I would strongly advice against PLA. It is usually too brittle and will fall apart after some time. PETG might be ok. More resistant materials are ASA / ABS or PC. I haven’t printed a respooler myself, so I can’t tell if PETG is sufficient to withstand the forces.
I printed the KYZ version for A1 mini. Most others can’t be built with a mini. I used PLA and I am very happy so far. I have only done 2 spools to date, but I am not worried about PLA. I don’t think that brittleness will be an issue. If there are going to be issues, it will be due to friction and heat causing plastic parts to fuse. I used Silicon Grease with PTFE on all plastic-to-plastic sliding parts and I could not detect any significant heat buildup. I did use metal bearings, which helps. The only thing I would be concerned about is the donor spool as that is all plastic with no bearings. If that fuses, I will just reprint that portion. I am not sure if PETG would be that much better. Yes, it has higher heat resistance that PLA, but it still isn’t very heat resistant. Time will tell if PLA is adequate, I guess.
bro just print the v spooler
V-Spooler por Fyrby Additive - MakerWorld
PLA is fine in this case because the thing is designed to be made with PLA and you can print it with more walls to be even more sure. But a lot of respoolers have fairly skinny members and high stress concentrations where the screw heads grip, etc so it’s a fair point to not use PLA for machines like this in general.
One advantage to using PETG here would be that it doesn’t stick to PLA so they will never fuse together! But really, just a small amount of oil should be fine, and once the mating surfaces wear in a bit, there will be even less friction and heat to worry about. Do report issues though! (I’m avoiding adding bearings to keep it super simple and I might add some steel pins if needed)
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thnx!! yeah… i noticed where u attach the power tool to the rod attached to the gear for winding… it normally breaks down after few respooling at high speed. was thinking of cutting off a portion of the allen wrench and use that instead.
A version of what @ExtremeElementz posted
I’m a big fan of the V-Spooler X available here on MakerWorld. It has a long set of instructions to guide you along the construction process and you can follow them Ok but it certainly could be a bit more clear. You’ll get through it and the designer answers questions so that helps.
Definitely like the stacked design. It’s a nice design and it handles 5K spools so you can purchase large spools at discounted prices and re-spool onto 1K (or smaller) spools for printing.
It also has a drill attachment included (in addition to a hand crank) so you can power from battery drill for easy spooling. The designer is also working on updating the design so you can attach a motor to the mechanism and it fits right into the frame so you don’t have to hassle with a drill (should be out soon). The winder mechanism is Ok (not great) and it does a fairly good job of directing the filament in rows as it spools. This is one aspect that could use some improvements but overall it works.
It’s a long set of prints but everything goes together quite nicely. I printed in Elegoo Rapid PLA+ (PETG not recommended, since it has too much flexibility). I originally started in PETG but after the first batch of prints I switched to PLA+ and it came out great (much more stable in PLA+). I printed it on both my A1 & my FlashForge 5M Pro and everything fits like a glove.
It also has a TPU attachment (I printed in FlashForge flexible PLA which worked really well) for incorporating a Sunlu Filament Connector unit into the path so your can easily attach filament strands and wind onto a roll for printing.
It does use brass inserts for solid part connection, so it does require you to have the needed components to get these inserted correctly.
I’d rate the overall construction process as moderately difficult. But it’s a great feeling when you get everything to come together and you see it working. If anyone has any questions about it, just let me know.
A great report - thanks.
What do the finished spools look like? I’ve yet to see the results from respooling not look like a birds nest.
Here is what it looks like with my remix of the LTS Respooler. The white was respooled and the yellow is from bambulab (might be helpful for comparison).
It sounds like you are expecting perfect results when respooling, like you would for example have on a roll of prusament. This isn’t something that you will be able to obtain with a cheap plastic machine.
The major influences of the result are, the width of the spool, the filament itself (how straight it is) and how much the filament guide wobbles/how accurately it moves. Most respoolers are designed to work best with spools that have the same dimensions as the bambulab spool, some like (I think) the pastamatic have remixes that add swappable gears for respooling onto different spools.
I think the V-Spooler with the linear rail remix or the pastamatic with the swappable gears will come closest to a perfect result (based on how they are designed/what can be changed), but does the result really matter? I don’t think it does, and my printer doesn’t care either.
I agree. The V-Spooler X results are similar to yours (I haven’t taken any images of spools I’ve rolled but I will on my next re-spool and post back). It certainly isn’t perfect but I think it does a reasonable job (very similar to what I get from ZYLtech). Not as nice as Bambu or Eyeone or others but I also don’t believe that level of a neat roll is really that important. I’ve not had any problems with rolls I’ve re-spooled on the V-Spooler X with the AMS Lite (& external mount) so I’m happy enough.
Thanks for the feedback. The spooling results look satisfactory. I’ll have a look at the V-Spooler X.
Here is me fixing a loose spool with the Pasta Lite. I had to clamp it down with the spool holder because it didn’t fit onto the spool anymore. The donor side kept getting loose because the pressure from the donor spool was decreasing as filament was being removed. (I’m wondering reversing the thread direction at the expense of intuitive use - easy to just mirror the parts in the slicer…)
One mistake was not transferring the RFID tag before respooling, so I double respooled to get the RFID back. (This was PETG - didn’t need to be double respooled for stress)
I’d call it a success though 
And here is the assembly video of the receiver side (the donor side just attaches with 2 more pins). No heat set inserts, no screws, no bearings (but can be added), no electronics, just one short PTFE tube and maybe 3 minutes:
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