Tension-Adjustable Paper Towel Holder

Note: I highly recommend you look at hjnorden's remix with spindle arms printed horizontally for strength. The vertically printed ones can last quite a while, but the the horizontal arms are inherently stronger. I printed a set at 95% scale and they fit into the sockets well.

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I was fed up with the limitations of commercially available paper towel holders.

I wanted one that would:

1. Hold the jumbo economy-size rolls from Walmart, which are fatter than most others.
2. Accommodate some variation in length and diameter of the core tube without having to reposition the side frames attached to the wall/cabinet.
3. Be adjustable in tension so as to balance the ease of pulling one towel with the need to keep the roll from unraveling when you tear a towel off.
4. Not allow the roll to fall off. Ever.
5. Allow easy one-handed operation.

I have been using this in our kitchen for a couple of months and I am quite pleased with it.

Note that the tensioner screw has left-handed threads. This means that, once assembled, you turn it clockwise to increase tension, counterclockwise to decrease tension.

The spindles are bayonet-style twist lock. Insert them into the frame and turn in either direction until they stop, then exert more force and they will lock into place. You can leave them unlocked if you wish, and they will generally stay in place if you initially turn them in the direction that the towel roll unwinds. If locking is too difficult, you can use some sandpaper to sand down the round bumps inside the frame.

Once installed, turning the tensioner clockwise spreads the fingers on the spindle apart to increase friction against the inside of the paper core.

When mounting the frames under a cabinet, use your most-often-purchased paper towels and set the frames apart far enough to give 1/4" extra space when the roll is between them. For the jumbo Walmart Great Value Select-a-size towels, it works out to 11.5" between screw holes, center to center. This gives you some margin in case you happen to buy some brand that is longer. The spindles will hold up the roll even when there is some side-to-side play.

Parts are already oriented correctly for printing without support.

Print two of each part.

I recommend:

Spindle: 2 perimeters, 25% honeycomb infill, 3 bottom layers, 0.2 mm layer height
Frame: 2 perimeters, 15% rect infill, 3 top layers, 3 bottom layers, 0.2 mm layer height
Tensioner: 3 perimeters, 0% infill, 3 top layers, 3 bottom layers, 0.2 mm layer height

The spindle and tensioner should be printed at a fairly slow speed, 30mm/s or less, to maintain high quality of the screw threads. You may experience a few extrusions separating and bridging across the opening. These can just be trimmed off. If you get a lot of these, you might try creating a modifier zone for just the threaded area and fill-in to concentric 100% for just that area. Worst-case fallback would be to print the whole spindle at .1mm layer height.

Update 6/7/2019: Uploaded new spindle and tensioner files. The new spindle is beefier than before. I found the old one could break if you left one side on no tension while using the other side to provide all the tension. The new tensioner allows for quicker adjustment with fewer turns.

Update 2/29/2020: New spindle file uploaded. I added some fillets to the inside that help with overhangs. Sometimes extrusions would separate at the bottom of the channel where the overhang was the greatest.

Update 1/17/2022: Added StrongerSpindle. After a year or so, the tines of the spindle began to fail where they attach to the base. The new design has better fillets and has a zone made to flex well above where the fillet is. Make sure your slicer settings create a solid zone within the tines where the fillets are, and just below them.