cattail filament cleaner

thingiverse

Attaches to a 4 mm OD tube. Mark the tube at 3 mm from end to get the correct depth. For the spong, this cleaner is sized to take a 12 mm or half inch antistatic pad cut into roughly 12 mm x 12 mm by 25 mm pieces. Thicker sponges might work better. But the 1/2 is what we found available from a Zutter "tool-it-all" antistatic foam pad. Any anti-static pad between 12 mm and 20 mm or 1/2 " and 3/4 inches. We made this to attach to tubes coming from the Prusa MMU2S. The buffer that comes with the unit provides additional inconvenience when it "needs user attention." Fortunately it makes an a functional stand for an open buffer. See cattail image. Printing: The included STL is sized for 0.45 mm extrusion widths common for a 0.4 mm nozzle. It may be shrunk slightly if not snug or bored out if it is too tight. We recommend adding a slight bevel to the tub entrance with a pair of pliers of clippers to facilitate tube attachment. We printed with the narrow opening up without supports. There are two 0.2 mm cutouts under the exit hole to assist the slicer with bridging. We used Prusaslicer. Any slicer that sees a straight edge crossing a narrow gap as something to bridge should work. I think the flat underside reduces pinching of the sponge as compared to models that use a funnel at the exit. Update: 7 June 2021: Added a model with cutouts under the exit hole to assist bridging. This technique was stolen from the Universal Auto-Rewind Spool Holder of VincentGroenhuis https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3338467 . Admire the underside of the large screw.