I made a printable filament spindle and
here's a link to the page on the RepRap wiki.
The idea is to eventually attach it to the frame of my Mendel so that filament management is all built in. For now I'm testing it with my MakerBot (it's easily modified to sit nicely under a MakerBot as well). It features a bowden style tube feed like MakerBot's filament spindle (and half the cost of their box). It has a smoothly spinning spool on 608 bearings. It also has a mostly printable spool (just needs 2 wooden circles). The spool can be easily lifted out of the side of the "box", top pops off using a printed friction fit hub, and it's simple to reload.
Now I just need a fresh batch of filament to test it. Most of my filament is a tangled mess at the moment, but I loosely wrapped some around my spool and did some test printing on my MakerBot tonight and it worked great.
Any comments or suggestions greatly appreciated!
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Tony Buser
http://tonybuser.com *
http://reprap.org/wiki/User:Tbuser#Projects