Faberdashery Spool: easy-print + light remix

thingiverse

If you want to print or remix this thing also check out the instructions. I like 3DMakeMe's design as it's functional and goes well with his/her Spool Stand (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:296971 / http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:370344). I found it hard to print though: the almost horizontal overhangs on the forks never turned out well on my printer. I redid the design in FreeCAD trying to copy the original as accurate as possible. Mostly round metric numbers made that easy. From this basis the following changes were made: removed the hexagonal pockets from the fork (too easy to mess up first layer), changed the profile of the connections to have no overhangs less than 45°, made sure the overhangs don't start at the first few layers (to allow using a brim), built in tolerances/gaps (0.15-0.4mm) to make parts fit, and as a bonus created a "light" version that takes about 35% less material and resembles a film spool. Instructions The design was made in FreeCAD unstable 0.14.3389 x86. It probably won't work in an older version. For the light version I recommend to use at least 1.5mm perimeter (e.g. 3x0.5mm). I printed everything with 0.3mm layers and found 20% honeycomb infill to be sufficient.