My larger multi-band antenna, a Wolf River Coil, comes with a trio of pre-cut radial wires to attach to the legs. No matter how carefully I roll them up into a tied off bundle, the next time I get them out and setup the antenna, I spend a significant amount of time untangling them.
I’ve been thinking about solving this problem with my 3D Printer for a while, but I have a ton of projects like this in the works and it’s taken me a while to get around to it.
While shopping for some other radio parts the other day however, I saw a commercial radial storage spool design in a portable antenna kit that I really liked. It was elegant, practical, and not overly complicated. So I dove into Fusion 360 to draw my own version of the design.
I exported the design to a .STL file, sliced it up in Cura using the draft .2mm layer height profile and 20% infill with a brim, and zipped it off to my OctoPi for printing in a dark blue PLA+ filament on my silent-steppered (mod) Anet ET5X.
The resulting spools (I printed three) came out great!
I’ve uploaded the design to Thingiverse if you want to print your own 🙂