Wool winder / spool

thingiverse

A major inconvenience of purchasing knitting wool from carefree free spirits is that it doesn't come in a ready-to-use format. It has to be pre-washed, color-stabilized and -ultimately- wound up onto spools or into the familiar playthings of a typical household cat. In order to rescue my son from being used as a living wool-holder by his knitting-obsessed mother, I designed this device. Design was created by myself, although I assembled components from other designs: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1832235 From this one, I utilized the rollers as a mount for the skateboard bearings. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1959208 Here, I employed the screw and screw hole of the back plate for the table mount. Design principle is a scissor-extender on two movable mounting plates. Two, because I was too lazy to design a solution for one of them. Some stabilization for the mounting plates is provided by the friction between the bearings and the aluminum rod. Important ! The aluminum rod must be of the anodized (matte) type to fit into the holes of the bearings and provide the necessary friction ! The entire device is to be mounted on the edge of a table w/ a maximum thickness of 30mm (less if you want to use a rubber protector on the mount). The rod will extend horizontally from the table. However, I discovered this to be somewhat clumsy/unstable, so I will design a vertical mount later on. On printing: 50% is probably excessive for most of the parts. However, the table mount REQUIRES AT LEAST 50%. 70% is preferable. Ah, and use PETG for the table mount because PLA is not flexible enough. Bill Of Materials (printed): 2 Mounting Plates Rod protector knob Table mount Screw Mounting bracket 8 scissor parts w/ thick end Thin scissor parts (count depends on desired extension) Bill Of Materials (other): 2 608 Skateboard Bearings 8mm anodized aluminum rod M3x10 screws (lots of 'em) M3 Nylock nuts (again: lots of 'em) M3 screws (I think it was 16 or 18mm), new version uses 20mm M3 Nuts UPDATE ! I modified the design for the table mount from a horizontal rod position to a vertical one. Simply choose the variant you desire. Hint: The plastic screw has an extremely tight fit. Scaling the width and height (NOT the length) of this to 99% improves usability significantly. Print Settings Printer: Anet A8 Rafts: No Supports: Yes Resolution: 0.15mm Infill: 50%