After a while of being pushed and pulled with the printhead movements, since the friction on the PLA bushings I used in the spool hub had such low friction, the filament would unwind itself loose enough for one loop to flop off one side of the spool, get caught on something and pull the extruder carriage to one side, skewing the whole piece being printed.
A lad on the reprap IRC channel going by the name DavideV tells me he uses some fancy piece of kitchenware called a Perfect Tear Paper Towel Holder to hold his spool, which apparently ratchets around in one direction providing some tension with a spring to stop kitchen paper rolls from unravelling. I looked around for other similar products to try and find a simple mechanism that would keep my filament in place, and one was simply using this method of pressure:
SimpleHuman "Tension arm paper towel holder" |
My Bungee Cord Plastic Filament Retainer (BCPFR) needs to be on quite loose so that it doesn't create the same problem that it's intended to solve. |
What about using the ratchet mechanism from an old fishing reel?
ReplyDeleteOf all the things you could salvage a ratchet from, that's got to be the coolest I've heard yet. :)
ReplyDeleteProbably worth looking into.