Expanded Spool Holder, Filament Guide, & Spool Hub

Once you get your printer printing properly, it suddenly becomes apparent that one color is not enough. Well, that's what happened to me. One color (orange) became two, then four and then six (with two more colors arriving in the mail soon). I kept them in an Ikea storage box. I quickly out-grew the box.

I also purchased a Hatchbox spool holder. it held one spool at a time. When I was printing multiple colors, it became tedious disassembling the spool holder with each color change.

So I expanded the spool holder to hold 8 spools, created a filament guide to keep the filaments from tangling and a spool hub on ball bearings so the spool turns smoothly..

Materials

Filament for your printer
Hatchbox spool holder
1" diameter dowel cut to length you need (I cut mine 30")
Screws
Wall mounting hardware

6 x 608 bearings for each spool

36" #8-32 threaded rod

6 x #8-32 nuts

Tools

3D Printer
Computer

OpenSCAD
Drill with assorted drill bits

Hacksaw

Cut the 1" dowel to the length you need. Drill a 1/4" hole in the center of each end.

Remove the center cylinder of the spool holder. Replace the center cylinder with the dowel.

Pick a place to mount the larger spool holder. Use the wall mounting hardware to mount to your wall.

Unscrew one end and put your spools of filament in.

The filament gets tangled on the larger spool holder.

To prevent this, I designed a filament guide.

Attached are the STL files and SCAD files. With the scad files the length and the width of the guide can be adjusted to your needs. In my case I found that 80 mm is a good length.

Print as many as you need and mount where needed to make sure the filament pulls straight from spool.

To make the spool turn better on the rod(dowel), print two of the spool hubs for each spool. So that the spools on the rod don't snag on each other, also print two of the spool hub bolt shields for each spool.

Cut 3 sections of the threaded rod 4.125" long (or 10.5 cm). Thread the three rods onto one spool hub. Add the 608 bearings. then lock the bearings in place with the nut. Push this assembly through the filament spool center and attach the other spool hub. Add the other 3 608 bearings and lock down with the last three nuts. Attach one bolt shield on each side.

slide the spool onto the spool holder rod.

happy printing.

attached are the STL and SCAD files.