Spoolholder for Small Print Beds

The Kodama Trinus came with no spool holder out of the box and the manufacturer recommended setup did not work well enough for me so I came up with a spool holder of my own, modifying the setup in the process as well.

The original spool holder was meant to be printed and attached on the back panel of the enclosure. This was ok for the first couple prints I made but soon enough I had many problems with the filament snagging and not feeding easily enough.

I moved the back plate to the top of the enclosure, so now I have a 33mm round hole to feed my filament through. This gave me the idea to create a filament guide that would be fastened to the hole by screwing two parts together.

I have Polymaker 1kg spools so I wanted to accommodate for those first.

A couple issues I wanted to solve for:

1. My maximum print area is 120x125x119 so I had to design the parts that would fit in this spec

2. I wanted the platform to fit the corner of the enclosure so it can be supported by it

3. The spool is pretty heavy and can fall over if not balanced enough

4. I wanted to easily interchange spools

5. Have the spool spin as easily as possible

Solutions:

1. I made the biggest part of the model, the base, split in the middle symmetrically, this way I had no trouble printing it. I created slots that would fit into each other then glued them shut with cyanoacrylate glue after print.

2+3. I made the base be a rectangle with rounded edges that would butt against the corner of the enclosure perfectly. By rotating the base 45 degrees now I had extra stability on each side. Tipping the whole thing over is less likely this way. I added support beams alongside the tallest part so the material wouldn't flex and would hold the weight properly.

4. I created threads and nuts with knurling to easily tighten and remove when exchanging spools.

5. I added two standard 608zz bearings for easy spins. These are the only parts that are metal, the rest can all be printed.

So far so good! The spools spin like a charm with no noticeable drag and it's not a big hassle to swap them out either. The rigidity of the base and the fit to the enclosure are great, and I no longer have to worry about the spool falling off in the middle of a print.

I also moved the rubber grommet from the original feed hole to the inside of the new feeder.

Next steps - design more accessories that would make other spool sizes fit.

Thingiverse files: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2479110