I've been printing a fair bit for
3dhubs lately: the user
uploads a model and chooses a material and colour, I print and post
it, I get paid. Since most people opt for black, silver-grey or white,
I've started buying larger spools of those, since they're about 20%
cheaper per length.
However, these larger spools (300mm diameter, 100mm deep) are too
big to fit the mount on the back of the printer. I've been working on
a longer spindle, and on a couple of free-standing designs, but I
needed to get something up and running quickly for an order. This is a
heavy spool which needs to rotate freely…
Now, before I got a big storage server, I burned a lot of DVD-Rs;
several hundred, in fact. (Most of them were still readable when I came
to put them onto the server, though a few weren't.) I don't need to
read them now, especially since I have a backup big storage server,
and it occurred to me that, actually, they spin quite easily…
![](tn_3575.jpg)
So about thirty of them, on a 100-disc spindle weighed down by a
couple of old hard drives, form the support and bearing for the big
spool of plastic.
![](tn_3574.jpg)
And thus it works. It's actually quite pleasing to be able to see the
spool turning a little every few seconds. Unfortunately I normally
store the boxes of plastic next to the printer where this spool is
living now, so its not a long-term solution, but it's getting the job
done very nicely.
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