Unlockable Filament Spool - 250mm diameter

thingiverse

UPDATE JAN 2018: Handle with care this design along with its original counterpart. Recently I hand wound a 50m loose roll onto the spool ensuring no hitches and inadvertently wound it a little too tight in places leading to a jam that caused an unattended print to fail. The spool itself rolls smoothly on a metal bar so that wasn't the issue. I needed a larger diameter filament spool than Christoph Laimer's original Unlockable Filament Spool design for bigger rolls of loose 2.85mm dia PLA filament. After printing some sections of Christoph's design to get a feel for the clip and spring features, I experimented with modifying several aspects: - incorporation of smaller snap-fit features similar to those used in a previous design, - thinning the Disk arms to reduce material slightly (this turned out to be probably necessary, enabling the arms to snap over the clip features), - the original spring features of the Spike-retainer axle-clips on the Fork part were single-walled outlines when sliced by Simplify3D v3.0.2, so they were beefed up significantly. The smaller snap fit features work very well - just don't expect to be able to disassemble this spool as easily as the original. To assemble, insert each Fork's inner clip in its corresponding mount hole in a Disk arm and gently flex each arm over the outer clip. When the second Disk is finally fitted, the arms really have considerable tension to overcome to snap the outer clips into place - strong fingers or a clamp will be required, but the sound is very satisfying - enjoy!