Filament Roller End caps for 22mm Tube

thingiverse

As soon as I saw HugoHuge's ingenious filament holder, I knew it was the one I wanted. But every time I printed the '3DPNFilHoldRoller' file I hit the same problem; the bearing pin snapped off. You can see one with exactly this issue in the main pic. Sometimes it snapped off when I was printing it. Other times it was when I was trying to get the thing off the print bed. ...And once it went just as I was fitting it to the holder. Now, it's almost certain that the problem's at my end. Either I'm printing it wrongly, or I'm using poor quality material, or I'm just plain unlucky! I tried EdNiedziejko's elegant solution of printing the bearing pin as a glue-on piece, but with my clumsy fingers, it just wasn't working for me. ...And then I thought; " Who says the roller has to be plastic too?!!". Just because I have a 3D printer, it doesn't mean I've got to do everything that way. After all, I don't make my dinner on the printer (not yet, anyway! Hurry up Star Trek replicator technology)! What's wrong with a bit of good old-fashioned steel?!! I knew I had some old 22mm wardrobe rail in my workshop, so I measured its ID and OD (Yes, OD. Just cos it says 22mm doesn't mean it is!). I then drafted a suitable end cap, with bearing pin, in Sketchup. My tubing had a 0.7mm wall, so my file is designed for that. But, if yours is less, it's not that important. Just so long as the cap slides into the tube, it doesn't actually have to be a tight fit. As long as it's not like a sausage up Oxford Street, obviously! My file has a couple of inner walls that I hoped would add some extra strength. But having tested a couple to (deliberate) destruction, I don't think they make any real difference. I originally designed the spool-retainer bump/flange thingy as a convex face to match the lovely design of Hugo's original. ...And it almost looked as nice as his, too! It was just useless for keeping the spool in place. So I swapped it for concave face, and this seems to work fine. I've included the Sketchup file if you want to play around with it some more, but I'm happy for the moment, so I hope it's of use to somebody else too. PS: Excuse the awful yellow plastic; I ran out of black!