What

This is a filament guide that uses the original spool holder from my Ender 5 Pro.

Why

After making a few upgrades (or downgrades if you look at it realistically), namely a filament dryer and a direct drive extruder, to my printer, I ran into some issues. The filament that was being fed from the dryer to the extruder was getting hung up on the frame, and the extra tension caused prints to have an odd beading/stringing issue that ruined prints. I didn't want to print a full arm that extended 4-5 inches from the frame, so I designed an attachment that clips into the spool holder the same way that the original rolly thing does. Eventually, I would like to add couplers and a Bowden tube to make it a little cleaner and not get tangled so much, but that comes later.

How

Creality

Ender 5

Doesn't Matter

Yes

at least 20%

The first step I took was to grab the trusty calipers and begin reverse engineering the mechanism that allowed the spool holder to attach to the arm.

After I reverse-engineered the part, I designed the channel it used, leaving approximately 0.10 mm of extra room to compensate for any inaccuracies in the printer. Next, I designed the "guide" part of the filament guide, adding a fillet for strength/looks.