Silica gel desiccant inside-spool container

About design

Although I really like my design of the silica gel container - with each print I was wondering where to put the container.

This new project is designed so one can put spool on your printer without removing this silica gel container. After print just put your spool back to the sealed bag.

Spool

This container is designed to fit the particular type of spool. It's RS 200 KD from Alpaplastic. It's used by many manufacturers. The design changed in 2019 and my container works only with newer version.

Left spool is an old design and will not work. Right is a new design from 2019 - this will work.

This design also works with a bit thinner version RS 200 GH2 (from 2021 and newer) - use short containers version. :)

How to print:

Grid:

• Use dense infill with your favourite pattern to make holes small enough to keep silica gel inside
• Set number of Top and Bottom layers to zero.

Containers:

• Print in vase mode (spiral mode).
• Set bottom layers to 4 (or whatever makes strong bottom of the print)
• Consider thicker line width for stronger print - I use 0.8mm line width.
• Remember, You can print couple vase mode objects at one go - just use Complete individual objects option.

Tips:

• Start with printing Grid - it's fast and You can determine if it fits the spool tight.
• You don't have to use all three containers attached to the grid - sometimes one or two are enough
• For smaller spools use shorter container
• Remember that not only the infill percentage but also infill line width affects how big are gaps in the grid - try preview some combinations of those parameters in slicer