I’ve gotten into 3D printing a little deeper than I thought I would… This is what I came up with for organizing my PLA…
I purchased 10 meters of PTFE and a bunch of tube fittings from Aliexpress for $20 shipped. The container is one from Walmart and the lid does fit okay. Then a dowel from your closet was used to hold the rolls in place. A bunch of zipties and kapton tape later, I have a nice and organized filiment feeder.
WOW, does it feed well? That is neat, and I guess the cover keeps the PLA dry enough?
Love it…
My solution:
Uses two 1" wooden dowels. I don’t feed from it though.
@Rp_White_KF5VLM I kept the rolls in a tote with silicon desiccant that keeps them dry. I purchased a few pounds on Ebay, that I can dry out in the oven and reuse. One of the rolls is 2 years old and still prints well.
Unfortunately, everyone of those rolls is exposed together air so it’s going to absorb moisture and become, uh, less than optimal to print with. If you’re using nylon, it’s even worse as moist warm air rises.
How do you feed from the roll through the bowden into the bowden tube attached to the printer?
I removed the lid for photo purposes. The are protected from the environment most of the time.
And to feed, I just pushed the plastic down the tube. They glided through pretty easily. Even the 5lb one on the end.
do you ever have problems with the rolls getting tangled up? we just experienced and overnight snag that caused the project to fail. lots of people talking about moisture and exposure. do you have to keep these rolls covered in some way? ours sit out. do they become brittle?
@Bobby_Shoutz Unless it’s a fault of my own, I have never had any tangles. And there’s no need for covering them since they are in an enclosed container.
Very neat, I need something like this! I’d have thought that there would be a lot of friction for the extruder to pull though, I have my rolls sat on bearings, but I suppose it would be easy to add bearings instead of the wooden pole!