The 3D Printing Tool You Didn’t Know You Needed
This is the rare 3D printing tool that comes along that you just need and will wonder how you lived without.
It wouldn’t make any sense to put a spool of filament directly on a 3D printer’s extruder carriage — that would be bulky and the weight would make the printing performance terrible. So, 3D printer designers position the spool nearby and feed the filament to the extruder through (usually PTFE) tubes. But those tubes can get pretty long and pushing the filament through them by hand can be hassle. That’s particularly true when you need to do it several times a day, if you’re switching filament a lot. The solution is MrFlippant’s Speed Loader.
The Speed Loader has one job and that is to quickly push filament through Bowden tubes. MrFlippant designed it for use with Prusa 3D printers, but it will work just as well with any other FDM/FFF 3D printer.
It is almost miraculous in its simplicity and utility, which are hallmarks of all truly useful tools. Just clamp the gears down on your filament and… that’s it. There isn’t a second step. The act of clamping activates the Speed Loader’s motor and the gears will start turning. Those are Bondtech-style gears, like you’d find in an extruder, so they grip the filament perfectly and push it through. Just keep clamping until the filament is where you want it, then release.
Best of all, the parts you need to build a Speed Loader are easy and cheap to acquire. Aside from the aforementioned gears (they match the MK3S+ extruder), you’ll need a gearmotor, a limit switch, a 9V battery connector, and a rechargeable 9V battery (or a regular 9V battery if you prefer). No fancy motor controller is necessary, because the limit switch simply closes the circuit to connect power to the motor.
That’s really all there is to it: just a useful tool that every 3D printing enthusiast can appreciate.