This is a quick and eco-friendly way of putting 100m coils of PLA or ABS onto a spool for easy loading into your 3D printer, assuming of course that you have access to a Laser Cutter. ;)
Buy a 100m coil of a really neat colour of PLA or ABS Filament from somewhere like Faberdashery. Discover to your horror that it's just a bare coil of plastic in a bag! How am I going to print that featured Thing now? I'll have to print all the bits for a filament reel and wind the plastic onto it first.
Never fear! make your own out of the box it came in!
Cut one copy of the Cylinder and two Discs.
Bend the Cylinder and insert the tabs into the slots in the Disc.
Drop your coil of filament over the Cylinder.
Now fit on the second Disc and run some hot-melt glue around the inside of the tabs to hold it.
If the spindle that supports your reels is not a solid tube (like the Ultimaker) then a 54mm diameter postal tube has the correct 52mm internal diameter to fit. Just cut off a 75mm length and glue in the centre of the spool.
Load it up and it print!
| Cylinder_Cut.dxf |
| Disc_Cut.dxf |
