Anycubic is already offering an "OK" spool holder, but when working with heavy rolls the friction can get really high, resulting in layer lines with varying thickness. I took of just the holder from the support arm and replaced it with a support and a roll spinning easily on 2 low friction ball bearings.

Till now it is working fine and the variance in layer lines has been significantly reduced.

The filament change is as easy as before and it is hard to find another solution with even less effort/parts

Anycubic

All-metal Mega

No

No

0,2

40%

I first had a round bottom, with the need to print supports, the newer version has a flat bottom to allow for easy printing.

The support arm from Anycubic has two angled corners in order to increase stiffness, I left a gap to accommodate that.

As PLA is not especially strong it might be wise to try other - more durable - materials (e.g. PTFE or ABS), for now the PLA Version is working well.

In addition yopu will need:

2 x 608 Ball Bearings
2 x M3 brass inserts for 4 mm holes

Please use Bearings as shielded - not sealed - versions, sealed versions tend to have higher friction - and we normally don´t use the printers in a wet or dirty environment. Shielded versions have the denomination ZZ or 2Z, the sealed versions have 2S or 2RS, the versions without any suffix are "open" versions which would need regular cleaning and lubricating.

To give the screws more grip in the plastic I designed 2 x 4 mm holes in the frontface to accept 2 brass inserts with M3 metric threads, you can use the existing screws - which attach the original arm - but I replaced them with slightly longer ones.