FABtotum Filament Spool

Back from vacation and found some time to play around with 3D printing again. Made a filament spool that actually fit inside the FABtotum. The STL file can be found on Thingiverse.

Stringing is still an issue

The spool consists of two halves so you need to print the part twice.

Test fit.

This version of the spool fits nicely within the filament bay, but I'll probably modify the next version to make it a bit thinner. This way there's less chance of friction.

Parts "glued" together with the 3Doodler

 You need to glue the two halves together. I used a 3Doodler for the purpose, but a regular glue gun should do nicely.

1lb (about half a kg) of black filament winded.

I'm not sure how much filament the spool can hold but after adding about half a kg I would guess it could hold at least three times that amount.

Winding is also something that will have to be addressed in the next version. Maybe some attachment to fit it to a drill.

FABtotum in da house

Finally, after waiting almost nine months, my new 3D printer has arrived!

The FABtotum is a hybrid machine which does both 4-axis milling and 3D scanning in addition to extruding hot plastic.

Back in August last year, when I ordered this machine, I was originally researching new architectures to implement on a new printer build. Then I discovered the FABtotum blog and one page in particular where they discussed different cartesian configurations and their pros and cons. The design decisions seemed really thought through and seeing they had recently finished a successful Indigogo campaign I read up on the rest of the design which also looked solid. It was time to try out a turn-key solution!

Currently I'm going through the calibration process so time will show if it delivers on it's promise.