Solid Spool-Holders for 3D Printing

at {dayjob}, I ended up in charge of a small fleet of Dremel Desktop FDm 3D printers. These machines, by default, work with a proprietary size of filament spool with a built in RFID chip. I decided to switch to using a generic PLa filament to save on material costs and sourcing headaches. Unfortunately, the new style of spool didn’t fit into the built in compartment in the printers’ enclosure. To get around this problem, I designed and build a set of spool-holders.

My design requirements for this project were as follows:

• Heavy, so that the spools stay in place without needing to bolt down the holders to a table.
• Wide enough to accommodate most common spool sizes, in case I want to change filament suppliers again.
• Durable enough to withstand constant use by 100s of makerspace users.

Here’s what I came up with:

If you’re interested in using this design or taking inspiration from it, feel free. A bill of matrerials and some drawings are available below, or grab all of my design files from github.

Bill of Materials

Drawings