Multiple Filament Spool Overhead 2020 Mounting Bracket

thingiverse

These spool holding brackets (Part A) are designed to hold up to four standard filament spools above your printer (I have them installed on my Tevo Tornado) via the top horizontal 2020 aluminum frame member, without any frame disassembly or installations of extra fasteners. This design is a mixup of a cantilevered single spool holder designed by HugoHuge (Titled: Filler - The Customizable Filament Holder that fills your printer!), which employs a spindle mounted on two rollerblade bearings. However, unlike HugoHuge's mount per https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3020026, this bracket is designed to interface with the female grooves of a standard 2020 channel on opposite sides, and to allow for two spools to be installed on the same bracket, each on opposite sides of the 2020 aluminum frame and in-line on the same axis for balanced loading. In addition to including mounting grooves for your printer's top horizontal channel, this bracket includes another slide-in part (Part B) which further secures the primary Part A bracket, making the assembly even more rigid. Finally, it includes another grooved bracket (Part C) to accommodate an unmodified Tevo Tornado Allen wrench tool holder (Titled: Tevo Tornado Tool Holder) as made by Thingiverse user Rumple https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2972387. Note that the Z-axis travel is limited in the event that this design is installed, so this will not work if you print really tall parts, unless, of course, you modify it to extend the spools above the channel sections. I find this design works great with the direct drive extruder setup, with no need to rearrange rolls when changing filament, although before the direct drive it was easy enough to swap the rolls so that the active one was in the best position for the extruder feed. As for installation challenges, I found that this bracket (Part A and Part B) interfaced PERFECTLY with the frame and the tool holder, however, I did have some trouble with the spool holder cantalever holders as well as the spindle itself. To be more specific, I had some difficulty in the female socket that was designed to receive HugoHuge's cantalevered bracket. Because I printed the Part A bracket upside down to avoid using a massive support section, I did have problems cleaning out the female groove in my Part A (I hate PLA hardness properties and I also hate cleaning out support material). I may have not had the best settings for supports either. So, I did what any rational 3D printer would do... I got a heat gun and a hammer, and voila, now it fits perfectly. But I don't think that the parts will come apart easily, but that's fine by me. In hindsight, I might have made Part A couple to Hugohuge's bracket as one piece, but as they say, it is what it is. Also, I did play with the scale of Hugohuge's spindle (which I made as two pieces) in my slicer to get it to fit into the bearing. At this point, I would assume that my interference was as a result of bad bed leveling on my part and bottom layer squish, so I can't say that the original design was to blame.