Click Claws - The spoolholder that grabs on to your spool

myminifactory

Design For the design of this spool holder I thought about what the typical interaction is with a spool holder. Based on this I thought of something I personally haven’t seen before. Instead of hanging or laying the spool on the holder I wanted to have the spool grabbed onto by the holder itself. Of course, this meant that there needed to be moving parts while still keeping the holder strong enough to not break. For making sure it was strong enough I stared by designing a click mechanism and discussing with a friend of mine, who knows a lot more about mechanical engineering then me, how I can make it as strong as possible. And eventually I came to the design you can see here! One arm could hold 4.5 Kg, this should be strong enough to hold your typical 1 Kg spool. I also wanted to make it easy to print. The most important stuff needs no support and are all overhangs of 45 degrees or less. However, for the honeycomb pattern in the claws there are some overhangs of 60 degrees. I also uploaded a version with a starpattern that doesn't have the 60 degrees overhang! it does however contain a little bit more bridging.  This is still printable, but it will probably not be as clean as the 45 degree overhangs. There are also two overhangs that are even steeper. For those I modeled in support structures that can be removed with some prying. To make it easy to assemble I wanted to use as little hardware beside the 3d prints as possible. For the assembly I recommend using superglue and to mount it 2 screws are needed. If there are any suggestions on how I could improve upon this design I would love to hear it! Everything is designed in Fusion 360 Assembly For the assembly I made a short video explaining how this is done.   I enjoyed designing this spoolholder for this contest, I really put a lot of work into it so I hope you enjoy it too!