In the endless pursuit to make this stupid machine feed from a filament dryer, I designed these guides to eliminate any possibility of drag on the turn going down into the toolhead.
The core problem is that the turn down into the toolhead adds drag, and that drag increases with tension. The other designs improve but do not eliminate that turn. Using a bearing here eliminates the issue entirely.
Other machines have an assisting feed motor (e.g., in an MMU) that’s slaved to the toolhead’s feed motor, but of course we cannot have that here because the machine comes with an accessory port and promised open-source firmware that was never actually open-sourced, so there’s no way to even try implementing this.
Hey, really nice work on this! A lot of people will appreciate this.
You should definitely post this in the Modification & Personal Project section and join our #2 community challenge here:Snapmaker Community Challenge – Season 2 - #3 by Fishbone3D
Do you think there will be enough friction for the filament to turn the bearing? Or will the filament just slide over the nice shiny surface? How will you know? Perhaps a small hole or two so you can monitor the bearing turning.
will the filament just slide over the nice shiny surface?
With the guide assembled but not installed, it’s very easy to feel difference between spinning and non-spinning just feeding filament through by hand. Give it some (a lot) tension on the back-side and it’s like butter.
First off, I just want to say: this is brilliant work. Thank you so much for sharing this with the community. I’m really grateful you’re putting in the time and effort on this.
Now, I did run into a small clearance issue during testing that I wanted to bring to your attention, hopefully it’s an easy tweak.
1: When homing the left toolhead completely to the left, the filament guide makes contact with the printer frame. It introduces a bit of mechanical force and actually bends the guide slightly.
2: When the head is all the way back left the front part of the guide also makes contact with the black top plate of the printer frame.
Would it be possible to adjust the model slightly to create a bit more clearance on those extremes?
Also, while we’re at it, have you considered adding support for heated inserts? I think that would really elevate the durability of the guide over time and less screws would be needed.
Again, massive thanks for your work on this. I’m excited to see where this goes and happy to test any revisions if that helps!
