rt-541

projects / spool cabinet

Basement spool cabinet

A sealed plywood filament cabinet one IKEA BILLY wide, for a Michigan basement, holding 56 spools at 10 to 20 percent humidity on desiccant alone. The doors are two IKEA OXBERG tempered-glass doors on their own hinges, the case is pocket-screwed from three sheets of plywood, and the seal is EPDM bulb weatherstrip held by magnetic catches. Drying is a bought box dehydrator, not a heater in the cabinet.

// 3d model

Shaded render of the cabinet with both glass doors closed, spools visible through the glass
Doors closed. Rendered from the same geometry as the STEP, with the OXBERG glass at 20 percent opacity.
Shaded render with both doors swung open showing four shelves of fourteen spools, two rows deep, and the gel pan and fan on the floor
Doors open. Fourteen spools per shelf on cradle rails, back row on risers, gel pan and fan on the floor, overflow spools flat in the cubby.
Shaded orthographic front view with the doors removed: four rows of spools seen edge-on with the back row standing taller
Straight-on front view, doors removed. The back row stands 1.75 in taller than the front row, which is the edge you grab.

The model comes from the same shopcad framework as the garage shop: one Python scene module whose parameters are the sheet numbers, checked on every build, exported as GLB for the viewer, STEP with names and colors, and a Fusion 360 script that creates user parameters (bay width and count, case height, shelf pitch, door size) and builds every part as its own body. Set bays to 2 and it draws the wider version.

// by the numbers

cabinet
31.5 x 76 x 18.75 in
capacity
56 on rails + 18 flat
doors
2 OXBERG glass
rough cost
$450 to 550

// how it got here

Revision A was a 4 by 6 ft cabinet with shop-built acrylic doors and a 75 C heater box beside it. The heater came down to 65 C once the shelf turned out to be PLA, PETG and TPU, then the shelves were called out as under-structured for a 46 in span and moved to fixed pocket-screwed shelves.

Revision D replaced the acrylic doors with IKEA OXBERG glass doors, which set the bay width at a BILLY's 30 in and cut the door cost and the door build to nothing. A used box dehydrator does the drying for less than the heater box's parts. Then a pitch check showed spools on rails sit edge-on at 4 in, not 10, so one bay holds 56 and the second bay went away. Every price on the shopping list is a checked listing rather than an estimate.

// the drawing set