ESun Spool To 13mm Shaft Adapter

*Quickie Update 11/30/16 - I added a 1.1 version of the adapter to the files in case some of you were finding that the original was a little loose in the ESun spools. The 1.1 version bumps up the diameter to a straight out 52mm, where the original is about 51.8mm. It may not sound worth troubling over, but believe it or not, 0.2mm actually does make the difference between fitting loosely and fitting snugly. YMMV, and I'm keeping both files in there just in case the 1.1 is too tight for some users.

This is a quickie adapter I made for ESun filament spools to adapt them down to 13mm diameter plastic or metal pipe for use in goldentuna1200's Quick Change ROBO Top Spool Holder. Just print off two of these, pop them into the sides of a typical ESun filament spool, and presto, the spool will slide neatly onto 13mm diameter pipe, which then fits neatly into goldentuna 1200's top mount spool holder. If you just place the pipe inside the normal gigantic hole that these spools have, the effect is a constant wobbling back and forth as the filament feeds. This cuts that problem out entirely and the spool instead creeps gently and smoothly forward just as it should, potentially reducing or eliminating problems like machine vibration and excessive drag and stress on the filament and extruder.

My experience has been that as is, this fits nearly perfectly, but you can of course bump up the scale up or down very slightly,like 101% or 99% to nudge the diameter up or down by 0.5mm. This piece works great in PETG, with plenty of strength and very low friction on smooth aluminum pipe. Please note that I designed these to be TIGHT fitting into the spool itself. This was on purpose, because I found that if they were at all loose, they'd eventually wobble out of the sides and cause all kinds of filament tangle mayhem during long prints. Press HARD, and it will go, as long as you're using ESun spools that have the 52mm center hole.

BTW, in the photo, that's ESun Solid Black PETG. Fantastic stuff, I swear by their PETG and won't even touch PLA anymore. Once you get your head around PETG, it's awesome. Not as rigid, that's one potential problem, but way more durable and prints neatly once you get it right. The last time I used PLA, I'd been using PETG for a long time, and man... I was near about ready to lobby the whole 3d printing industry to have the name changed to "PIA", I was that irritated with it. This PETG is far better behaved. Also, they have some truly pretty translucent colors. Try the translucent blue, it's gorgeous.