Fettling the eSUN 3D Printing Filament Box

I keep meaning to buy a proper filament holder for 3D printing, ideally one that allows the filament to be dried before and during use. Whilst I could just build one, I saw the eSUN 3D Printing Filament Box Storage Holder on ebay that seemed to fit the bill, and provided spool weight too which is vwry helpful for understanding how much length you have left and whether it will do the print job contemplated. See https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/eSUN-3D-Printing-Filament-Box-Storage-Holder-Keeping-Dry-Measuring-Weight-N1O7/113517683450

I bought it know that there was some slightly iffy feedback on heating / dehumidification / weighing, but I thought that at least it would be the right size for the spool, so I could fix the rest. That turned out to be wrong. A standard Colido 1kg spool was about 0.5mm too wide, so didn’t turn freely on the spindles. I found nothing on the internet about what to do about that, so thought I;d post my fix so future searches can find it.

The spool runs on rollers that are in bearings clipped into a plastic moulding that is in turn clipped to an aluminium base plate. To fix the issue I made the plastic plate about 1mm wider by cutting it in half and bolting directly to the baseplate using holes I drilled and tapped in it – see photo below. The bearings still run fine, and the spool now unrolls very cleanly.

In use I also found that the feed pipe came loose and the end tended to get dragged into the print head. So, I designed and printed a small widget that clamped the end of that pipe and held the filament so it fed cleanly into the printer. See below