I’ve been thinking about how best to store my screws and nuts and bolts in my shed, and I came across the idea of repurposing filament spools There’s something a bit meta about this – printing these uses a fair amount of filament, so the more you print, it seems, the more empty filament holders to have…
Anyway, I searched Thingiverse until I found a suitable size that matched the specific polylite PLA filament spools that I had. I actually ran into a few difficulties with printing holders that go into thirds – they re just a little too big for my lulzbot mini 2, and so I went for a different style that splits things into quarters. As an added bonuses, this one had both shallow and deep drawers, which I can see being useful.
I printed these and then drilled holes into the spool. I was a bit worried about cracking the plastic, but the drill and drill bit held up. However, now I ran into my first problem – how to attach the holder to the spool. The Thingiverse design recommends M4 x 60mm screws, but I was not satisfied with this solution: the screws are both too wide, and also too short. Rather than make another trip to the hardware store, I decided that I would make a custom solution via the 3D printer. I wasn’t sure my printer could handle this – it seemed like a very narrow and long print, but it seemed to work pretty well.
Then it’s simply a matter of assembling them.
