3D printed yarn tunnels
I often struggle with stuck yarn when I’m using very fine yarn. The thin threads slide into the narrow tip of the triangular yarn guide and get stuck and in the worst case rip. I tried to use tape or a piece of paper to block the tip but most often whatever I used fell out during knitting.
With a 3D printer at hand I decided to design something in Fusion 360. I thought of something that’s easy to put in and can be slid over the yarn. I had the picture of tunnel earring in my mind. Here is the result:
After the yarn is in the yarn mast, these yarn tunnels (as I call them) can be slid over the yarn from both sides of the metal triangle and then slid into place. I noticed that I just left them in place and threaded my yarn through.
It works really well. No clue if such a thing already exists somewhere. That’s my solution to the problem. Fixed! A nice side effect is that the yarn is also not hopping out of the triangle anymore when I work very wide pieces.
I share the model on Maker World with everyone for free, since the small items are designed for the yarn tension unit that comes with the Brother color changer (KRC830) and they are not tested with any other yarn tension unit – neither Brother nor any other machine brand. You can download all relevant information to adapt the model to your liking, though. The fit of the yarn tunnels is depending very much on how the metal of the tension unit is bent.
