Thrifty Modular (Floating) Filament Shelf - mk.4

A system to store your filament boxes and/or spools which requires no hardware whatsoever. You can really store whatever you want in it, just customize some parameters and it'll fit any solid of you liking.
It's inspired by the Filament Shelf from the creator Filament King. His is definitely more stable than this one.

Modular - No Hardware - No Supports - Wall Mount Option - Parameterized - Open Source

New to mk.4

• 0.6mm Nozzle profile
  • +50% print speed
  • +10% material usage (
• Way more stable
• Single wall mount bore
• !! 0.4mm nozzle profile will be delivered as soon as I tested it.
• Downwards compatible to mk.3

With a 0.6mm the rail interlocking is a fraction of a millimeter more loose. So if you really need the tightest fit, you have to go with mk.3 and a 0.4mm nozzle at the moment.

Find details in ChangeLog below!

What's it for?

Store your filament boxes (or basically any cubic stuff) in a modular 2d-stackable manner with wall-mount option.

Key Characteristics

I tried to keep it simple, thrifty and modular. Also, I wanted a version which I can mount on a wall as well.
To outline the key characteristics:

• Wall Mounts → each shelf contains bores for two 4,5mm countersink screws, so you can easily mount them on a wall
• Thriftiness → I wanted to keep it as cheap as possible by creating a skeletized model. You'll get at least 7 shelves out of a single 1kg spool PLA.
• Stability → As mentioned, we're talking about a thrifty skeletized model, but I tested a single mk.1 shelf to be able to bear at least 30kg (including slight but constant shake-tests) in stacked assembly (no wall mounts). If you additionally use the wall mount option every fourth or fifth row, only sky's the limit I guess.
• Open Source → I encourage you to create remixes of this model. You can find the source f3d archive including an okISH history attached
• Parameterized → When you're familiar with Fusion360: The entire model is parameterized so you can customize the shelves to your needs.
• No Supports → That's just a personal preference to design models without supports

Wall Mount Option

Even though I said there's no hardware required, it surely would benefit the overall stability, when the bottom and top shelf as well as a few in between get mounted to a wall. If you want to have it floating like on the picture above, you must use some screws at least.

I recommend using wood screws (and screw anchors when working with dry/brick walls).
Personally, I used the following mounting material:

• 6x30mm Universal screw anchors
• 4,5x40mm wood screws → you can vary in length, but not in diameter
• (brick walls only) → ideally you would use a 5,5mm drill to get a tigther fit for the anchor

One thing I noticed, when using the wall-mount option: You'll need at least 2 rows to provide real good stability. Since the bores are located in the vertical center, there's a little bending when adding weight on a single shelf. Adding at least one row above (given it will be mounted to the wall), they will support each other and the wiggeling is over ;-)

Stability

As you can see on the picture, when adding the 8th shelf, it starts to bend.

BUT…
and there's a BIG but(t). Or two to say the least.
Instead of spools I filled the boxes with 2,5kg bumper plates each. So we're talking +1,1kg of additional weight in each shelf.

And, the shelf which started to bend, had a flaw: I made use oft leftover filament and combined PLA-CF (black) with normal PLA (orange). After the print I wanted to do a strength test which broke one of the top cross beams exactly on the interface where the two materials met. I guess that added it's two cents as well. Also, the bottom shelf was a mk.1 which had different dimensions and tolerances.

Overall, I'd say it's quite stable for a standalone column and if adding additional columns, using non-broken shelves and not exceeding the average weight of a spool box, I guess you can stack them to the ceiling, even though I wouldn't recommend that without mounting at least the top and middle one to the wall.

When mounted to a wall every other shelf, each can carry around 5kg without a doubt (I tested it with bumper plates again).

Parameters

As mentioned, you can adapt the source f3d file by simply changing some parameters. There are predefined “Favorites”, which make it easy to adapt the shelf size according to your boxes:

• filament_box_depth
• filament_box_width
• filament_box_height

I already added some sane defaults for margins, so you can just measure your box and type in your values. No need for additional inclusion of margins.

When changing nozzles you may also want to adapt “printing_line_thickness” and “printing_layer_height” which will optimize some thinner walls.

Bambu Optimized

The predefined sizes in the source archive as well as the bambu project are optimized for bambu filament boxes.

Printing

Print Profiles

There are 2 basic print profiles attached:

• 0.4mm nozzle (6hrs per shelf, 136g) (actually 2 profiles: single and double)
• 0.6mm nozzle (4hrs per shelf, 149g) (2 plates with single and double)

The 0.6mm variant is new in mk.4 and my personal go-to profile at the moment. The speed and increased stability outweigh the 10% filament increase by far.

Settings

Please refer to the specific print profiles I attached. They state the exact settings in detail.

Changelog

This is kind of a living document. Have to find out, how to include some Git markdowns here ;-)

mk.4

tl;dr: Reduced weak points and increased printing speed by more than 50% with only 10% more material usage. Details below!

There's only a 0.6mm nozzle print profile at the moment. I will deliver one for 0.4mm as soon as I've reinstalled the other nozzle and did some tests on mk.4.

• Optimized for (up to) 0.6mm nozzles
• Added new Printing Profile (AiO - AllinOne contains Single and Double) especially for 0.6mm nozzles which prints more than 50% faster* but only consumes 10% more filament (3mm layer height). You'll still get 6 shelves out of 1kg of filament (PLA Basic).
• Hook tolerances scale with nozzle size. printing_layer_thickness is the parameter which represents the default line with of the nozzle.
• Fixed some weakspots to counteract brittleness of PLA-Matte filament by enhancing bottom beam strength (depth dimension): 5mm → 10mm
• Reduced wall mount bore holes to 1 to reduce overhead, centered it horizontally and put it farther up for stability.
• Fixed a lot of sketches in the f3d archive so it scales way better than before.
• Observation: When changing from PLA Basic to matte it'll consume about 9g more of filament. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because it's denser. Haven't investigated further here.

* provided you use the "mk.4 - AiO - 0.6mm Nozzle" profile which requires you to have a 0.6mm nozzle installed in your printer.

mk.3

• bigger bores for 4,5mm countersunk screws → no friction anymore
• Modfied walls to use less material by (hopefully) maintaining the same stability
• Optimized height for Bambu Boxes

mk.2

• Adaptions to bottom plate → less material, more stability through straighter lines
• More chamfering and fileting for a smoother finish

mk.1

• Initial version

Feedback

Please be kind! This is only my second bigger project with Fusion360. I'm still in the process of getting behind things.
But constructive feedback as well as change requests are very welcome.
Also, if you want to make remixes yourself, you are allowed to do so. I will link useful one's here :-)

Support

If you appreciate this model and wanna buy me coffee, you can do so here: https://ko-fi.com/kellervater
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