Filament Recycler Spool Holder
Designed and printed an alternate spool holder to make generic spools compatible with the FabLab's filament recycler.
The UVM FabLab recently acquired a Filabot Filament Recycler, so that we can reuse the material from failed or discarded prints. We have many empty generic spools lying around, but unfortunately the stock attachment on the spooler module is designed for their own proprietary spools. It seemed foolish to invest in a filament recycler and then buy proprietary spools to use it, so I took on this project.
I designed a simple alternate attachment for the spooler (removing the stock one proved only minimally invasive) to work with generic spools. Rather than the stock design which utilized a specific protrusion which fit into their spools, I opted for a threaded cylinder with a large wing nut style retainer. Finger-tight with my design was perfectly sufficient for eliminating the risk of spool slippage, and unlike the original design, there was now no risk of the spool being pulled off by the traverse mechanism and unraveling on the floor. When I was first presented with this problem, I immediately took several photos of the spooler unit from all angles to clearly see where I would have interference to consider, and then took down basic dimensions. I then procured the .STL for the stock attachment, and printed a copy on my personal printer. Between the pictures, measurements, and physical duplicate I had just made, I was in a good place to open up SolidWorks and begin drafting my own rendition. I kept the retaining flanges and remade the center mounting design to ensure compatibility, but i replaced the tapered prongs with a threaded cylinder and large wing nut to keep the spool locked in place. Once I was happy with the design, I printed it in PETG and hooked it up to the spooler. Overall, the attachment worked quite well! It fit perfectly onto the spooler unit, and when I put a generic spool on and set it up, I was able to successfully respool some loose filament we had. However, the threads were a little sticky, so I went back and adjusted tolerances, and I also increased infill from 15% to 25% and bumped up the wall count as it felt like you could break it if you really tightened it as much as you wanted. After that, I set it back up and that is still what we have running on the Filabot. In a future rendition, I would like to reprint with multiple materials. I think if the first few layers of the wing nut were TPU 80A, I think it would have better grip on the spool and generally improve the design.