Another spool holder

[Captain Starfish]

Must be the season

I replaced my SeeMe bar with a threaded rod and bearing loaded hubs ages ago, worked great.

Now, though, as I start to play with Nylon, I'm going to need something that fits in a bucket with room for the desiccant sachets.

And here it is. The base (upside down), bit of threaded rod (8mm or 5/16) goes through the guts with a lock nut after tapping the appropriate thread.

The cones hold the spool, with a rollerskate bearing in the cup you can see. Don't print it this way around, I just flipped it to show the bearing pocket.

And because I never trust a 3d render on the parts databases, a photo of the real thing. Yes, it looks rough. 0.5mm layers on a 0.6mm nozzle of ABS at 260º ain't pretty. But it holds the wait and it printed a large part quickly.

This was designed to go with the SeeMe, Amazon and DoodadDoes spools. The spool in the photo is just a reel of local hardware sourced weed whacker line.

So far, working well - we're in the midst of kitchen renovations at the moment so I have no oven to use to dry the Amazon Blue out. I have noticed that running the spools flat like this makes them a little more likely to jam, something to keep an eye on.

[teoman]

Looks like it will start walking and attack me

Looks very nice, why did you need a horizontal spool?

[Captain Starfish]

Looks like it will start walking and attack me

Looks very nice, why did you need a horizontal spool?

Coz it's going in a bucket. Dessicant at the bottom, spider holds the spool above it, bit of tube running from the side of the bucket up to the ezstruder.

It means I can keep things reasonably sane size-wise in a sealed container.

[teoman]

Ahh, makes sense.

[Captain Starfish]

It's only fair that I come back with a bit of a review on this.

Whilst it does everything I wanted it to do, it does have a side effect which makes quite a lot of sense in hindsight: as soon as the filament loosens up it falls off a full spool and tangles under the spool as it tightens again. After my third failed print due to filament jamming in this spool holder, I thought I should warn anyone considering using it.

It's not a problem with this design so much as a problem with the idea of the spool laying flat instead of standing up.

I might try and make some catches to hold that dropping filament before I abandon it in favour of a different vertical mount rig.

[teoman]

More pictures of it in action please...

[Eaglezsoar]

Hey Captain! What do you think would happen if you made the base wider so the filament could not go under the spool?
Enjoy your warm temperatures while we in Ohio are freezing our butts off!

[Captain Starfish]

Well, the spool sits on the bottom cone which sits on the base. And the filament's getting jammed between the bottom cone and the base, so I doubt increasing the base will help.

A wider 'bottom' side flare on the spool itself might help, or a cage that holds the filament in place except at the 'top' from where it can be unspooled as needed during the job.

Regardless, it's still extra work that has to be done for each spool because even making an extended base plate for the spool will need different sizes for different bore size spools.

If I come up with something simple to fix it, great, but it's looking less likely by the minute and so I may just scrap this one and re-use the cones on a horizontal frame.

And warm weather? Not yet, squire, it's only going to reach 31º today. The warm weather's still a little ways off.

[Mac The Knife]

Mig welding machines use an adjustable friction brake to keep the spool of wire from "bird nesting".

[Captain Starfish]

Oddly enough it seems to hold it together once everything's set up, it's just when I'm getting organised and loading it up with a fresh spool that it seems to go awry.