. The bearings are held on by 5/16x1.25" bolts, a couple of washers and a nylock nut - 8mm hardware should also work, though 8x30s might be just a little short to work with nylocks, and 8x40 will stick out almost 9mm. (If you want to use 8x30s, you should probably tweak the .scad to make the carriage arms ~1.7mm thinner.)
The same configuration could be printed as a single piece per spool, and wouldn't be too challenging to print, but then when it's not in use it will be big and bulky to store. The separate pieces can be mixed/matched to work with whatever new spools need to go in the drybox next. You could also print substitutes for the 5/16" hardware, but, why? It's solid, reliable, cheap enough, and readily available. PHIL http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:996398 is your fully printable alternative, but I trust the metal hardware a bit more, especially during an 18 hour print. Also, living down inside a dry box, nobody would see a cute smiley face if YAFR had one.
Minor update: added another notch in the bottom of the carriage to let plates be attached between spool rollers, so several roller sets can be positively located relative to each other. Just print the same spreader plates, but sized as you like for spacing between your spools. For the hardware I'm using, 50mm sized spreader plates between the spools seems just far enough.
Also, a note about filament spool sizes: they vary. I just finished one roll of Hatchbox white that worked just fine all the way through on 56mm spacers, but its replacement roll of Hatchbox white is on a slightly wider spool which falls off when using those spacers. Since the bearings are 7mm wide and this spool just barely falls off, I'm printing some new 61mm spacers to hold the new spool of white.