Due to popular demand and our desire to do our part for the environment, we are stoked to announce that we will be stocking Masterspool PLA refills. The Masterspool system is a 3D printed spool that screws together. This design allows you to refill the spool and eliminate waste from single-use spools.
Key Features
- High quality PLA
- Consistent +/- 0.03 mm diameter tolerance
- Reduce waste from single-use spools
- Made from renewable resources and thus biodegradable
- Re-sealable bag for easy and dry storage
The Spool
We wanted to offer a 1KG PLA coil refill, but unfortunately we could not get them to fit on the original RichRap v4 Masterspool. As a result, we have decided to go with a spool based of ckitching’s design, which fits our 1kg coil. This 3D-printable spool prints easily and with little filament. There are two different types; a normal circle 200mm spool and a squarish 175mm spool for smaller build surfaces. You can download the files here www.thingiverse.com/thing:2976384
This spool has plenty of holes for holding the end of your filament. Grooves to allow zip ties to be slid under the filament on the spool, letting you re-zip tie the coil and take back off for storage. All refills come packaged with four zip ties and vacuum sealed in a re-sealable bag for ongoing moisture-free storage.
Printing
Printing this masterspool is very easy. No special settings or supports needed. We do recommend using 3-4 top, bottom and walls layers to ensure maximum strength and a minimum 175x175x60mm build volume is required.
Loading, unloading and caring for your refill coils
You may be worried about the potential for tangles. It’s near impossible for filament to tangle during manufacturing, the only way to tangle filament is to not keep proper tension on the filament and letting it wrap around itself. This also applies to our refill coils. They are tightly wound from the factory and will not tangle unless handled improperly. To ensure a good experience, follow these steps:
- Keep the zip ties on your filament coil until it’s securely loaded onto your spool.
- Screw both sides 90% tight before removing zip ties.
- When removing the zip ties, hold the end of the filament tight to keep tension on it
- When not in use, ensure the filament end is securely held onto the spool, just like with regular spools
- If you need to remove the filament from the spool, put new zip ties on before taking the spool apart
- Store in re-sealable bags to improve life of filament
Packaging
1KG coil secured with 4 zip ties
Vacuum sealed re-sealable bag
Silica gel
Wanja –
The filament itself is nice, but I’d only recommend a loose refill if you put it on the spool once and use it up in one go. Swapping between different filaments has been an absolute dog of a time even though I always tied it up tight when I removed it.