3DPN Shelf Spool Holder - Brien Allison
3DPN Shelf Spool Holder - Brien Allison
Published 2018-08-08T16:13:58+00:00
My submission to the 3D Printing Nerd Shelf Spool Holder design competition.
When designing this spool holder, I aimed to optimise strength and simplicity within the design constraints of the contest. I was particularly concerned that If I attached the spool holder to only the front timber, while it would easily carry the vertical load, the twisting moment from the spool holder could cause damage to the shelf brackets; particularly if many were attached to the same timber.
For this reason I opted for this levered design, where the bending moment from the spool would be held with vertical forces on the front and back timbers. I used large fillets and undercuts to reduce stress concentrations at the corners, and changed the thickness based on the bending moment along the beam.
This design is very secure when holding a spool, but can easily be removed by unhooking it from the front. It can be positioned at any point on the shelves without interfering or needing to move any of the stowed filament spools.
This prints all in one piece, without any support material, on its side for maximum strength from print orientation. This does mean it is quite long however (about 320mm) and doesn't fit on my standard 200mmx200mm print bed; the printed example is at 80% scale. I've also included the Fusion 360 file if you need to make any minor adjustments ;).
Update: I've adjusted the text on the model to make it larger and generally much easier to print.
The printed example, done at 80% scale, was made with 2 shells with an 0.4mm nozzle and 5 top and bottom layers at 0.1mm resolution and with 15% triangular infill. Despite being quite light at 40g, it is very rigid, easily more than capable of holding a 5kg spool. The simple beam shape, where the majority of its strength comes from the walls, combined with the truss like triangular infill makes it very stiff and strong, even with these very light printing settings. Also using 3DPN high five blue filament (or as close as I could get to it) is guaranteed to make it ten times stronger and cooler ;).
Date published | 08/08/2018 |
Material Quantity | approx 65g |
Dimensions | 320mmx90mmx30mm |
Technology | FDM |
Complexity | Easy |
Support Free | YES |