The $10 10-minute Filament Holder

Hey everyone, I JUST got my Thing-o-matic put together and after one long print I was having all sorts of issues with keeping the filament playing nicely with the extruder.  I would constantly have dread in my heart whenever I heard a coil of plastic unspool loudly.  But, everything was going well and I was kickin' back a few brews watching some Netflix when...

The worst thing ever happened.  My filament snapped.  I tried to melt the ends together, but the extruder just ripped them apart, so I cancelled the print.  The next part was terrible, I tried to get out the old filament, but it was past the extruder gear so I couldn't.  Then I tried to feed in new filament to push out the old stuff, but it kept getting stuck and kinked.  Finally, I had to sit there and feed in the filament through the control panel until I was sure that if I started a build it wouldn't kink.  

The solution?  GO TO TARGET!  AND THEN LOWE'S!

Step 1 Find a spinny thing.

So I remembered on the Makerbot website they sold a fancy kit that had a filament guide and holding box to sit underneath your Thing-o-matic.  Well, that was $99 and I was still recovering from the price of the kit!  

I boiled it down to a few basic parts:
1. Lazy Susan
2. Guide tube
3. Stiff anchor between Lazy Susan and guide tube

As you see here, Target sell's a 10" lazy susan for about $6.  The diameter of the filament spool is about 8".  Close enough for government work!

So far so good.

Comments

[megaduty]

Greetings from another MK6 brother, #4890!

[Cabe]

My 3d printer is on its way, I shall ensure this is waiting for it!