2kg Spool Holder (spools up to 136mm wide) version of "tommyvn's New-Spool Dry Box"

A wider version (up to 136mm wide spools) of tommyvn's "New-Spool Dry Box", able to hold 2kg Prusament spools.
1h 58m
1× print file
0.25 mm
0.40 mm
21.00 g
8
98
2
1597
updated May 18, 2022

Description

PDF

TL;DR: Parts and Assembly

This is a slightly wider version of tommyvn's New-Spool Dry Box spool holder, able to hold spools up to 136mm wide, including the new 2kg Prusament spools.

You'll need:

  • 1x print the included model
  • 4x 608 ball bearings (preferably 608ZZ, which can be reused from e.g. a Prusa MINI spool holder)
  • 2x 150mm long, 8mm outer diameter smooth rods or tubes (steel, aluminium, …)

Simply slide a bearing onto both ends of each rod, and place them in the cradles on each corner of the 3D printed base, and your spool holder is good to go!

For information about how to further set up this spool holder for use in a dry box, check out the original post of tommyvn's New-Spool Dry Box.

Thoughts behind the remix, and some tips

The new 2kg Prusament spools (used for their Recycled PLA and Recycled PETG) are +-125mm wide, rather than the +-70mm of their usual 1kg spools. Given the design of the spool holder that comes with the Prusa MINI, these spools don't fit on it. Prusa's suggested solution is to print a longer version of the connection rail, but this means that you'll still need to alter the width of the spool holder every single time you switch between spools of different sizes.
For this reason, I was looking for a spool holder that uses a rod/tube roller instead, to automatically support a variety of spool widths, up to and including those of my newly arrived 2kg Recycled Prusament spools. :D

So the features I was looking for are:

  • reuses the 608ZZ bearings that came with the Prusa MINI spool holder
  • allows use of any width of spool up to and including the +-125mm wide 2kg Prusament spools
  • however, still keep the total width as small as possible, because space is somewhat limited next to my 3D printer
  • minimal use of plastic

From all the designs that I found, Tommy's design stood out, as it:

  • has a very minimalistic design
  • uses 8mm smooth rod inrunner rollers (which I happened to have available), instead of a big 3D printed outrunner roller
  • no additional hardware needed (I only needed the spool holder, not the drybox function)
  • still, the option to upgrade to use the original-zipbag-as-a-drybox feature in the future

However, Tommy's original spool holder was designed around the 120mm long, 8mmOD smooth rods included with the Prusa MMU2, and as such only allows for spools up to +-106mm wide.
Hence the reason for my remix, which uses 150mm long rods/tubes, allowing for a spool width up to 136mm, including the +-125mm wide 2kg Prusament spools. :)

Aside from making it wider, I also made a few minor changes that I deemed a good idea, such as chopping off the corners on the central block, and giving the inner runs of the bearings some more space, to absolutely avoid any rubbing against the cradle.

Reduce, REUSE, Recycle.

If you don't have the required rods/tubes or bearings, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to buy them new. Plenty of hardware parts can be sourced from broken devices.

For example, I sourced my 8mm smooth rods from an old, defective, HP PSC Inktjet printer. 
Many inktjet printers contain such rods, as well as a lot of other useful stuff for makers!
Things I was able to recover from this printer were:

  • the aforementioned 8mmOD steel smooth rod, which I cut in half to create 2x 146.5mm rods (close enough to work fine with this spool holder design)
  • a second, 400mm long, 8mmOD steel smooth rod, as well as a 197mm long, 6mmOD steel smooth rod
  • 3 different DC motors (the operating voltages are yet unknown, but I'm guestimating them to be a 24V, a 12V, and a 5V motor)
  • various sizes of springs
  • a variety of Torx-headed M3 machine screws and Phillips-headed self-taping screws for plastic
  • a 7-segment display
  • a female USB-A port and a female USB-B port (both on a piece of PCB, handy to integrate in a project, and easy to solder to)
  • several optical encoder sensors and accompanying optical encoder disk and strip
  • a few regular optical sensors (that detect if something breaks the beam, e.g. when a lid is closed)
  • various other through-hole electronic components, such as capacitors, inductor coils, and clock crystals
  • various sizes of plastic gears and toothed belts

And that's just the parts that I could be bothered to harvest and/or could envision a future use for! There are still the scanner LED/optical array, a glass pane, a bunch of tactile switches, various SMD components, etc. that you might find worth recovering.

Similarly, the required 608 ball bearings are a very common type of ball bearing and can also be found in various broken devices.
Most bearing-based spool holder designs that are included with 3D printers already use them, most likely in the 608ZZ (metal side-covers) variant, including those that come with the Prusa MINI or Prusa MMU2. 
The 608RS (Rubber Seal) variant are primarily known for their use on skateboard wheels, while the plain 608 (with exposed bearings) is often used in fidget spinners. 
All of these variants can be used for your spool holder, though the 608ZZ is preferred. 
Basically, the ZZ type is designed for relatively “clean” environments and mostly just blocks dust and debris, but still have a fairly free spin. The RS type is more designed for dirtier environments and can also block water and grime, but its seals cause more resistance, which means they might not roll too well when only the comparatively low weight of a filament spool is put on them. Lastly, exposed bearings will run the most freely, but can easily catch crud and stop running at all.

MacGyver

Last but not least, if you can't find the exact suitable hardware, you can always hack a solution.
For example, if you can't get any 8mmOD smooth rods/tubes, you might be able to insert a 6mm all-thread rod through a 8mmOD/6mmID vinyl hose pipe to get basically the same function! :)

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Model origin

The author remixed this model.

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