Hi
I am new to 3D printing and need to find a filament rewinder quickly. After looking on-line I can see there are many designs with a fair amount of negative feedback. Can anyone suggest a budget sussessful model to print (hand or drill powered)? At present I only have PLA and PTEG Hf filament.
I have filament that I needed to change onto another spool as the existing is PLA (i now know is a bad idea) and I need to dry it. I have successfully change a couple of spools with a no problem but I now have a spool that I need to rewind as it has sprung off the cardboard carrier.
Thanks for any help you can give.
Red Arrow
I’ve downloaded
but haven’t printed it yet. It sure seems to be popular.
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Print one of the ones that just screws onto a spool and uses a drill to wind.
Put feed spool on printers spool holder.
Put end of filament on empty spool.
Pull trigger on drill.
Go slow to wind properly.
Profit.
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The Pastamatic was the second one I tried. I learned how the reversible screw works, very good gear design but unfortunately not how to respool smoothly.
Just follow @johnfcooley advice. That’ll get you there quicker. If you need that one spool immediately though… purely by hand I need 45 Min per 250g…
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Edit: Now that read your post again, this is probably a bit much, but you wont be disapointed if you go with something that resembles this. It also had a drill option, just didnt want to sit there will my drill runing for that long.
When I printed this, I had tried a few designs. Ive recently upgraded the power supply so it respools in about a minute. Atleast 500 rolls ran through it with no issues. Somewhere on this forum, there is another thread like this. I posted the actual models I used in that thread.
Cf nylon gears or just normal nylon will make it last forever
Keep in mind that if youre using cardboard spools, the bambu spools will fit inside the center carboard ring. You can tear off one side of cardboard, insert bambu spool, flip spool over, tear off other cardboard side and insert the other bambu spool half. For the cardboard spools with a slightly larger diameter center ring, the bambu cardboard ring should fit inside of it and then the bambu plastic spool inside both cardboard rings
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Welcome to the community! 
Here is a basic simple one and easy to print. I have printed all the parts in PLA and am waiting on the bearings from Amazon. Simple and to the point.
I use the PastaMatic and also use the extra gear and follower to wind my dual and triple spools. I use a small electric hand driver to power the winder. Start slow and pickup speed as it winds. I usually hold my hand on the supply spool to stop it if I let up on the speed. The friction paddles don’t always work fast enough. Otherwise, you could send a lot of filament flying.
Side note: I keep some TPUs on a triple spool. The double spools are great for those short leftovers or samples.
Check this thread also
I printed re-spooler by LZTS It works pretty much great.
It takes cca 13-15 minutes to respool 1Kg filament and it stops automatically when donner spool is empty.
I use it also as a film holder when feeding film to printer on external spool…
I have modified the motor drive so I can use stepper controller ZK SMC02 - no need for Arduino on off switch etc… I did it because I had those parts on hand. And most of the time the motor drive kit ( 50$ ) the author sells is out of stock.
Could also use 12V DC motor with gearbox - I tried with 12v motor direct drive but it just was not strong enough. And when using gearbox it gets to slow.
Down sides I noticed during respooling and I will tackle them in future:
- The filament gets wound more on the one side of the spool - makes problems once loaded in the
AMS. - No brake for the donor spool - unwinds uncontrollably when running with higher speed.
- Additional brake to tension the filament on the spool more tightly
- Can be a bit tricky to attach the start of the filament on the spool due to the respooler compactness
Funny you mentioned this one.
A coworker has brought this unit up the other day, hated it. Had used it, it didn’t work. Has a new spool he needs to respool and thought he try it one more time.
Next day comes to work and says man, I don’t know what I did wrong the first time but it worked like a dream. Worked so well he respooled all his cardboard spooled filaments to plastic spools.
Think maybe he was going to fast the first time he tried it.
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Probably… Think the issue was/is that the donor spool runs too fast and filament tangles under it. I can run it at 700 do not know what? rpm ?or steps? if i go to 900 it loses steps and stop working after 5 -6 minutes 
faster it starts with filament tangling.
Today i replaced the feeding arm - where the micro switch is with my own version - different ball - from a BB gun and different micro switch.Now I sent to printer new set of gears to make it go faster or to lower the rpm of the stepper.
I did print the Pastamatic rewinder and it came out very well. I used Bambu PETG-HF and had no trouble with the dense plate. The device wound well once I realized that I needed to add friction to the donor spool. I didn’t have TPU so didn’t make the friction pads, but, for the first run I simply placed my canvas screw bag and gently leaned against the rim and that created enough drag.
I have since reworked the right and left wiper plates so that it holds 1.6 mm butyl rubber sheets. I use this material for various gaskets so have plenty of it on hand. That seems to work well, but I haven’t done a full spool with it yet.
I did realize that I should do this in a cleaner environment. I did the first spool in my workshop and I think the filament picked up some amount of dust. Next up is a dust wiper… 
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great idea for the “brake” - think wil implement it
I use printer next to my garage / workshop. there is some dust involved but no isues there.