This is the gist of the filament rack I built. Not too expensive, not horribly complicated. Easy access to all spools. Framework for potentially added a full enclosure to protect against dust and humidity. And most importantly — cheap!
It has 24 posts, each with the capacity to hold two 5 lb spools (by length that is. It seems like it should be strong enough but no guarantees haha). I used to just slide a bunch of spools onto some pipe or threaded rod or whatever, but changing them out was a pain since you had to move all of the other spools to get to the one you wanted (which was the center one 99% of the time it seemed).
Bill of materials:
(5) 2×4 x 8′ lumber ————– ~$2.50 each
(2) 1/4″ x 5′ PEX tubing ——– ~$2.00 each
(3) 10′ x 3/4″ Sch 40 PVC pipe – ~$2.50 each
(24) 1/4″ x 4.5″ Bolts ————– $0.36 each
Bunch of 2.5″ screws ———— ~$3.00
Cost ———————————- ~$36
Basic info:
There is 1 foot of spacing between each holder.
2×4’s are cut to 4′ long for the horizontal beams, and 3′ long for the vertical beams (vertical beams were originally 4′ long but I had to trim them to make it fit in my available space).
Bottom stabilizer feet 2×4’s are 26″
PVC is cut to 22″ lengths
PEX is cut to 1.75″ lengths (2.5″ lengths if you actually have 10′ of PEX. I didn’t)
Oh, and you’ll need some hot glue to glue the PEX onto the 2×4’s.
TLDR:
Picture instructions!
Cut the 2×4 into 4′ lengths
Drill 1″ holes every foot – leaving 6″ on the ends
Lovely
I had to ream out the holes a bit to get the PVC to fit (PVC was actually like 1.05″ external diameter)
Screw in the horizontal beams
I just did 2 screws per beam
Make sure it’s all square
Lay down the other beams
Line up the bottom beams
Lining up the bottom beams
Drilling countersink holes
Screwing a screw π
Centering the PVC
Hammering in the PVC
I cut the PVC into 22″ lengths
PVC all inserted
Drilled 1/4″ holes for the bolts the retain the spools
Had to put on some filament to test it out π
I trimmed down the vertical beams to 3 feet so the rack would fix above my bots.
Added some 26″ feet to the bottom. This way the rack can stand on it’s own, or be flipped upside-down and screwed into rafters.
I originally tried to cut the PEX tubing on the scroll saw. This makes for very rough edges.
I cut the PEX in 1.75″ length since I only had 7′ of PEX. If you have 10′ of PEX you should be able to do 2.5″ lengths.
Cutting with a razor blade worked much better
Cutting with a razor blade worked much better 2
Lengths of PEX hot glued together
Use a filament spool to measure where to hot glue the PEX tubing
PEX tubing glued in line for this column
All of the PEX tubing glued on
Drilled some holes in the feet for mounting to rafters
