February 15, 2026
Description
There are many filament spool rollers available, and I have tested several designs. Some of them were reasonably practical, but none of them fully met my requirements, so I decided to design my own spool roller. My largest spool, a 1 kg Prusament, has a width of 68 mm, and I dimensioned the roller for a maximum spool width of 75 mm. To keep the unit as narrow as possible, the 608ZZ ball bearings are fully integrated into the rollers. The assembly is held together by interference fits between rollers and bearings, as well as between the axles and the bearings.
Due to tolerances between different bearing manufacturers and the varying behavior of printers and filament, it is difficult to define the interference fits precisely. In some cases, I used tissue paper to clamp the bearings firmly onto the axles (see pictures). Alternatively, the fits can be adjusted by scaling the parts in the slicer.
To allow multiple rollers to be combined, I have included a connector clip. For my use case, this roller is exactly what I need: narrow, simple, and effective.
License:
Creative Commons — Attribution — Noncommercial — Share Alike
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