Filament roller guide for Anet A8
I hung all my filament on the side of the cabinet that my printer is on (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2775181) so I needed a low resistance guide to steer my filament up and over the top of my printer and back down to the extruder. I quickly drew this up and it's not pretty but it works GREAT. It uses two 608zz bearings, one to swivel and the other as a roller for the filament. I used a 16mm long piece of m8 threaded rod to hold the bearing and screw the two halfs of the roller together.
You'll need two m3 screws that are ~4mm longer than the stock screws.
If I were to redesign this I'd:
- Make the base plate smaller and move the bearing closer to between the two screws
- Redesign the fan/fence on the guide's roller tower
- increase the clearance between the two sides of the roller tower**
** I'd do this because I designed it so that you can just force thread the m8 rod into the holes on the roller tower halves but when I did this I didn't thread them in perpendicularly AND the threads that I did "cut" in weren't "clocked" correctly so when I'd screw it down and align the two halves the roller bearing would bind. I was able to re-"tap" the threads on one side and with a little sanding it's working great now. Still though, assembly was a P.I.T.A.
UPDATE: I modified the base plate (new file is v0.4) to be smaller (12mm less wide) so that it takes less time & filament to print.