Winding device for mains cable

thingiverse

As I was tired of the mess I had with some long power cables for yard work I decided it was time to fix the problem. Commercial parts I found either to expensive or to simple to be useful. You will need 2 of the shown part plus some 16mm diameter rod which can be aluminum tubing or wooden rods. I used two ~500mm and two ~150mm pieces but the lengths can be made as desired and what cable length should be rolled up. The two small holes at the base accept the pins of a Schuko plug so it doesn't hang around when winding up the cable. Even printing 0.3mm layers with 0.6mm width (0.4mm nozzle) made for a lengthy print time of 9:45 per side! The rods I glued in with CA glue. As I used the cheapest PLA I could find the print quality is pretty poor but for the purpose cheap is better than nice...... Because I could and not had to I made two versions. cable-spool.stl is a one piece design. cable-spool-3part-xxx.stl is a 3 part design. One needs one piece of body and two pieces of plate plus four 4mm flathead screws to assemble it. I also applied a bit of CA glue in between. The 3 piece version has the advantage that it is less likely to break as the layers are in a better orientation.