Spool Cable Reel

thingiverse

A quick re-use for spent filament spool; turn it into a cable reel. I use it to store a long Ethernet cable. Consists of a small handle to attach to the spool, and a removable insert to make holding the spool easy when spooling cable onto it. Idea for the insert is to re-use it across spools of the same size. The handle is intended to stay on the spool, and is just a few grams of plastic - but it can be removed and refitted easily enough, just the clip structure on the handle components may wear over time. The handle is in two parts; a flange/rod piece that fits from the inside of the spool (drill a 10mm hole in the spool to fit it), and the handle which slides onto the rod and clips into place. For strength, the rod has a hole for a 30mm screw - getting the diameter of the hole suited to a screw I did by trial and error; I think the screw I used is M4. Idea with the screw is just for strength to prevent the rod just snapping at a layer line. Of course you could just buy a cheap drawer handle knob from a DIY store - but that's not the point :) The spindle insert provides a hole suitably-sized for the middle two fingers of whichever hand you use to hold the spool. Lastly, there's a little clip that I use to hold the length of cable I leave at the start of the wind so I have enough length to plug it into stuff without removing the whole cable from the reel. OpenSCAD source is included, so fill your boots if you need to tweak any sizes. Spools are not all exactly the same size, so quite likely you'll want to change the "spool_inner_d" parameter which is the diameter of the spindle insert - set to slightly less than the diameter of the central hole in the spool, so that the spool rotates freely around the spindle. Choose the piece you want from the "model" parameter drop down, render and save as STL.