Every 3D printing hobbyist using up a spool of filament has thought about what to do with the empty spool. It is quite sturdy and just FEELS useful for something more than just thrown away.
This repository has my suggestion on what to do with them: use an empty spool as the chassis to hold 3D-printed trays organizing small parts. The concept is not new and has been done many times. But this particular take on the idea is mine and shared with everyone under MIT license.
The challenge is to make trays that fit a spool. Dimensions vary between filament manufacturers, and even within the same company's filament product line they may change their spool supplier for any reason. So there's no one size fits all, thus an ideal situation for parametric CAD system such as CadQuery. It is parametric CAD using the Python programming language. This storage system started as a CadQuery learning/practice exercise but it turned out well enough to have graduated to its dedicated project repository here.
r2s4.py generates CadQuery geometry based on provided dimensions.
single_wedge.py uses r2s4.py to generate a single tray. This file was used
for interactive development using CadQuery's
CQ-Editor.
geenerate_all.py uses r2s4.py to generate a large number of STL files based
on lists of parameters defined within. This file is intended for command line
execution.
The expect usage pattern is for the user to clone this repository and edit
generate_all.py replacing my spindle spool dimensions. Then in a Python
environment with CadQuery installed, run python generate_all.py to generate
organizer trays with specified dimensions.
Well, if the filament spool dimensions are already in generate_all.py,
then corresponding STL files are available under docs\stl subdirectory.
Fork this repository and add desired spool simensions to the existing list in
generate_all.py. Create a pull request with those dimensions. If they look
reasonable to me, I will accept the change. Then I will manually run
generate_all.py on my machine and add resulting STLs to the list of
pre-generated STLs in this repository.
Service Level Agreement: None. I may be busy and not get around to it for some time. If you are unsatisfied you will be refunded the full service payment of $0.00. Offer expire when I delete this section from the latest version of this README file, or when I expire, whichever comes first.
I would prefer to automate this process (see below) but that has yet to happen.
Installing CadQuery is probably more work than most people would want to deal with. I have ideas on how to make it easier, but I haven't put time into executing these ideas. If you look at one of these and say "Oh I can do that easily" or "That looks like an interesting project" consider this your invitation!
CadQuery installed and running alongside a simple web server. Somebody can fill in their spindle spool dimensions on a form, hit "Submit", and get their custom generated STLs available for download.
CadQuery incoproated into an automated pipeline. For example, maybe some
GitHub Actions
magic can handle automatically generating STL when someone generates a
pull request with updated generate_all.py
- This repository is originally created with CadQuery version 2.4.0.
- Interactively created with CQ-Editor version 0.3.0dev.
- Running under Python 3.12.2
- CadQuery was installed with mamba 1.5.9 via conda 24.9.2
- Running within an x86-\zv64 virtual machine running Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS