Multi-orientation Dry Box - With Desiccant Container, No bearings and no meauring needed!

These are the dry boxes I use to store my standard width spools.  These dry boxes can accomodate spools with a width up to 7 cm.  Overtur, Amazon, and Prusament do not fit in these boxes. For the wider spools, have a look at my HPL Dry boxes.  

I am a hobby printer, so I have a lot of different types of filament from different suppliers.  I needed a solution to keep them dry until I needed them again.  I just had one simple requirement: do not compromise the container sealing. This meant no drilling or bolting through the box. 

After some time of using compeltly 3D printed shafts I came to the conclusion that they deform over time and just cause too many problems.  By implementing a metal shaft, you decrease the overall packaging (and allow for wider spools), increase lifetime and most importantly, there is no need for bearings any more.  Due to the low coofecient of friction between the metal shaft and the printed bushings, the bearings are obsolete.

Features:

• Can be used in almost any orientation because the shaft locks into the cradles
• Metal shaft for long-life
• No bearings!  Just printed bushings
• Integrated desiccant container to dry the filament while it is stored
• Can attach to a PTFE tube to remain air-tight
• No measuring needed thanks to the assembly tools

Bill of Materials:

1. Musli/cereal containers.  I purchased mine from Amazon.de.  They also appear to be availabe on Amazon.com, but I have not tested these yet.  There are a lot of sellers selling the exact same thing, so please look at the reviews.  Have a look at the dimensions in the pics to ensure you get the correct one.
2. 3M VHB tape, 50mm wide.  I found this to be the only tape that works.  If you can't find it or do not want ot use it, please just stop here.  All other tapes will fail sooner or later, causing a filament jam and ruining your print!
3. 8 mm metal shaft, either cut down round aluminum stock or cyliderical machine pins.  90mm seems to be the perfect length for machine pins, or 95mm if you cut the shaft yourself.
4. You will need a glue-gun for the filament guide and desiccant container.

Assembly:

See the pics as a guide.

Cradles:

• First you need to apply the tape to the backside of the cradles.  Then trim the excess and remove tape around the shaft locking feature.
• The Box_CenterFinder tool can be placed on top of the musli box and will show you the exact center of the box.  Use a marker to mark this through the slot in the guide.  The top is semetrical, so it doesn't matter which side you use.
• Then align the slot in the Cradle_OrientationBracket with the mark you just made.  You can temporarly fix the bracket with tape, if you need to.
• Place the cradle into the orientation bracket (use the long edge as a guide) and firmly press it onto the box.

Spool Shaft:

• Remove the printed supports
• Place the metal shaft into the spool shaft as a guide for the bushings
• Press the bushings into both ends of the shaft with your hands.  No tools should be needed here.
• Optional: I put small rubber O-Rings onto the ends of the shaft to prevent it from sliding out.  Depending on your printer's tolerances, the shafts may be lose.  The O-rings prevent it from sliding out and landing on your foot
• Optional: If you really do not like the bushings, you can replace then with the standard 608 ZZ  (8mm x 22mm x 7mm) bearings.  But I found little improvement in performance.

Fialment Guide:

• Use only 4-5 dabs of hot glue to fix it to the cover.  The upper wall of the guide wedges itself into the cover so only a little glue is needed.  If you use too much you will never be able to remove it if needs replacing or to update to a better version
• Optional: There are M6 threads in the filament guide.  I use a PTFE tube and fitting to act as a filament guide.  Some filamens tend to be wound very tightly and the spool will try to unwind itself.  The tube helps keep the filament on the spool
• Optional: You can also put another PTFE fitting on the other side of the guide to attack to your printer setup, if you use a closed system.

Desiccant Container

• There are four glue pads where you place the hot glue.  Simply apply hot glue and push it into place.
• Optional: I usually put my desiccant into small “gift bags”.  This prevents the small broken pieces from falling out of the box and makes drying the desiccant much easier.
• Put the cover onto the desiccant container, long end first. Use the tab to pull the top out a little and then click the cover into place.  Done!

The material selectors can be found here, if you are interested.

Happy Printing!